What do you get when you combine an economist, a lonely girl, a nanny and plenty of money? A marriage of convenience, Betty Neels’ Year’s Happy Ending. Our economist is widower Professor Gideon Beaufort, the lonely girl is his daughter Eleanor and the nanny is Deborah. Eleanor needs a mother and the only way that can happen is if Gideon takes a wife. Eleanor likes Deborah, so Gideon decides Deborah will do just fine.
Gideon comes to his sister’s home, where Deborah is nanny-ing, meets her, insults her and annoys her. Later he and his sister’s family all go to the Algarve, taking Deborah along for nanny duties. This is the plot device to bring Deborah and Eleanor, then Deborah and Gideon, together.
Gideon is blunt. He doesn’t love Deborah and doesn’t think he may ever fall in love. Deborah however decides Gideon is the cat’s meow and agrees to marry him. This is more than half way through the book.
Betty doesn’t show much romance between Gideon and Deborah. She is miserable when he is cold or aloof, and he doesn’t seem to do anything to foster attachment. The most emotional moment is when Gideon decides he must leave work unexpectedly and come home, just because he wants to talk to Deborah. This is lucky for Deborah because she is stuck in a ravine in an ice storm with a wet dog. Gideon rescues her, but of course he’s rather nasty about it.
Year’s Happy Ending is an easy, gentle read, and I liked Deborah, but the book isn’t as satisfying as some of Betty’s. It’s almost as if Betty changed her mind half way through about what book she was writing. The first half shows Deborah doing nanny work – over and over and over. It’s a little boring to read about,not to mention doing it 24×7 with scarcely a moment without kids or kids’ laundry. Gideon isn’t there most of the novel and when he is all he does is make snide comments.
It’s as though Betty wants us to see that Deborah needs to be rescued, but Deborah doesn’t seem to want a rescue. She doesn’t particularly want to be a nanny forever but she’s not flirtatious and doesn’t know many men so she’s not expecting to get married. The Algarve scenes were nice but the whole first half could have been summarized into 20-30 pages of Deborah-the-nanny, then Betty could have developed the romance and shown us more about Gideon.
I own the book and it’s good enough to reread, just not one of Betty Neels’ best.
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