Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Book CoverLynneC’s review of A Dangerous Infatuation by Chantelle Shaw
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Presents Extra 3 Jan 12 (M&B Modern – 1 Nov 11)

This is an old-style Modern Romance and is very much a book you can sink into for an hour or two’s pleasure. It’s a woman struggling with her life and a billionaire. Don’t expect anything revolutionary, but sometimes you need a break from revolution, and this book provides it.

Emma is a district nurse in Northumberland, and it’s snowing. She’s driving to the house of the last patient on her round, an old lady who lives in a large manor house on her own. She comes across a man who has just crashed his unsuitable but dashing car in the snow, and she gives him a lift. He turns out to be the grandson of the old lady, Rocco, an Italian and the chief exec of the car company that makes his flashy car.

So far so usual. It carries on in the same vein. While this isn’t an earth-shattering book, with one proviso it’s written in a clear, smooth style that makes the story easy and pleasant to read. Let’s get the problem over with. And this could well be my preference. It might not bother you. There’s a lot of POV transitions. A lot. I won’t call it head-hopping because that’s when you don’t know which character’s head you’re in and Shaw is skilful enough not to do that, but the reader is constantly moved from one head to another and back again. That does bother me, quite a lot, because you can’t go really deep and I’d rather not know what both characters are feeling in a scene. If the kind of thing exemplified in the passage below doesn’t concern you, then you’re good to go.

“ ‘Thank you,’ he murmured, closing the door and feeling a welcome blast of warm air from the car’s heater. It was only now sinking in that he was lucky not to have been injured in the crash, and that he could have faced a long, cold walk to find civilisation. ‘I was fortunate you were driving this way.’
Emma released the handbrake and carefully pulled away, her hands tightening on the steering wheel when she felt the car slide. She rammed the stiff gear lever into second gear, and tensed when her hand brushed against the man’s thigh. In the confines of the vehicle she was even more aware of his size.”

His thoughts, then hers, in two adjacent sentences. Then the narrative could easily move back to him again.

Now to the characters. I like that Emma is competent and, although struggling, good at her job. Not in abject poverty. Her small daughter is three, but she’s a precocious, annoying three who seems to be fully potty trained and speaks in complete sentences (not impossible, I admit). The child seems to be a five-year-old transposed into a three-year-old. I could have done without the child, who could have stepped out of a 1930’s “cute kid” movie.

Rocco doesn’t let it faze him. He gets on with seducing the sexy nurse after their meet cute, when she’s wrapped up so much she resembles a bowling ball. “Good for her,” I thought. Snowy Northumberland isn’t to be messed with. But does she have a Geordie accent, I want to know? In the version in my head, she did. “Why aye, Rocco, you gan canny!” would have fit rather well into the story and might have made the heroine a bit different. Rocco is pretty much your standard hero. But I happen to like the tall, strong, wealthy Italian type, so that’s okay by me. And Rocco isn’t too arrogant. On the whole he’s a likeable character.

There is a big misunderstanding at the beginning, where Rocco thinks Emma is too bossy and managing and Emma thinks Rocco is heartless because he left his aged grandmother to live alone (he employed help, but his grandmother fired her after finding her stealing). Since that all happens in the first three chapters, I don’t feel that’s much of a spoiler, and that’s why I didn’t mind this particular misunderstanding. Emma and Rocco talk, and explain themselves, and, lo and behold, they come to a better understanding of each other.

There is a secret in Emma’s past, again revealed to the reader early, that her husband, while a hero, was also a cheater in his marriage. So she’s understandably wary of handsome bastards who go from woman to woman. While many Moderns use the trope of the character’s past life affecting their present beliefs, this time it worked for me because the past is recent for Emma – to some extent she’s still hurting. So her reticence to accept Rocco as a lover is understandable.
And that’s the way to use Mills and Boon tropes. They are part of the story, they reveal the character and they’re not stretched to unbelievable levels or tedious levels. They’re not strained. When one problem ends, another begins, or is bounced off the first one. Their past lives affect both characters, but they’re intelligent enough to reason with themselves and deal with their problems. When they come to a mutual understanding, they deserve it, although Rocco does get stuck with the precocious kid, and he even wants more. Let’s hope they find some great nannies.

LynneCs iconGrade: C

Summary:

Rocco D’Angelo doesn’t do needy women—and he certainly doesn’t do commitment! But the spark notorious playboy Rocco feels with his beloved grandmother’s nurse, Emma Marchant, is more than the usual thrill-of-the-chase adrenaline!

Never in her wildest dreams did cautious Emma imagine she would be swept from a sleepy English village to the exotic climes of the Italian Riviera—especially by a man as disreputable as Rocco.

Emma could be the one to tame the untamable—unless her infatuation is more dangerous than she imagined….

Read an excerpt.