Lynne Connolly’s review of The British Billionaire’s Innocent Bride by Susanne James
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Presents Extra 8 Dec 09
I read the British version of this book, the Harlequin Modern version, but you can also get it as a Presents Extra.
I know how hard it is to read a poor review for one of your books, and maybe sometimes it’s because the reader and writer just don’t mesh. Maybe this is one of those times. I find it so hard to write a bad review. I want to share my joy in a pleasurable experience, not kill someone’s dreams. I can console myself by remembering that it’s not down to me and a lot of readers might actually enjoy this one.
Title – completely irrelevant. The hero isn’t a billionaire, and the heroine doesn’t agree to marry him until the last 4 pages. Blurb – equally misleading. No developing romance that I could see.
It’s a long time since I read a book which was quite so puppilicious – full of sweet children, niceness and sweetness. I’m hoping it’s a long time before I come across another one.
The book starts with what is effectively two chapters of backstory. I hate backstory and I skipped a lot of it. Nothing much happens. I should have stopped then, but I’d never read this author before and I wanted to give at least one of her books a good try.
Lily meets Theo on a plane. She’s on her way to visit her brother, who owns a small hotel with his friend, who is, we’re told with emphasis, just a business partner. I was surprised, because Lily’s brother sounds exactly like a gushing schoolgirl, or a gay man who is trying very hard to live up to the full-on stereotype. He uses words like “divine” and “gorgeous.” Most of the action, however, takes place in England, where Lily agrees to be childminder to Theo’s children. He’s a widower and has three children, who are perfectly adorable, even the girl, who is supposed to be difficult.
The heroine of this book, Lily, seems to be a time traveller from the 1950’s. She’s a great cook, thinks about things that are nice and sweet and – her word – pure. And pretty, and probably the youngest 26 year old I’ve ever read. Lily lays the table at one point and thinks it looks as wonderful as an advertisement.
The hero is a doctor, a paediatrician, and although his house is, apparently very nice, a billionaire he isn’t. They go on holiday to a hotel in England, as, at one time, middle-class English people tended to do. He’s described as handsome, but I never really got a feel for him. He goes to work, loves his children and at the end of the story, decides he loves Lily.
Lily arrives at his home, bringing sweets for the children. She bathes the boys the first night. Reading through this part, all I could think of was – danger, danger!
And this is one of the reasons I can’t give the book a higher grade. Lily has drifted from being a cook into doing childminding. She doesn’t have any relevant qualifications, isn’t asked for any. At this point I checked to see the publication date of this book, almost sure it was an older reprint. It isn’t. Everyone in England who looks after children they are not closely related to is required to hold a licence from the local authorities, saying they’ve been vetted and their background is thoroughly checked. Lily doesn’t seem to have anything except a sweet nature. And a dubious background which would have made the authorities study her carefully.
This is not a well-written book, and I really feel it could have done with more thorough editing. It was full of those irritations that my editors will always question. “She thought to herself,” “he shrugged inwardly,” and there are far too many tags of the “she thought” variety. There are a lot of words that don’t have to be there – “briefly,” “for a moment,” “slightly.” Cutting them out would have led to firmer writing. And it’s a book of lists. She went here and there, she did this and that, and we get lists of what she wears, what she cooks, in place of much character or plot development. Every character gets a point of view and the switches are so frequent they made me dizzy and detracted from any impact the scene might have had.
There isn’t really a plot. Neither is there a love story. A couple of obnoxious men hit on Lily and she panics (and how did such a nice hero get such a horrible friend and not even notice?). One man does it twice, but neither incident, described in the book, grades too highly on the harrassment scale.
She has a bad background, was fostered out as a child. Theo has lost his wife. They could have healed each other, but they don’t. For most of the book he behaves as a boss, and she behaves like an employee. We don’t really see them falling in love, just behaving nicely to each other. There isn’t one kiss until the last couple of pages, and then it’s not described in much detail. Part way through the book the heroine dreams of making love with Theo, but it’s done so vaguely and doesn’t do much to the story that I suspect it was a request from the editor, who remembered, a bit belatedly, that it was supposed to be a romance. Someone had to.
This book didn’t stir me, didn’t interest me very much and failed on most levels. And then the tooth-churningly sweet, well-behaved children. Regular readers will know I’m not too keen to have children as major figures in romances, and this was definitely no exception. It’s an F from me. Sorry.
Grade: F
Nanny at the billionaire’s beck and call!
When devilishly handsome Theodore Montague meets Lily Patterson in Rome, he is quite taken by this pure English beauty. Theo’s not looking for a wife, but he needs a nanny for his three motherless children and Lily’s the perfect candidate!Lily might feel completely out of her depth in Theo’s glamorous world, but from the moment they’re under the same roof the spark between them ignites into a passion neither of them can ignore…
