Sara Wood (1)

Entertaining romance about hero Luke McLaren (who is writing a guidebook of Jerusalem). He hires photographer-heroine Olivia Kent to take the pictures for his book. They start off on the wrong foot but eventually they end up enjoying themselves and begin to fall for each other. I really liked the descriptions of Jerusalem/Israel and the places they visited in this book. I felt like I was there. Luke was a scruffy, free and easy hero who liked women. Olivia was repressed due to a strict show more childhood. She eventually loosened up and began to live life. An enjoyable Harlequin Presents from the 1980’s. show less

The hero can get a bit too mouthy and violent for my tastes at times, but Harlequins like this are why I used to read so many of them. Gems amongst plain stones. Hard to put down and a delight to read. It'd be better if the hero didn't call the heroine names when he's angry at her and threatening to ruin her, but her act at the beginning as a decorator had me giggling, their relationship seemed to progress in a way that didn't feel rushed and seem to hold a type of innate magic that wasn't show more "silly". The heroine was the best part of the story, I liked her humor and attitude, although she was a little stubborn at the end with realizing something obvious about her employer. Speaking of that, the story cut off too soon! I wanted to know where Lionel went, if there was any confrontation with him, any revenge done in retaliation. Also, an extended epilogue with the HEA would have been good, at least for a few more pages, the ending kind of caught off. show less

Well this had a bunch of potential that it didn't really live up to. It also had one of the weirder setups of any HP that I've read. Let's see he got married at 18 to a 30 year old and then they immediately had a son to go along with the daughter his wife already had. And then when he was 34 or so, a young girl (16 years old) comes to board with them while his wife is dying of cancer and everybody loves her cuz she's just so lovable. This includes the hero who makes a pass at her just after show more the wife dies 2 years later. This all happens 4 years before the book starts. Where can it possibly go from there? Lots of crazy places let me tell you. Let's just say the hero has some weird motivations but he does go all in for the heroine about 2/3rds of the way through the book and a lot of time is spent trying to work things out between them which was nice. In Harleys you don't often get to see a couple trying to work on an established relationship so I enjoyed that. show less

Another totally whackadoodle HP. And this one I just couldn't get behind at all. The set up is that the heroine is going to Hungary for the marriage of her brother to her bestie. Her other brother Istvan is there to throw a spanner into the works. Turns out he is not her brother although they were raised together. He had had the hots for her even as a teenager and so the parents had sort of tried to keep them apart and he had himself pushed her away. He found out they weren't related 4 or so show more years ago. I think he's around 30 now. She just finds out during this book. I just kept thinking that if you're raised as brother and sister you don't fall in love with each other if you find out when you're 24 that you're not related. I would think that you would still feel like that person was your sibling. That is unless you are writing smut instead of romance. So I was anxious to see how the author would deal with it cuz, you know, juicy. I just didn't feel like she pulled it off totally. Then throw in the crazy Hungarian royalty stuff and it didn't gel well for me. show less