Sara Craven tends to write stories where the primary conflict is in the heroine’s head, when she convinces herself that although she is deeply in love, the hero does not and never can love her, and therefore she faces a lifetime of misery. Usually she protects herself by acting as though she cares little, or that the attraction is physical only.

Sometimes this theme happens after marriage, marriage to take care of a child (Devil and the Deep Sea), a coerced marriage for financial/business reasons (Wife Against Her Will, The Marriage Proposition), even when the marriage was ostensibly for love (His Wedding Night Heir). In Solitaire (link is paid ad) her agony of the heart happens during courtship, when Martine leaves her aunt’s house to go to her older cousin, Uncle Jim, in France and discovers Jim is dead and film director Luc Dumaris owns his house now. Martine is not sophisticated but she’s wise enough to realize that there is no future for her with Luc.

Unfortunately she falls for Luc despite telling herself over and over to stop. For the moment she is stuck in his house because she hasn’t enough money to leave (nor anywhere to go since her aunt doesn’t want her back) and she works for him as a companion for his son to earn enough to return to England. She doesn’t see all that much of Luc but everytime they run into each other she is pulled deeper. Luc is likewise attracted and keeps grabbing Martine, kissing and caressing her and suggests they go upstairs to make love. Luc of course loves Martine but she doesn’t realize it and is reluctant to even suspect it.

This is where author Craven must be her strongest, to make such an implausible story work. Martine has zero experience of men and Luc is strong, masculine, successful, good looking, intelligent and fun to be with. In fact Martine spends very little time with Luc and is surprised to find he can be a delightful companion when he’s not kissing her senseless. Solitaire doesn’t show us anything about Luc’s feelings except through his actions, but it’s clear Luc is attracted to Martine physically but also to her integrity and innocence. He’s about 15 years older, an obvious target for her to have a huge crush.

Unfortunately Craven can’t quite pull this off. The romance is all too likely but it is hard to believe they love and are not simply attracted or infatuated or in love with love or with an ideal. The love story is not compelling.

One reason Solitaire falls just short is the sheer implausibility of the pairing, especially given the fact very young women tend to fall in and out of love until they finally are mature enough to love and not simply be in love. A second reason is that Craven doesn’t show us what Luc thinks. He avoids Martine and spends time with the older, more sophisticated other woman. We could infer that he avoids Martine because he’s attracted to her strongly and wants to play fair with such an innocent, or we could surmise that he’s not interested in her except physically and is decent enough to avoid that. If I were in Martine’s place I don’t think I would figure Luc feels love. Lust, yes. Definitely. But love is not evident in his behavior.

Craven shows us too much inside Martine, as she constantly agonizes over Luc and how he doesn’t/can’t love her. She is responsible and has integrity and wants to earn her wage, first by companioning Luc’s son and then by typing his manuscript. If Martine had been older or wiser she would have asked Luc just what was going on the first time he grabbed her and kissed her silly. He could have been leading up to an affair, or he could have been expressing frustration. Or he could have been showing love.

Had Martine been brave enough to confess her love to Luc, risking rejection or even worse, having him rush her into an affair without love, she would have seen that he did love her. Almost all of Craven’s heroines are cowards when it comes to saying “I love you”, and then they are lost in the woods because they have to wait for a crisis to prompt the man to say it. Since the ladies have spent almost 170 pages being aloof, it’s not too easy for the man to say it either.

Craven sometimes builds excellent characters, uses dialogue and actions to reveal them to us. Martine, Luc’s son Bernard, and Jean Paul, the student working at a local café who dates Martine are quite well developed and we can feel like we might recognize them if we were to meet. Luc is an enigma. We know Martine by her verbal dialogue and her inner thoughts, and I feel Craven uses far too many internal monologues to set the stage and show us Martine.

Overall Solitaire is a solid 3+ stars, not quite 4 but certainly worth reading. I got my paperback copy from Thriftbooks and you might see copies on eBay or other used book sites. Amazon has copies available as I write this. The Open Library at Archive.org does not have Solitaire yet.

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