Gillian Smith (alias Lindsay Armstrong) was born in South Africa. She grew up with three ambitions: to become a writer, to travel the world, and to be a game ranger. She didn't achieve the last one, but her fascination for wildlife and that special something about Africa and its big game still remains with her. When she went to work it was in travel, at an agency and an airline, and this started her on the road to seeing the world.
Lindsey met her New Zealand-born husband, who had been working in West Africa, when he was on his way home through Johannesburg. He did go home but in a matter of weeks he was back in South Africa, and six months later they were married. Three of their five children were born in South Africa. Then one in London and one in Australia, after they made the decision to emigrate from South Africa.
It wasn't until her youngest child started school that Lindsay sat down at the kitchen table determined to tackle her other ambition to stop dreaming about writing and do it! She hasn't stopped since. She's not happy unless she has a book under way, and she's discovered she can write through just about anything.
Lindsay and her husband have moved around a lot. They've trained racehorses,farmed, and lived on their boat for six months while they sailed it from the Gold Coast to the Torres Strait and back, an epic voyage! They currently live in Queensland, overlooking the water; they sold their farm, and they're looking around for another boat. She and her husband love to travel and have been back to Africa twice in the past few years. The highlight of one of their trips was a visit to the Serengeti, in Tanzania, where Lindsay did the one thing she swore she would never do: take a ride in a hot-air balloon. She was a nervous wreck as the balloon tottered upright, but will remember it as a unique experience to see the game spreading out on the Serengeti plain beneath her as the sun rose.
"They say you can take someone who was born in Africa out of the bush but you can't take the bush out of someone born there..."
Despite this passion for wildlife and Africa, Lindsay considers Australia her home now and loves the country. She travelled to Sydney to witness the closing weekend of the Olympic Games in September 2000; it made her proud to be an adopted Aussie!
'Richard' she whispered(...) 'I love you.' 'Why?' he said roughly. I'd better understand if you said you hated me. ' (...) " All those things I said, all the things I thought - can you ever forgive me?' ' Of course ' she whispered (...) ' You shouldn't. How come you do?'
"Sometimes I just want a good old-skool WTFery read. When that’s the itch, I’ll usually go scroll through some of Boogenhausen’s tags for trainwrecks and hate-able heroes, and bonus points if Naksed has (rightly) seethed about it in a review. ;-D What can I say—I do love an alpha behaving badly!"
I seriously love our corner of Goodreads! I too wanted an alpha behaving badly and I wasn't disappointed. He had such a chip on his shoulder about his ex-wife (now dead) that he couldn't see that the heroine was perfect for him. He even slut-shamed her after they were married since seeing her dressed up for the opera triggered cynical thoughts about women.
Heroine called him out on his attitude, but still couldn't help but fall in love with him and his daughter (who was adorable). The housekeeper, tropical island, mystery-writer aunt rounded out the evocative backdrop to their relationship.
5% in the book.. "he shook her again, so hard that her head flew back painfully Ooookaayy.. 10% Violent kissing with bruising..
Once in a while I like to torture myself with OLD regency romances. This one was..GAH He was soft at times, but mostly a Dbag. She was a confused ninny. He kept getting angry at her randomly, and then the book ends with him NEVER even confessing his love. GRRRR.
Like many others, I too switch to reading older Mills and Boon books for a change.
In my opinion, Reading older books is like a throw of the dice. At times you'll get the number you want and at others you'll have to try your luck again. A vast majority of the older books fall into varying categories of average (including above and below average). One in a while there will come along an absolute gem of a book which will have all your favourite plot elements, while at times some books others will have a mix plot elements which will have triggers for you.
Coming to the book, it falls in the average category for me. And.... because it neither grabbed my attention nor did it make me want to gnash my teeth, my attention got diverted to the place(s) the book was set in. The book is set in Queensland, Australia..... more specifically Nothern Coastal Queensland.
Some places are well described or referred to in a manner that one remembers it. Eg. Mission Beach, Dunk Island, Hinchinbrook Island, Thursday Island.....
While some other places are just mentioned in passing, in what I refer to as Travel / Place hookups. Eg. Cooktown, Great Barrier Reef, Cairns.
While there are other places or routes that interest me enough to Google it. Eg. Gerogetown to Innisfail. (It takes 10 hours by road!!!)
But the main issue I have is with what I call a Transplated Place - Yandilla. Now Yandilla is definitely a place in the Map...and it is in Queensland, Australia too, but it’s not an Island!! And... finding a place existing elsewhere transplanted elsewhere in taking poetic license too far!! GRRRRRRR!!!!
THIS WAS BALANCED OUT BY ------- Coming across places that I refer to as eligible for Picture Postcards. Eg. Cape York.
POSTING MY VERY FIRST IMAGE IN A REVIEW!!! It has a placard stating that "YOU ARE STANDING AT THE NORTHERN MOST TIP OF THE AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT"
Just me, sitting here emotionally wrung out, giving a high score to a low scoring vintage as per. This H was an absolute bastard 😂 Let's be clear, there is no way I'd want someone so cynical and irascible in my real love life but it made for some pretty intense scenes. I was a bit dubious about Richard from the off. In the opening act she's been ditched from a semi by a wandering hands trucker in the middle of nowhere and he nearly knocks her down and starts straight in on the innuendo and sex talk. Don't know about you ladies, but handsome hunk or no, having just been shook up by unwanted sexual attention, this would have scared me to death. I set aside my discomfort with this opening scenario and basically read on through the lovely orphaned h, Anna's takeover by the Hs family that she coincidentally ends up turning up to help as governess. The little girl, Chrissy is precocious and desperately in need of a mother figure. The scatty novelist aunt and the jolly housekeeper Letty are both wise and interfering. In fact all the minor characters in this are enriching and entertaining. The island sounds divine, despite the cyclones. The H, whose turbulent relationship with his late (would have been ex if she hadn't died) wife is supposedly at the root of his harshness keeps his emotions under wraps all the way through, apart from his occasional hissy fits. I feel exhausted now. Good luck to her, I say. He's going to be hard work, although there are lots of compensations.
I just couldn't get into this story. Too much time was wasted with secondary characters. (Who cares about an elderly couple having their version of a youthful fling?) The H and h didn't seem to have much chemistry, despite their hitting the sheets. (And what a switch: a H who was bothered by the fact that the h was a virgin! Usually, they like to be the one and only, this guy would have preferred being one of many???) And any h who thinks it's okay to hitch a ride with a truck driver because he's middle-aged and therefore "safe" has to have rocks in her TSTL head!