Ilze

Meh. Don't know what it is about the Harlequin "formula" that always eventually turns me off their stories. The heroes are always so clean and heroic, the heroines are always so pure and feminine, and the villains can be spotted a mile down the road. Nicola Cornick's story is the best, but it is marred by a really dreadful scene with the heroine's hired "chaperon" - if the woman hadn't been so awful, the scene might have been more effective, but instead, the story just ended with me shaking my head. The only memorable character in the book is the irascible Aunt Harriet, who really came into her own in Elizabeth Rolls' story. Although how an ancient spinster always knows, instinctively, what a wife needs to restore her composure after her husband has upset it, even when that need is a good bout of "exercise" in bed, is never explained in the story.