Yesterday's Echoes (Harlequin Large Print)

Rating:
Summary: From a dark past to a bright future...
Review: Back cover reads:
He Knew Her Dark Secrets...
Tragedy had befallen Rosie when she was a vulnerable sixteen-year-old, and the worst thing about the experience was being caught by Jake Lucas, who clearly thought Rosie was a tramp.
Since then Rosie had resolutely concentrated on building up a successful career and had allowed no one to guess that there was another womean behing the cheerful face she showed to the world.
But Jake had entered her life again, and he wasn't about to let her forget the past. There seemed to be no way of avoiding the inevitable confrontation. Would it shatter Rosie's life all over again?

Rating:
Summary: No Men for Fourteen Years, Oh Good Grief!
Review: Fourteen years ago, when she was sixteen, Rosie had been drugged and raped at a party by Jake Lucas's cousin. To make matters worse, Jake discovered her, clothes in disarray, his cousin standing over the bed. Then, of course, she got pregnant and lost the baby. That was Rosie's one experience with a man in all of her thirty years. So when she runs into Jake at the christening of a friend's child, she is mortified. She hates him, loathes him as he is the only man in town who knows her shame. The rapist cousin, mercifully left for Australia shortly after the incident, and in fact had been so drunk that he doesn't even remember it.

When Jake sees Rosie again all those old feelings come rushing back. He'd been in love with her back when he thought she'd preferred his cousin to him. Never had he suspected rape. However Rosie wants nothing to do with him. Then the cousin, now married, comes back from Australia with his wife and two children. He makes a pass at Rosie, Jake stops him, tells him he and Rosie are an item and before long everybody in town assumes they are getting married.

So how about it, do you think the semi-virginal Rosie will tumble for the man who has loved her all this time? All I have to say about this one is, "Oh, good grief, how could a fine writer like Penny Jordan have penned this drivel." Thank goodness I've read a lot of her very fine romances, or I'd really have to wonder about her. Only three stars and that's being generous.

A Harlequin Dreamers Review by Chole Randall

Rating:
Summary: Good but predictable
Review: I thought this was a pretty good book. I am not one for Harlequin, so taking on this book was new to me. It was okai, though, and it really got to the heart of the main character's soul. A little slow, but it is worth reading a short book like that. Very relaxing still.