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Dear Professor

Sara Seale

3.35 · Rating details · 37 ratings · 8 reviews

For a year the glamorous Sylvie had been corresponding with Adam Soames, and the personality revealed in the letters had so intrigued him that now he was coming home to visit her.

But the letters had actually been written by Sylvie's younger, plainer cousin Sarah. What would happen when the three of them met at last? ...more

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Paperback, Mills & Boon Romance #497, 189 pages

Published November 1970 by Mills & Boon (first published 1970)

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Jul 07, 2016 Dianna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: actualise-that-roleplay, feelings-are-for-losers, loveably-competent, poorly-parented-protagonist, super-scheming-hussy

I’m attracted to vintage romance by the nostalgia factor. I have this love of classic British, where everyone is beautifully put together and they have sparkling conversations while sipping gin, and get very stoic about suffering. The British have the capacity to be cosy or witty around the most incredible horrors that is just magical. I like vintage romance because I can pretend that the heroines are Anne or George from the Famous Five, or even (and this can be a stretch, given what happened at I’m attracted to vintage romance by the nostalgia factor. I have this love of classic British, where everyone is beautifully put together and they have sparkling conversations while sipping gin, and get very stoic about suffering. The British have the capacity to be cosy or witty around the most incredible horrors that is just magical. I like vintage romance because I can pretend that the heroines are Anne or George from the Famous Five, or even (and this can be a stretch, given what happened at the beginning of 'The Last Battle') Susan or Lucy Pevensie all grown up. Or any of those school-girl heroines who wore cloche hats and played lacrosse and had adventures.

‘Dear Professor’ is a book where I really notice why other people could like them too, and prefer them over modern Harlequin. I thought maybe sometimes other readers just wanted a break from secret baby-making sexy times with psychologically damaged alpha heroes, but I get it now. Sara Seale, in particular, is pretty great at multi-dimensional characters, and spending time actually setting up some layered and complex interactions.

‘Dear Professor’ starts out with one of my favourite romance tropes: Cyrano~ella the lovelorn letter writer. Sarah is eighteen. Her father is wealthy and their house is between a quaint little village and an incredibly beautiful moor. It’s all steeped in magic and local culture and tradition. There’s a piskie (pixie) pool for wishing and an old woman living in a gypsy caravan who tells fortunes. There are three local families, so almost everyone has the same surname, seasonal fairs and crusty farmers who will shoot at a dog they suspect of sheep worrying. Sarah has been describing all this incredible rich daily life stuff to Adam in weekly letters. She doesn’t know his first name, she calls him Professor. She doesn’t know what he looks like, only that he has a large nose and a beard.

At a party almost a year ago, Sarah’s beautiful cousin Sylvie met and flirted with nosey beard. She called him Professor. A mineralogist, he was headed off on a Himalayan expedition. Sylvie asked him to bring her back a snow leopard fur, and he said he would, if she would write to him. She did for a while, but Sylvie wasn’t all that into her Professor, and turned the letter writing duties over to her younger cousin.

Sarah is plain. Not that you would realise that from the cover, or from anything other than her family’s general ridiculousness. If you go by the cover, she’s a dead ringer for Jennifer Lawrence. I also love everything about her outfit, that incredible brown and yellow striped dress with the polo neck and the shoelace closure, her hairstyle, even her watchband is so fashion. Her earring is the only slight misstep – it’s the wrong proportion. A bigger hoop or a smaller stud would have been better. I love the cover art.

Sarah’s looks are a disappointment to her father. He, quite frankly, is a pervy old so-and-so and pretentious because he’s read a bunch of books and could have written one, probably, if he’d had the inclination. He’s awful to Sarah. She’s learned to live with it, but is starved for affection. She used to keep a journal, but for almost a year she’s used her letters to the Professor as her outlet.

He’s now on his way to visit. She knows he’s Sylvie’s property, that he probably sees himself as Sylvie’s property, and she’s sad and prickly because now she can no longer write to him she’s lost a creative and emotional outlet. Sarah is a very good heroine. She takes in lame and hurt animals and cares for them. She also works at a children’s home with children with special needs. I should mention that she does use what would now be considered extremely derogatory terms to describe them. I loved Sarah, she had Jane Eyre qualities. Actually, I probably loved her because she was Jane Eyre – she had the whole wild untamed spirit and flashes of fiery rage and if she’d burst into the ‘I have as much soul as you’ speech at any stage, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Or loved her any less for being derivative.

Adam is, naturally, much older than Sarah. He’s not Rochester, which is a mark in his favour (or, ok, at times a disappointment but I know I can’t have it both ways). There’s no getting around it, all these books are based on a girl of 18 marrying a man who could be as much as 20 years her senior. It’s not quite spelled out with Adam, he’s over 30, but Seale drops a couple of hints each way on just how far over he actually is. He’s been in love before, and has come through the experience with emotional intelligence, rather than some cracked vow to never love again. He’s handsome, smart and naturally he’s taken with Sylvie’s looks and the person he’s come to know from the letters. When he sees that Sylvie is not the girl he’d come to know, he resolves to be patient. He initially thinks that her flirting (charming, but lacking sophistication) is a cover for who she really is.

Initially, Adam spends a lot more time with Sylvie. That changes, of course, and his realisation that he is more attracted to Sarah are some of the books most perfect scenes. They aren’t particularly unusual – Seale isn’t going for flash and noise. There are plenty of interrupted moments and jealous arguments, and manipulations leading to misunderstandings and hurt, but Seale sets them up with such care and restraint that they shine. The view point in this book moves around a lot – Seale likes third person universal, so she can spend a bit of time in everyone’s head, and it works well, because it made every character seem more layered.

Sylvie is a great character. I find the Other Woman in modern Harlequin can be really cartoonish. That woman can be fun, but you often wonder why everyone tolerates her when she’s clearly so awful. It’s actually obvious why Sylvie does so well, she’s a genuinely charming person, but very flawed. Sure, she ends up coming across as someone with sociopathic tendencies, but I didn’t get the sense that I was supposed to judge her as fully evil, or be completely baffled by why anyone would keep her around.

I do really love introspective heroes and heroines. This is a beautifully done telling of one of my favourite tropes, and I’d really recommend it.
...more

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Oct 29, 2013 Kay rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: other

4 Stars ~ At the farewell party for Adam's mineralogical expedition to the Himalayas, he became enchanted with a young woman who reminded him of his dead fiancee. As he was the head of a party of students, and he had grown a beard in preparation for the trip, the girl, Sylvie took a shine to calling him Professor. And when she flirtatiously asked him if he'd bring her back a snow-leopard, he promptly agreed on the condition that she wrote to him, keeping him informed on the doings here at home. 4 Stars ~ At the farewell party for Adam's mineralogical expedition to the Himalayas, he became enchanted with a young woman who reminded him of his dead fiancee. As he was the head of a party of students, and he had grown a beard in preparation for the trip, the girl, Sylvie took a shine to calling him Professor. And when she flirtatiously asked him if he'd bring her back a snow-leopard, he promptly agreed on the condition that she wrote to him, keeping him informed on the doings here at home.

Sarah is 18, rather plain in appearance but a young woman with a generous heart. When her gorgeous cousin Sylvie came to live with her and her father, she hadn't once resented the fact that her father favoured Sylvie because she was perfection to his eye. Sylvie may be 3 years older than Sarah, but it's Sarah who's the mature one. So when after a few weeks Sylvie grows tired of her letter writing, she encourages Sarah to take over. The thought of the Professor waiting for letters from home that will never arrive, prompts her to agree. Sarah puts all of herself into the letters, as if she were writing in her journal, intriguing the Professor enough that when he returns to England, he writes to her father to seek permission to visit. When Adam arrives, he's puzzled by Sarah, who seems determined to avoid him and tends to be prickly when he's around. Sylvie on the other hand is as beautiful as he remembers, but when she tries to play him off another beau, he realizes that she doesn't measure up to the image he had of her. Sarah on the other hand, enchants him.

Ms. Seale has a penchant for creating plain Jane heroines. I really liked Sarah, she's not a silly teenager needing to grow up as many of Ms. Seale's heroines tend to be. Adam is a bit of a dark horse until the truth to the letters comes out and we see how hurt he is. This is one of Ms. Seale's last publications, written in the early 70's, and is much more light hearted than many of her earlier books. I loved the HEA ending! ...more

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Nov 06, 2018 Diya rated it it was amazing

Shelves: vintage-hp, hp, favourites-hp

4.5🌟
Loved this book! This wasn't your typical harlequin as the ow was on every page but the moments the mc were together was special and it was well written with so much depth. Adam is one of my favourite heroes✨ ...more

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Aug 09, 2018 Margo rated it it was ok

Shelves: age-difference-is-icky

Sara Seale is the queen of the unnerving age difference between h and H. Sometimes it works, and sometimes (OK, many times) words such as "predator" or "power differential" or "ICK" pop into my mind regularly. This one is in the second category (most are) because not only is there an age difference and an experience difference, there's an intellectual difference. The H seems to feel superior to the situation he's been placed in most of the time, which is good, but at the same time there's an alo ...more

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Nov 08, 2014 Leona rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: hqn

Loved it, with a capital "L". ...more

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Mar 01, 2018 Noël Cades rated it really liked it

Shelves: older-man, vintage-romance

Why must Sara Seale insist on making so many of her heroines plain? And in the case of poor Sarah, constantly harping on about her plainness through the mouth of every character including the hero. Honestly, one starts to wonder if she is somehow deformed.

Even in the final few pages of romantic denouement, there’s this backhander from hero Adam Soames:

"For me you will always have charm, no matter how plain you look…"

“Dear Professor” (also he’s not a professor, nor ever was) might have been m Why must Sara Seale insist on making so many of her heroines plain? And in the case of poor Sarah, constantly harping on about her plainness through the mouth of every character including the hero. Honestly, one starts to wonder if she is somehow deformed.

Even in the final few pages of romantic denouement, there’s this backhander from hero Adam Soames:

"For me you will always have charm, no matter how plain you look…"

“Dear Professor” (also he’s not a professor, nor ever was) might have been more palatable if the hero didn’t frequently snog the heroine’s exquisitely beautiful cousin in the first half of the book, and – scandalous for Seale! – there’s this:

"He could feel the tears still wet on her cheeks to remind him of his clumsiness as he kissed her, but her mouth was eager and knowledgable under his and the sudden pressure of her breasts warm and hard."

Just to clarify: this is NOT the heroine, it’s the beautiful-bitch-cousin. The heroine enjoys nothing remotely so passionate and sensual. But given how utterly hideous we are reminded that she is on practically every page, that’s perhaps no wonder.

The whole premise of the book is just bizarre, but then so is the premise of many of these vintage Mills & Boons/Harlequins. To summarise: Adam meets beautiful-bitch Sylvie at a party. He goes on an expedition and they write to one another. At some point plain-Jane Sarah takes over the letter writing. Adam returns, with a mind to romance/marry Sylvie, but of course she's actually vain and shallow, and it takes him far too long to figure out the letter writer is her 18-year-old cousin Sarah.

The thing is with “ugly heroines” is that romance novels heroines are not supposed to be actually ugly, because the reader is supposed to relate to them/identify with them. They’re supposed to be undiscovered beauties, their true and more enduring loveliness temporarily hidden under a bushel for the hero to finally uncover – after which the Other Woman’s charms appear brittle and artificial in comparison.

Ultimately while some of Sara Seale’s novels are enormous fun, despite their implausibility, this one just wasn’t a particularly enjoyable read. The hero seems weird, the family are toxic, and the heroine is so damn plain and odd and awkward that you rather wish she’d stay under her bushel. ...more

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Apr 29, 2011 Lynda rated it really liked it

One of my favorite Sara Seale novels. I would give it a 4.5.

A little twist on Cyrano.

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Jul 31, 2018 Anuradha rated it liked it

Adam is a mineral research scientist , not really a professor but a geek nonetheless. He is about to leave England for the Himalayas on a year long expedition. At his farewell party, he meets sexy Sylvie. She asks for some outrageous gift upon his return, he asks her to write to him in return.

Sexy Sylvie is too busy with competing boy friends. She also keeps playing vain stunts to keep up the fragile, pretty girl image. So no time to write. Job passed on to the dutiful goodie-goodie younger cous Adam is a mineral research scientist , not really a professor but a geek nonetheless. He is about to leave England for the Himalayas on a year long expedition. At his farewell party, he meets sexy Sylvie. She asks for some outrageous gift upon his return, he asks her to write to him in return.

Sexy Sylvie is too busy with competing boy friends. She also keeps playing vain stunts to keep up the fragile, pretty girl image. So no time to write. Job passed on to the dutiful goodie-goodie younger cousin Sarah. Now Sarah gets hooked onto the task and pours out her mind and heart in her letters.

A year passes, our professor is back in town. Drawn to the writer of the letters, thinks its sexy Sylvie, wants to catch up once again. He comes to stay at their place for a few weeks.

Is this really accepted socially in 1970s England ? A guy comes and settles down in a girl's place, and the family hoping that he might propose marriage, hosts him for weeks on end. The guy might simply walk off after all the hospitality for all you know !!!

Anyway, professor interacts with sexy Sylvie and sweet Sarah. Realizes Sylvie is not his cup of tea. Sarah however is extremely prickly and difficult with him. How can the guy be so dense and not realize Sylvie cannot have been the writer of those thoughtful and caring letters - that's her complaint.

Not too many engaging interactions between the leads. Whenever he comes looking, she bites his head off. Finally, she blurts out the letter impersonation business. He thinks the girls have been out to fool him.

Instead of using the letters and their premise to create tricky situations in the story, the author resorts to the good old OM. A married philanderer, Sylvie's backup plan !

Anyway, after plenty of hits and misses, Sarah gets her professor, Sylvie gets a big fat egg on her face! Ok read, nothing scintillating. My favourite author, she sort of let me down here.

And another thing that rankled with me in this story. Sweet Sarah's daddy is a MCP of the highest order. He thinks his daughter is too caring, simple and gauche. He prefers the shallow sexy Sylvie to shower all his affections. Weird really, no father can be that vain. ...more

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About Sara Seale

Sara Seale

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Sara Seale was the pseudonym used by Mary Jane MacPherson (d. 11 March 1974) and/or A.D.L. MacPherson (d. 30 October 1978), a British writing team who published over 45 romance novels from 1932 to 1971. Seale was one of the first Mills & Boon's authors published in Germany and the Netherlands, and reached the pinnacle of her career in the 1940s and 1950s, when they earning over £3,000/year. Many o ...more