Rafe Peveril meets a young lady in a gift shop in New Zealand heroine Marisa Somerville and he is convinced she is someone he met six years ago called Mary Brown.
But she insists they never met, As the story goes on Marisa's home burns down and Rafe let's her stay at his place with her fiveyearold son Keir.
They become attracted to each other, But Rafe is wondering why Marisa is keeping secrets about her identity,
I really enjoyed this romance, Marisa was married to an emotionally abusive husband for a couple of years, She finally got out of that marriage and she never wants to be that scared, meek girl again, She is now confident and successful with her own business, Rafe was a great hero, nice, likable, and protective when it seems that Marisa's crazy exhusband is out there again, looking for her.
Marisa's son Keir was cute and adorable, A lovely read by Robyn Donald, When Marissa married David Brown, things changed, He abused her, never physically but both mentally and emotionally, After her first miscarriage, he told he that he was happy because he did not want a baby, So when Marissa thought she was pregnant again, her mother was ill and she was given a chance to get away thank to Rafe, she took it.
Once back at home in New Zealand she got help for her horrible depression, her pregnancy and helped try to nurse her parents but sadly they both passed away.
As time moved on, she moved away to a different side of New Zealand, Never knowing for quite a while that her past would show up in Rafe, because he lived there too,
Marissa had kept a bunch of secrets from everyone, she became a new person after she fought her depression and divorced David.
Now things are falling apart for Marissa but Rafe is there to love her and her son Keir, not to mention pick up the pieces.
I loved this novel, it was so different from the ones out there, It was like a suspense but wasn't, The only thing I felt a bit frustrated on is David's background, In the book David was definitely psychotic and I would of loved to know what he was thinking and what happened in his past when he was seven years old that turned him into the creepy dude in the novel.
Marisa Somerville has changed. Now a confident, groomed, successful businesswoman, she's nothing like the scared wife of an abusive husband that Rafe Peveril survived a plane crash with six years ago.
She has a different name, but he'd know those sirengreen eyes and lush lips anywhere, Yet she insists they've never met and Rafe wants to know why, She might deny knowing him, but she can't deny how she responds to his touch, New Zealander tycoon meets a woman with extraordinary green eyes who reminds him of someone he met long ago on another continent.
It was the mousey, timid wife of one of his employees who had nothing going for her except a beautiful pair of green eyes.
He was giving her a lift back to New Zealand in his private plane because she had a family emergency, But the plane crashed, killing the pilot, He and the woman both survived the crash but he was in shock and terribly injured while she miraculously was almost unhurt.
She dragged him to safety and nursed him as best she could until they were rescued the next morning, Then, she disappeared and he never saw her again nor did he ever give her another thought,
Until now. Because this woman he has just met has the same startling green eyes as the one who saved his life, Except that far from looking like a drab, brown mouse, she is stunningly beautiful and sexy, He falls instantly in lust with her and is determined to insert himself into her life, despite her standoffishness,
Naturally, we soon find out that he is not dealing with a doppelganger but with the exact same woman he metyears ago.
In the meantime, she has had a total makeover and change of identity, Or rather she spentyears healing from the emotional and physical damage inflicted on her by her abusive husband, that made her look like a shell of herself.
The specter of the abusive husband hangs over the entire story, even pushing the hero and heroine into entering an engagement of convenience to protect her Seekret Son from a custody battle or worse, a kidnapping attempt.
We never meet the abusive husband, we only see him through the heroine recalling his serial killer psychotic tendencies killing animals, committing arson, rejoicing in his wife's miscarriage, etc.
.
Lo and behold, the author kills the abusive ex husband off page because she has simply run out of pages to come up with another conclusion.
Problem solved. Cue the undying love declarations between two people who pretty much just met and don't even know each other, I mean, Hero had to use his private investigator and do some on the field exploring himself before he was able to force a confession out of her about all the lies she was hiding behind: Stellar courtship lol!
These characters were so flat and forgettable, so one dimensional, so bland and boring, and the plot so meandering and full of holes that it kind of made me miss Robyn Donald's Old Skool WTFery days.
Those older books may have made me want to hurl them against the wall in sheer frustration and disgust at the garbage people she described in them, but at least they felt real, alive, and breathing, and made me FEEL.
Here, on the other hand, I felt, . . NOTHING. And that is worse : It was just okay, Was going along well enough as astar read then fell flat,
The heroine is hiding from her abusive ex husband when she meets the Hero again, She has changed from the meek, downtrodden, abuse victim that she was when the Hero met her, so he doesnt immediately recognize her, plus she is using a different name.
The first half of the book was intriguing and I was interested enough to find out when the Hero would discover her true identity.
He is attracted to the new confident beautiful woman he encounters and he recognizes something about her, but cant place it.
The heroine has a child whom she is hiding from her ex husband and this is the part where the book falls flat.
The heroines house gets burned down so she and her son move into the heros house, which provides a good venue for a lot of sexual tension moments.
Then there is the possibility that the house was burned by arson, . . the evil EX However, the climax of the book, the EX finding them or causing problems suddenly fell flat and he was dispatched in one paragraph after all that build up, its as if the author ran out of page count and abruptly ended the book
Recommendation:
Hmmm.
. . just read if you have nothing better, Just ok. Not sure where or when the love came although author insists it has, Dull. another nice romance by this author, though she does not write with the depth that she didyears ago, When Rafe Peveril meets Marisa Somerville again, she's a changed woman and nothing like the terrorstricken woman who survived a plane crash with him six years ago.
The only thing is Marisa was Mary Brown then and denies ever meeting Rafe! As circumstances keep throwing them together, Rafe is determined to discover what happened and why Marisa refuses to acknowledge the plane crash they were in.
This is an interesting story involving strong emotions and a back story that was terrible emotionally for Marisa before she could open
up to Rafe.
Miniseries: DarkHearted Tycoons
Category: Classic Romance
Humdrum, Extremely short and shaky. After running away from her emotionally abusive husband, and from Mariposa, with Rafe's help, Marisa makes a life for herself, and her son, Keir, in Tewaka.
What she doesn't realise is that her past is back to haunt her, and neither does she expect to run into Rafe, or that he should remember her from six long years ago.
Her entire demeanor has changed now, and back then, they had departed as mere acquaintances,
I loved Rafe, and this story too which had elements of suspense in it, but I think Marisa's ex, David, got away easily.
But of course, this is a romance, not some crime thriller, The bond between Rafe, and Keir, was lovely, The book does justice to the title, and viceversa, for the first time, read an MampB with a sensible title,
It is almost at the end that the explosive chemistry between RafeMarisa leads to confessions of love,
P. S. When I found the mention of a couple in the story, Kelt, and Hani, my romantic nose started sniffing around, and out came a book to be added to my ever growing pile of TBR.
No, make it two, a duology Regally Wed
, sitelinkRich, Ruthless, and Secretly Royal by sitelinkRobyn Donald, and
, sitelinkForgotten Mistress, Secret LoveChild by sitelinkAnnie West It was a good read,the story progressed really well,liked the way Rafe never gave up but fought all the walls that Marisa tried to put between them and healed her of her demons.
Overall enjoyed the book very much,
Recommend it. Robyn was born onin Northland, New Zealand, She was the oldest child in her family, and as a child, she thrilled her four sisters and one brother with bloodcurdling adventure tales, usually very like the latest book shed borrowed from the library.
Robyn owes her writing career to two illnesses, The first was a younger sisters flu, She was living with her husband and Robyn and spent most of that winter acquiring, suffering, and recovering from various infections.
One day she croaked that she had read everything on Robyns bookshelves, so would Robyn please buy her something cheerful and sustaining.
Robyn found three paperbacks one Mills and Boon Modern Romance novel and a couple of other romances, Robyn read them, too, of course, and Robyn was born onin Northland, New Zealand, She was the oldest child in her family, and as a child, she thrilled her four sisters and one brother with bloodcurdling adventure tales, usually very like the latest book she'd borrowed from the library.
Robyn owes her writing career to two illnesses, The first was a younger sister's flu, She was living with her husband and Robyn and spent most of that winter acquiring, suffering, and recovering from various infections.
One day she croaked that she had read everything on Robyn's bookshelves, so would Robyn please buy her something cheerful and sustaining.
Robyn found three paperbacks one Mills and Boon Modern Romance novel and a couple of other romances, Robyn read them, too, of course, and so enjoyed them she spent the next couple of years hunting down Mills and Boon books.
This was much difficult then than it is today, so she decided to write her own, and for the following busyyears she wrote and hoped that one day she would finish a manuscript good enough that was good enough to send to a publisher.
The second illness was her husband's, and it was bad a heart attack, He was so young it terrified them all, While he was recovering, he suggested that Robyn finish the manuscript she was writing and send it off, It wasn't a perfect manuscript, but the doctor had said to humour her husband, so she finished the manuscript, edited it as best she could, and sent it off.
Three months later, she was astounded to read a letter from the editor saying that if She made a few revisions they would buy her novel Bride at Whangatapu.
Published since, Robyn sees her readers as intelligent women who insist on accurate backgrounds, so she spends time researching as well as writing.
Robyn Donald sometimes thinks that writing is much like gardening, It's a similar process creating landscapes for the mind and emotions from the seeds of ideas and dreams and images, Both activities can also lead to moments of extreme delight, moments of total despair, and backache, Now Robyn lives in the Bay Islands, She continues writing, and also finds time for a very supportive husband, two adult children and their partners, a granddaughter and her mother, not to mention the member of the family that keeps her fit a loud, cheerful, and ruthlessly determined "almost" Labradordog.
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