Mills & Boon, £3.99, ISBN 978-0-263-24837-1
Contemporary Romance, 2015
Around the time of the publication of Playing by the Greek’s Rules, Sarah Morgan was starting to release full length romance novels, so it shouldn’t be surprising that this one feels a lot like it belongs to a more genial line, only to somehow wandered into the Modern line by mistake.
Sure, Nik Zervakis is a Greek rich dude. Sure, Lily Rose decides that she’d like to have an affair with him, her boss, because romance heroines know that it’s awesome to sleep your way to the top.
By “top”, I mean peak true love, naturally. Romance heroines don’t have any greedy or mercenary bone in their body, duh, it’s just lucky coincidences that the man they are putting out to out of true love happens to be the only one rich enough to solve all their problems and allow them to live indolently ever after.
That’s the plot, and everything else—jobs, names, hair color, et cetera—is just cosmetic wallpaper.
You know, at the risk of sounding like a pre-boomer person, I really miss the older contemporary romances from Jayne Ann Krentz, from the 1990s. I know, we aren’t ever getting back to those days, especially not when the author is now on a romantic suspense trip for the last two decades. That and she isn’t getting any younger, let’s just say.
Sure, the author had a very noticeable formula that she repeated in everything she put out back then, and back when she was putting out two to four titles a year, the repetitiveness got old very fast.
Still, not many authors do romantic interactions like Ms Krentz, who can balance humor and emotional moments very well when she puts her mind to it, and her story has fun secondary characters that add to the story instead of just being sequel baits.
Ms Krentz also did family interactions very well. Sure, the hero would always be jaded about love because of his dysfunctional relationship with his family, but the heroine would help him reconcile with these people by showing him that not everything has to be viewed with so much cynicism.
No, I’ve not gone on a senile detour and completely forgotten that I’m supposed to be reviewing this title. What I’m trying to say is that this one is easily the closest one could get to Ms Krentz’s greatest hits repertoire in the 21st century outside of rereading Ms Krentz’s books.
Nik is that guy. Lily is that lady, although she’s far more cynical herself about love than most of Ms Krentz’s heroines. Since this is a shorter Modern story that doesn’t require some lame romantic suspense stuff to pad the pages, the author has all the opportunities in the world to bring Nik and Lily together, and boy, Ms Morgan sure makes the most of these opportunities.
Both characters are likable and pretty level-headed all things considered, and their interactions display believable chemistry. Like a typical Jayne Ann Krentz story back in those days, the hero is cynical about love due to his father’s constant marriages and divorces, but our heroine will help him believe again and make peace with his father.
At times, Lily does come off as too intrusive of a busybody poking her nose into Nik’s businesses, but considering the average intelligence level and neurotic antics of the heroines of the Modern line, I’ll take this over that any time, thank you.
Some readers of the Modern line may be dismayed at how this one is completely divorced from the tropes of that line. The hero doesn’t call the heroine a ho even once, and he doesn’t plan to impregnate her as revenge against her father, so how can we know that the hero really loves the heroine? It can all be so confusing, when an author rudely subverts expectations like this.
Me though, I welcome the escape afforded by this little adorable vicarious adventure. Sure, the author’s name is Sarah Morgan, and she may not appreciate me saying this, but this is as close as I’d get to vintage Jayne Ann Krentz, and for that, I’m one very happy person.
