Violet WinspearRecensioni

"I -- I sensed something RUTHLESS about him. He moulds people to his tastes, and he makes them submit whether they want to or not," Lauri described Maxim di Corte to her aunt Pat when, as an inexperienced girl, Lauri first joined Maxim's famous corps de ballet.

There was no doubt that Maxim de Corte would use these ruthless qualities to make her submit to him as a dancer, but could he make her do the same for him -- as a woman?
Harlequin 1208

This book was okay but it had tons of potential that it didn't live up to. The conflict was different with the heroine being a 4th Jewish and his Muslim father having been murdered in a racially motivated attack. But that conflict was dropped pretty quickly. The one about the withheld passport came out of left field. She was so crazy about him that her instant knee jerk reaction to leave him and her leaping to the conclusion that he was still going to divorce her was weak writing. Both would have worked better if there had been ongoing threads about them. But they were pretty much hot and heavy after just some lip service to the conflicts.

It was a fairly good read. There was sufficient contact between the couple to allow me to buy the relationship unlike some of these older HPs where there are almost no scenes of them together. The hero was alpha but far from a dick. The heroine was overly feisty. She kept berating him for being autocratic when he really wasn’t. The end was nice, sufficiently long to get a lot of I love yours and explanations covered.

Just okay. I’m not fond of heroine’s who sassily fight the hero at every turn just to show how independent they are. The dialogue was so unrealistic. The heroine was an absolute ninny. The ending was pretty much just a whimper and a sigh. I liked him but wondered what he saw in her.

Another on my quest to read the first 100HPs. This is a very sweet 50 year old romance. The writing was lovely, very descriptive. I could totally see the island and the castle, the hero and the heroine, her clothes etc. The story, unlike some old HPs, started with a bang. A sinking ship! It moved along at a leisurely but steady pace. The hero was wonderful. Kind and generous and gentle with the heroine. There was no POV from him but you could tell how he felt about her. The end was great and I believed their sweet HEA. I’m sure he worshiped at her feet for years.

Fun oldie. It was written in 1968. The best part of the story was the travelogue portion. Very nice descriptions of the jungle. I did enjoy that the heroine made her living as a folk singer. I wish the cover art had accurately portrayed the characters because this cover made the gamin heroine look like a total frump. Another element that was well done is that you could see that the hero was all in for her from the very beginning. The book failed at having an adequate ending though. Suddenly and briefly love and marriage were declared.

I know I read this one back in the 70s but I only vaguely remembered it as I read. Boy they wrote romances differently back in 1967. This one had a pretty gothic feel to it. There were five important characters, two men, two women and a grandmother. The other woman got a lot of page time with the hero, and she wasn't truly evil, just not a good match for the hero. The other man of course was decent and kind and really it would be fun to read about him meeting his heroine. The heroine, Lygia, was the waifiest of all waifs. But somehow even with limited face to face time with the hero, Robert, the heroine managed to be the only person who could ever match the tortured hero and bring him happiness. But somehow I just bought into the idea that the hero really loved her.

The book had a bit of a lyrical, misty quality and was an enjoyable read especially if you approached it as an interesting trip to the writing styles of the past.

Trying to work my way through a stack of vintage HPs. This one had quite the gothic feel. I found the first half of the book better than the second half. The reason for that is that the heroine started doubting the hero in the second half. Also more characters were added in so there was actually very little interaction between the hero and the heroine in the second half. This one was quite vintage in writing style with everything extremely fade to black and barely any I Love Yous at the end.

I liked this one even though the heroine and hero were only peripherally in each other's lives. They meet but that same day he meets and asks out her older sister, eventually proposing marriage to the gold digging sister. The whole book the heroine hides her love for the hero. They were hardly in each other's presence at all. The only way you know it's a romance is because it's an HP and you know how it's going to end. The end is just a couple of pages long and not incredibly romantic. There really should have been more hair tearing on the part of the hero and explanations and kisses and what not. Still there was something very readable about it.

This is the second Violet Winspear I've read this week and it is very different in feel. I was wondering if all her early stuff was so gothic feeling as [b:Bride of Lucifer|11991469|Bride of Lucifer|Violet Winspear|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1424820974s/11991469.jpg|7520886]. And just FYI this one wasn't. Other than the fact that the hero and heroine were only alone together for the duration of two car rides, it was much more modern in feel. As least as too writing style. However, I really need to read a book written in the last 5 years to cleanse my palette.

4 stars because it was such an oddly riveting read for all that. I didn't get bored. One more down in my quest to read the first 100 HPs.

5 crazy old skool stars. As far as I can tell it was first published in 1976 but I think it must have at least been written a few years before that since the author kept referencing the hero being a boy just after "the War" which I think must have been WWII.

Okay talk about crazy. The heroine sneaks and marries the hero when her cousin leaves him at the altar. Because of a super heavy veil all unbeknownst to the hero. When he finds out he is livid. There are lots of threats, insults and what not. This all culminates in some forced seduction.

This hero is over the top alpha greek misogynist but he has a few redeeming moments but you can't blink or you'll miss them.

This baby's got everything. Private Greek islands, forced seduction, forced pregnancy, car accidents etc.

Oh my goodness, what a bicker fest. Most of the book was taken up with incredibly long scenes where all they did was verbally attack each other and sad to say it was mostly the heroine. I wanted to tell her to just shut the F*** up. It might not have been so bad but the scenes were each 10 to 15 pages long. You just got tired of it. I can stand the bickering if there was some other sort of stuff going on in between but it was all the same until the end where she magically realizes that she loves him. You could tell all along that he loved her although I don't see why.

This was a fun oldie. The heroine is very innocent and naive. At first the hero just wants her to pretend to be his nephew's mother with himself as the father, but he soon falls in love with her. Of course there is no POV from him so it's all told in clues. She does a halfway decent job of standing up for herself and questioning the hero about things but she does believe that the hero had been in love with the baby's mother. The heroine is one of that sort whom everyone falls in love with. There were several well developed secondary characters which always adds to a story. There was both an nice Other Man and a live but evil Other Woman. This is one vintage HP that for me at least stood the test of time.

This was refreshing. Even though it's an oldie, #18 of the first 100, the hero and heroine spent sufficient time together to make me believe they fell in love. There was a nice balance of travelogue and dialog. A nice well rounded HP.

Well this was interesting. Different but interesting. First off it was an exercise in purple prose. Sort of felt like a gothic romance. All of the descriptions were florid and the heroine was a wimpy ninny. She is a heroine that few are going to enjoy. My goodness she leapt quickly and often to conclusions. She saw her husband have a quick word with a local unmarried mother who he had just saved from suicide. She immediately is convinced that he is the baby's father. She holds on to that throughout the book but never asks him, not even in a round about way. With no particular reason she is convinced he loves yet another OW. She gets so het up about it that she continually turns him away in bed. At least here he doesn't then force her like in many older HPs. And unlike in newer HPs her lady bits don't lead her to sleep with him anyway. She was the master of blowing hot and cold. He basically does everything for her to convince her he loves her except say the actual words and she is just blind to it all. Finally he fesses up and all is well, HEA.

This was an interesting read from an historical standpoint. I liked it as an illustration of changing mores in the romantic fiction genre. At least it wasn't boring. I read it on my continuing quest to read the first 100 numbered HPs. This was number 30. I've got a couple more early VWs so I'm interested to see if they are all written like this. Is this style something she grew out of gradually or was it something she wrote just to try the style out. I've read later books by here that weren't so gothic in feel.

Another one down on my quest to read the first 100 HPs. This is numbered 98 and was first published in 1974.

This was going to be a 5 star read right up until the end. The author did an excellent job showing you that the hero had fallen head over heels for the heroine at first sight. They spent plenty of time together and the way he treated her was just lovely. The book had a bit of a travelogue feel to it. Lots of descriptions of jungle flowers. There was also a sort of melancholy brooding feel too it. But the ending was just too abrupt. I wanted him to tell her all about how and when he fell in love with her. But no, it wrapped up too quickly. Still a great read.

Another one down on my quest to read the first 100 HPs. This one is numbered 21 and was published in 1969.

On the whole it was pretty decent. Unlike many books written in this era it didn't take half the book to get to the action/romance portion of the story. It starts right off with the wedding of the hero and the heroine. There are then a couple of brief flashbacks to fill in what is happening. The marriage is consummated but it is fade to black and there is no suggestion that any part of it is forced. So that's kind of different for an old HP. The heroine was sensible enough to realize that he had told her up front he wanted a son and she had agreed to it so there was no fussing around like a twit when she had to follow through. On the other hand, she was a bit of a twit about the instant dislike she took to the hero even before he blackmailed her into marriage. Then she continued to snip at him in a haughty manner for no real reason. I think the author was trying to convey how feisty she was.

You did get the feeling all along that the hero had fallen for her and that is why he forced her to marry him. Where the book really falls down though is the ending. It was too brief and there were no real explanations to tell us how he had felt about her all along. Okay we kinda knew but the heroine sure didn't. I think HP authors have wised up to how much readers want those satisfying I Love Yous and explanations so this shorting of the feelings bit doesn't happen so much anymore.

I want to thank StMargarets so much for gifting this book to me!

Janna is a quiet shy typist working for a romance author. She runs into Don Raul several times. He comes to her with a proposition to return to his home in the desert to help him with his grandmother's expectation that he marry her ward who looks like Janna. Janna is opposed at first because she would have to lie. Raul says he only wants her to show his grandmother that they are not suited but Janna's heart becomes involved. She comes to love him but believes he is in love with another of whom his grandmother would not approve. She also comes to love the desert but knows she must leave. Can they come to the truth?

I enjoyed this story. It is very much a book of the time written (1973) with a strong alpha male who knows what the shy virginal secretary should choose. She's not a quiet as he thinks and does stand up to him. Both need to learn to communicate and be honest and not assume. This is a sweet story of two people trying to find their way to love. I like Violet Winspear's writing and always look forward to reading her.

I'm not entirely sure what I thought about this book. It hasn't aged very well and there's not really anything about it that makes it stand out. But I liked the main two characters, Yvain and Don Juan, well enough and overall it's a rather harmless and clean romance. I read it the first time many years ago and recently decided to re-read it, because for some reason it has stayed in my memory.

Much of this book was very slow-moving and boring until around the halfway point when the plot starts moving. I cringed at the Orientalism (Western belief of what was Asian). Then there was the purple prose! So purple, much prose. Interesting plot, but I wish it was executed differently.

Sur la plage de Luanda, un Indien chantait que "la mer, comme l'amour, est belle et cruelle". Et, bouleversée par la mort brutale que son oncle venait de trouver au cours d'un sanglante révolte, Vanessa sanglotait dans les bras de son sauveur.
C'était, à ce moment, la vie qui lui semblait cruelle. L'amour, elle l'ignorait encore. Allait-elle le découvrir, sous la protection de Don Rafaël de Domerique, dans ce château de conte de fées surnommé la Tour de la Captive? Et quel visage prendrait-il?

The very first Harlequin I ever read. It was free. I'd never read anything like it - I was VERY sheltered, apparently.

Sometimes a little classy trash is fun.

I saved this book as an example of a Harlequin romance novel. Harlequin has a well-deserved reputation as being trashy escapist literature. During the early 1900's, a young Jewish girl's loyality to family tradition conflicts with her desire to go to college.