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Storm passage
Book by Thorpe, Kay
- GenresHarlequin Romance
Paperback
First published August 1, 1977
About the author
Kay Thorpe
187 books67 followersKay Thorpe was born on 1935 in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, UK. An avid reader from the time when words on paper began to make sense, she developed a lively imagination of her own, making up stories for the entertainment of her young friends. After leaving school, she tried a variety of jobs, including dental nursing, and a spell in the Women's Royal Airforce from which she emerged knowing a whole lot more about life - if only as an observer.
In 1960, she married with Tony, but didn't begin thinking about trying her hand at writing for a living until she gave up work some four years later to have a baby, John. Having read Mills & Boon novels herself, and done some market research in the local library asking readers what it was they particularly liked about the books, she decided to aim for a particular market, and was fortunate to have her very first, completed manuscript accepted - The Last of the Mallorys, published in 1968. Since then she has written over seventy five books, which doesn't begin to compare with the output of some Mills & Boon authors, but still leaves her wondering where all those words came from.
Sometimes, she finds she has become two different people: the writer at her happiest when involved in the world of books and authors; and the housewife, turning her hands to the everyday needs of husband and son. Once in a while, she finds it difficult to step from one role to the other. She likes cooking, for instance, but she finds that it can be an irritating interruption when she's preoccupied with work on a novel, so the quality of her efforts in the kitchen tend to be a little erratic. She says, "As my husband once remarked, my writing gives life a fascinating element of uncertainly: one day a perfect coq au vin, the next day a couple of burned chops!"
Luckily Kay has daily professional help with her housework, and that leaves her time to indulge in her hobbies. Like many other Mills & Boon authors, she admits to being a voracious consumer of books, a quality she shares with her readers. She likes music and horseback riding, which she does in the countryside near her home. But her favorite hobby is travel - especially to places that will make good settings for her books.
Kay now lives on the outskirts of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, along with husband, Tony, and a huge tabby cat called Mad Max, her one son having flown the coop. Some day she'll think about retiring, but not yet awhile.
In 1960, she married with Tony, but didn't begin thinking about trying her hand at writing for a living until she gave up work some four years later to have a baby, John. Having read Mills & Boon novels herself, and done some market research in the local library asking readers what it was they particularly liked about the books, she decided to aim for a particular market, and was fortunate to have her very first, completed manuscript accepted - The Last of the Mallorys, published in 1968. Since then she has written over seventy five books, which doesn't begin to compare with the output of some Mills & Boon authors, but still leaves her wondering where all those words came from.
Sometimes, she finds she has become two different people: the writer at her happiest when involved in the world of books and authors; and the housewife, turning her hands to the everyday needs of husband and son. Once in a while, she finds it difficult to step from one role to the other. She likes cooking, for instance, but she finds that it can be an irritating interruption when she's preoccupied with work on a novel, so the quality of her efforts in the kitchen tend to be a little erratic. She says, "As my husband once remarked, my writing gives life a fascinating element of uncertainly: one day a perfect coq au vin, the next day a couple of burned chops!"
Luckily Kay has daily professional help with her housework, and that leaves her time to indulge in her hobbies. Like many other Mills & Boon authors, she admits to being a voracious consumer of books, a quality she shares with her readers. She likes music and horseback riding, which she does in the countryside near her home. But her favorite hobby is travel - especially to places that will make good settings for her books.
Kay now lives on the outskirts of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, along with husband, Tony, and a huge tabby cat called Mad Max, her one son having flown the coop. Some day she'll think about retiring, but not yet awhile.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 22, 2017
Awful. Heroine is not just second-best (to hero's dead wife who he loved then hated for her infidelity, and who the heroine resembles physically) but also third-best to the widow of hero's late business partner, who he doesn't hesitate to compare the heroine to in the cruelest, most callous and vulgar terms possibly. Plus he left his wife on her first night in her new marital home to be with the OW! NO, UH UH, BUDDY!!!
Heroine started off the story smart and strong, going on a world trip adventure by herself, and surviving a harrowing shipwreck followed by being stranded on an island with eleven men (!) without losing her cool. Unfortunately, she then inexplicably dissolved into a leaky mess after her MOC to the zero...ahem...hero. She can't even blame love for turning her into such a spineless twit since she internally realizes very soon into her hellish marriage that the hero, by his constantly cruel,disloyal and taunting behavior, has killed her love for him, that the man who she fell in love with during her shipwreck adventure was just a figment of her imagination. So what gives?
I couldn't understand the motivations of either protagonist and to say they were both offputting and unlikable would be the understatement of the year :(
Heroine started off the story smart and strong, going on a world trip adventure by herself, and surviving a harrowing shipwreck followed by being stranded on an island with eleven men (!) without losing her cool. Unfortunately, she then inexplicably dissolved into a leaky mess after her MOC to the zero...ahem...hero. She can't even blame love for turning her into such a spineless twit since she internally realizes very soon into her hellish marriage that the hero, by his constantly cruel,disloyal and taunting behavior, has killed her love for him, that the man who she fell in love with during her shipwreck adventure was just a figment of her imagination. So what gives?
I couldn't understand the motivations of either protagonist and to say they were both offputting and unlikable would be the understatement of the year :(
May 21, 2024
Usual Kay thorpe asshat hero, but entertaining nonetheless
July 3, 2022
The first half of this book was great and just what I want out of really old romance novels, as exemplified by the cover - on which a boat is going down in flames as our hero and heroine moodily embrace in the foreground. Tara is riding cargo ships around the world to have an adventure, something which most of the men around her seem to find somewhat concerning; her next-door-cabin-neighbor on this particular leg of the journey is an overbearing dude named Nick. There are some fun side characters and lots of ship details, and then SHIPWRECK. We lose all the nice paternal dudes and are left with Nick, the ship's leering obnoxious first officer, a young man with an injury, and a bunch of nameless crew members.
The boat finally makes it to a deserted island, where they all survive in the best castaway fashion but the first officer continues to make progressively more aggressive plays for Tara, culminating in an attempted rape; she fights him off and screams for Nick to help her. Nick beats the crap out of him and he and Tara agree that he should move into Tara's hut. (Yes they've built huts. This is a romance novel castaway scenario, not a real one.) There is, of course, a lot of gross gender essentialism and Nick is thirty-something and overbearing while Tara is a twenty-two-year-old virgin, but again it's a romance novel from 1977, I know what I'm getting.
Anyway, then they get rescued and the entire novel rapidly goes downhill; there's some vague references made to salacious tabloid speculation about one British woman marooned with eleven dudes on an island, but Thorpe never follows up on it, and when Nick proposes his marriage of convenience, Tara agrees because she's fallen in love with him. It then turns into a much more conventional novel of this era, with the very young heroine adjusting to life on a small remote island with a love-starved stepdaughter, an overbearing husband who's basically punishing her for the fact that his first wife was horrible, and a potential other woman who's fighting for Nick's attention. Ugh.
The boat finally makes it to a deserted island, where they all survive in the best castaway fashion but the first officer continues to make progressively more aggressive plays for Tara, culminating in an attempted rape; she fights him off and screams for Nick to help her. Nick beats the crap out of him and he and Tara agree that he should move into Tara's hut. (Yes they've built huts. This is a romance novel castaway scenario, not a real one.) There is, of course, a lot of gross gender essentialism and Nick is thirty-something and overbearing while Tara is a twenty-two-year-old virgin, but again it's a romance novel from 1977, I know what I'm getting.
Anyway, then they get rescued and the entire novel rapidly goes downhill; there's some vague references made to salacious tabloid speculation about one British woman marooned with eleven dudes on an island, but Thorpe never follows up on it, and when Nick proposes his marriage of convenience, Tara agrees because she's fallen in love with him. It then turns into a much more conventional novel of this era, with the very young heroine adjusting to life on a small remote island with a love-starved stepdaughter, an overbearing husband who's basically punishing her for the fact that his first wife was horrible, and a potential other woman who's fighting for Nick's attention. Ugh.
abrierto-to-read-hr-other
July 1, 2022Tara Smith and Nick Bryant had been through a lot of adventures together--a shipwreck, being stranded on a Pacific island and then dramatically rescued--so perhaps it did not come entirely as a surprise to her when he asked her to marry him. But the reasons for his asking her were quite plain--he wanted a mother for his little girl.
Nick's expression was unreadable as he asked, "Just why did you agree to marry me, Tara?"
Because I was in love with you, Tara wanted to say, although now she wasn't so sure. She hadn't love THIS man; she'd loved the person she had imagined him to be.
But this man was her husband. And all she knew was that he had the power to hurt her as no one ever had before.
Nick's expression was unreadable as he asked, "Just why did you agree to marry me, Tara?"
Because I was in love with you, Tara wanted to say, although now she wasn't so sure. She hadn't love THIS man; she'd loved the person she had imagined him to be.
But this man was her husband. And all she knew was that he had the power to hurt her as no one ever had before.
October 26, 2020
I really wanted to like this one more. I enjoyed Shifting Sands and Storm Passage was essentially a re-write, except set in South Pacific instead of the Sahara. (Yes, that is quite a difference!)
Otherwise the two plots are pretty close, except Storm lacks the romantic tension that I enjoyed so much in Sands.
Otherwise the two plots are pretty close, except Storm lacks the romantic tension that I enjoyed so much in Sands.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews