nichtszusagen

• *** "Rich Man, Poor Man" by Judith Arnold.
  Emilie Storrs is a newly-unemployed social worker whose sister is married to a rich man. She's tired of seeing the worst side of life, and wants to use a rich husband's money to do good. So, following the suggestions in the book, she gets a job as a cocktail waitress at the Golden Key Caribbean Resort.
  
  Unfortunately, the man she's most interested in is bartender Tyler Weston. If you've ever read a book before, or seen a movie, you know the punchline. If not, I'll hide this in a spoiler: ****Tyler is the owner of the resort chain, undercover to see how his new acquisitions are faring.****
  
  There isn't much in the way of actual romance in this story--other than the two of them lusting after each other, so I had a bit of a hard time believing they were really in love. There's a bit of very mild suspense as they uncover a prostitution ring, but its resolution is never in any doubt.



• ***½ "Family Wealth" by Muriel Jensen.
  Millie Brown is an accounting whiz who wants the money to pay for her three half-sisters' educations. To that end, she proposes a marriage of convenience to her new boss, Rio Corrigan, heir to a cigar family fortune. It's not a complete shot in the dark, however: Rio was quoted in a magazine as saying that if he could find a woman who could set his new company's finances straight and warm his bed, he'd marry her in a heartbeat.
  
  Turns out, Rio has some difficulties of his own, besides the finance system. He's the guardian of his nephew after the deaths of his brother and sister-in-law, deaths he blames himself for, since they were attending a meeting in his place when they were killed.
  
  This was for me the best story of the three, because the romance made a little more sense. Rio and Millie were both rather lost souls, and each had something to offer the other. They also ended up falling in love convincingly--getting to know each other first. Rio's nephew was a realistic child, as well.
  
  However, it wasn't perfect--Millie is rather too much of a martyred saint in the way she's willing to sacrifice all for her sisters. And the sisters got on my every last nerve. The premise everything hinged on--Millie needing money to pay for their educations--bothered me too, likely because of my own experience. The sisters are all adults, and I didn't see why they couldn't get jobs to help out, or get educational loans or grants.



• *** "Once Upon a Husband" by Suzanne Forster.
  The heroine in this story is Torrey herself; the hero, her ex-husband Kit McGrath. They'd been high school sweethearts, married when Torrey had thought she was pregnant, and divorced when Kit was more focused on his hockey career than on his marriage.
  
  Fast-forward 15 years, and Torrey's been married again and widowed, this time to a rich man, which gave her the idea for the book. At least, he seemed to be a rich man until he died and left her only debts.
  
  Now Kit is the third contestant in the contest, and he seems to be trying to sabotage her, just when she desperately needs her book to succeed because she's completely broke.
  
  I usually like second-chance stories, but this one seems to lack direction. Kit doesn't really do much to try to get Torrey back until near the end of the story. In a longer book, this would be a decent plot--the clueless hero is a particular favorite of mine--but it's not developed enough here. Then there's Kit's disastrous "pursuit" of the 20-years-older Bubbles, with a twist, but that's not developed enough either. And there's the running gag/theme of body language signals which, you guessed it, isn't developed enough.
  
  It would have been a better story if it had focused on just one of those elements, or if it had been long enough to include them all.

Overall, this wasn't a bad anthology. I'd bought it at the flea market at 3/$1, so the price was definitely right. And as quick beach reads (literally, in this case), they were fine.

• ****½ A Suspicious Affair.

  When this story begins, a duke is murdered in his carriage, where he'd been trysting with his mistress. His very pregnant wife, Marisol, is the prime suspect.

  The neighbor, Lord Kimbrough, is also a suspect, because he'd been arguing with the victim over a piece of land on their adjoining estates. So to clear his name, Lord Kimbrough decides to get to the bottom of things.

  He and Marisol initially distrust each other, but as they get to know each other, they fall in love.

  What really makes this story stand out, though, is that it starts out in the POV of Jeremiah Dimm, the Bow Street Runner investigating the case. Dimm isn't just a plot device, though, he has a distinct personality, and he plays a major role in getting the hero and heroine together. He's also a major source of the humor in the book, as he finds jobs for his large extended family, one by one.
  

• ****½ An Angel for the Earl.

  This is a rather unusual story, in that the heroine spends nearly the entire story in a coma. I think I can see why these two stories are combined, besides being originally released in the same year: they're both unusual Regencies.

  Lucinda is an overprotected young lady whose father is set to marry her to an old man. She very naturally elopes with a scoundrel, and when he attacks her after she discovers his true nature, she very naturally defends herself, inadvertently killing him. On her way home, she falls off her horse and ends up in a coma.

  If she dies, she's destined for hell (for self-defense killing? maybe for disrespecting her parents and eloping in the first place?), but if she can reform the rakish Lord Stanford before she dies, she'll go to heaven.

  Kieran, Earl of Stanford, inherited a pile of debts and a peculiar household. His mother has apparently taken up with a smuggler; his aunt regularly holds conversations with her long-deceased husband; and his one remaining servant has the shakes so badly he's mostly incompetent.

  Lucinda's attempts at fixing his life are both sweet and funny, and all the more believable because they sometimes work and sometimes don't.

  As in the previous story, they fall in love slowly, developing an appreciation for each other over time.

  
  

• You don't call a senior chief petty officer "senior" for short (well, maybe, in jest, but this wasn't.)--you'd say "chief" or "senior chief." Yeah, that was exceedingly minor, but it bugged me.
  
• There is no way that a 25-year-old could have been an officer for 7 years. You have to be 21 to become a military officer. This might have been cleared up in a previous book--maybe he was prior enlisted?--but as it stands, it's wrong.
• You do not go to OCS in college (no, this wasn't the same person mentioned above). That would be ROTC. OCS (officer candidate school) is for enlisted personnel who want to become officers.
• One does not become used to drinking beer mixed with lemonade in Germany. For one thing, you cannot find "lemonade" in Germany--I had a terrible time trying to explain to a babysitter once what was in the pitcher in our refrigerator. "Limonade" is soda. Like Sprite. And that's what they're mixing with the beer. How hard would it be to get this right?
• And then what made me toss the book across the room: the heroine complained about her "unfashionably large breasts." Is that even possible? I'm looking at all the oh-so-fashionable actresses with their balloon-sized implants and wondering how the heroine can walk upright if her breasts are unfashionably large.
  

1. I don't have time to do a Thursday Thirteen this week...
2. Allow me to rephrase.
   
3. I have time to write a Thursday Thirteen, but I don't have time to bloghop.
4. Blogghopping is at least half the fun for me of doing a Thursday Thirteen.
5. So instead of writing the Military Primer Thirteen I was composing Wednesday afternoon, or using one of the nearly-completed Thirteens in my files and then only sharing it with a handful of people, I'm writing an Anti-TT, to tell you that I'm not doing a Thursday Thirteen this week.
6. I suppose I should say why I don't have time.
7. We're leaving Monday morning for 10 days in Italy.
   
8. My mother-in-law is coming on Friday to dog-sit.
9. The house is a disaster.
10. I have a ton of laundry to do.
11. I haven't even begun to pack.
    
12. I've read 20 books I haven't written about yet, and my email in-box is overflowing already--both of which I was hoping to have caught up before we left.
13. We're going to see Fantastic Four tonight, so I have to squeeze everything, including exercise, in before 5 p.m.--I can't skip exercising because I've already missed two days this week--Monday we were at the Heinerfest, and Wednesday was our niece's birthday.

1. Julia's favorite TT posts
2. Lisa: books
3. Candy Minx: random
4. Lori: bananas
5. Tempest Knight: 80s rockers -- creatures of the night?
6. Spyscribbler's title quest
   
7. You're next!