"Hits almost every cliche of romance"
Cynthia and Michael are thrown together during a snowstorm.
He has come to stop the marriage of his younger brother
Neil to Anne, whom he believes to be a fortune hunter.
Michael believes all women are out for what they can get
based on his own failed engagement. Cynthia, Anne's employer and friend, is closing up her
formalwear shop for the weekend when they meet for the
first time. Michael roars up on a motorcycle, dressed head
to toe in black leather and mad as hell. Michael mistakes
Cynthia for the absent Anne and threatens "I'll marry you
myself if I have to in order to stop you, but you are not
marrying my brother two weeks from Saturday." Rather that laughing at the shmuck or pointing out his
error, Cynthia invites him in to dry off and have tea,
while trying to calm her fluttering heart. Oh, my. With
that line and the description of her Victorian costume and
manners, Cynthia is now forever pictured in my mind's eye
as 'Little Nell' trying to resist the evil moustached anti-
hero. After a moment, she recognizes Michael from a picture
Neil has shown her of his brother and decides to play along
a little. Notice, she recognizes him AFTER he is in the closed and
locked shop, alone with her. This is a contemporary
romance, and the heroine is thirty-five years old. Frankly,
the first thought that popped into my mind was, she's nuts.
Even small towns have crime. How did she survive this long? After Michael figures out she's not Anne, does he apologize
for making a fool of himself? No, he kisses her, and
proceeds to make himself at home. Huh? OK, so he's a macho
jerk who thinks he's irresistible. It really didn't get any better than this. The story is all from the heroine's POV, so the hero can't
redeem himself through inner dialog, and he sure doesn't
change my opinion of him through his actions. He's
manipulative and shallow, and the heroine is naive to the
point of being a danger to herself. The big love scene
could have come from a late '70s romance with a seduction
verging on date rape. The resolution is the hero telling
the heroine he loves her and suddenly everything is peachy. Wow, what do you say when a story hits almost every cliche
of bad romance? I hope that this book was a throwaway for
the author, something she knocked out in an afternoon. But
more likely, this was her baby, something that she worked
and sweated and agonized over, and that makes me sad. As an
amateur writer, I know what goes into crafting a story, and
I want to like what someone has worked so hard on. I'm
sorry, but I could not make myself like Snowbound. Reviewed by Maven for Sensual Romance
Reviewed by Sensual Romance
Courtesy Sensual Romance
Posted January 2, 2002
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