Forest of the Night

by Jane Donnelly

Sally knew she'd never trust again!

Painful memories of a shattered dream haunted her. It was still so hard to believe--betrayal by her fiance and her best friend! Pride told her that she must get away somewhere, somehow, to recover.

And Sally had grabbed at the only chance available. She had practically blackmailed Adam Burgess, writer and TV personality, into giving her a job. They disliked each other, but even so, she would show him she was no quitter!

And if he could handle the steaming jungles of the Amazon--so could she!

Genres: Harlequin, Harlequin Romance

186 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Jane Donnelly began earning her living as a writer as a teenage reporter. When she married the editor of the newspaper she freelanced for women's mags for a while. After she was widowed she and her 5 year old daughter moved to Lancashire. She turned to writing fiction to make a living while still caring for her daughter, she sold her first Mills & Boon romance novel as a hard-up singleparent in 1965. She wrote over 60 romance novels for Mills & Boon until 2000. Now she lives in a roses-round-the door cottage near Stratford-upon-Avon, with four dogs and assorted rescued animals. Besides writing she enjoys travelling, swimming, walking and the company of friends.

Reviews

[StMargarets · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was just going to skim this again to leave a review, but I ended up re-reading every word. This is such a fun story for vintage Harlequin junkies.

Reporter heroine finds out her fiance is having an affair with her best friend. Still reeling from the discovery, she goes to interview a celebrity reporter/author and notices a face in the window of his house. It's the OW, a famous model/actress/Kardashian who just married a rich businessman. Before he even answers the door, heroine realizes the H is having an affair with a married woman and is incensed, thinking no one has any honor anymore. On the spur of the moment, she blackmails him into giving her a job as his assistant so she can get away from the newspaper where her fiance also works.

She goes to work for him, doing a lot of typing. He is not friendly at all and works her hard. Then he announces he is going to "the jungles of the Amazon" to an archaeological dig in Purumaxi. Her best friends is a bit dim and thinks that heroine is happy about her new job and the adventurous trip and that she is completely over the fact that she stole her man. They throw her a farewell party and heroine tries to be gracious.

The OW is at the airport to kiss the hero good-bye. She warns the heroine that she might not come back alive. (!)Hero barely speaks to her on the long flights and once at their destination, arranges a donkey caravan for them to ride through the high mountains down to the Inca settlement. Heroine suffers from "mountain sickness" and thinks she's dying. Finally one of the guides tells her what's wrong with her and she is angry that hero let her think the worst. One good thing: heroine is now happy to be alive and this has been the cure for self-pity about being jilted.

Once at the famous city, she is delighted and finds a congenial group of people. Everyone talks to her except the hero - who is on vacation and doesn't really have work for the heroine to do. So she helps with the dig, types up correspondence for the leader of the dig, causes two of the men to fight over her (and for the hero to be jealous), and sits for a portrait done by the resident artist, the wife of dig leader. OW sends letters to H and he stays out of the way of the heroine.

The h slowly starts to fall for him - first acknowledging her sexual attraction and then deciding she likes him. Eventually she tells H the story of her jilting and he is kind, but remote. They have other platonic, but charged encounters. The h takes meticulous notes in several notebooks - not sure what she's going to do with them. The H asks her to read to him and he praises her writing and keen eye for detail.But the H refuses to forget about the blackmail when the h tries to apologize.

When the H takes her to a snake temple, she gets the creeps and worries he's going to kill her because he hasn't forgiven her. She runs blindly and twists her ankle. When she tells him she had a mad thought he was going to kill her, he is totally taken aback. From then on he nice to her, carrying her back to the settlement and being friendly - but no punishing kisses. When their time is up, he tells her to go home for a rest and he is going to New York. H thinks he's going to see OW.

Heroine returns home. Her former fiance and best friend have broken up, but ditzy best friend wants to have a welcome back party. In desperation, h calls hero's house in hopes the housekeeper is there and will let her stay so she can get away from the party. Hero answers the phone and h runs right over. Hero explains he had to off-load OW before he could take up with heroine. (He never had an affair with the OW after she married. He wanted her to divorce her husband while he was away - and only then would he consider having an affair.) That all went out the window when he saw the heroine react to the lost city, but he thought she was on the rebound and wanted to be sure of her. Now that former fiance is free and she doesn't want him, all barriers are down. HEA.


This story contains all the delicious pain of vintage Harlequin with the added bonus of the heroine bringing a lot of it on herself. The jilting was unearned pain. The grueling trip was unearned pain. The disdain from the hero about being blackmailed was earned pain, and the heroine knows it. I also liked how the other women were portrayed. The OW decides to stay with her husband. The best friend is ridiculous, but not malicious, and the other woman at the dig was friendly and supportive. And there was lots of info about the Incas if you like that sort of thing.

[Julz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't usually like Harleys with no wtfery but this was an exception. Girl stabbed in the back by fiancé and best friend. Thinks the H is a scumbag but uses a forced job with him as a chance to put distance between her and her heart ache. Then we see the gradual fade of her love for her ex and the developing feelings for the H. Nothing crazy but well written. Go figure.

[Myrna · Rating 2 out of 5]

1,5 stars

The h is a villain here, and I loved that. However, Donnelly didn’t quite manage to make it work.

The premise is great – a sweet h discovers her fiancé cheating on her with her best friend, and her heartbreak drives her to make the most ruthless decision of her life.
She’s about to interview a famous author when she spots his ex-girlfriend - an internationally renowned, married-to-a-millionaire actress - at his house. Overcome with rage, hurt, and pain, she blackmails the author into hiring her as his assistant, both as a way to escape and to save face.
Reluctantly, he agrees but warns her he’ll make her life miserable. Then, he takes her to a lost jungle city. The H is pretty terrible to her - treating her with disdain and keeping their relationship distant - up until chapter 7.
Here’s the problem: Where’s the romance? The h seems almost intent on throwing herself at the hero, but he keeps evading her. It feels very one-sided, with all the emotional investment on her part. Where are his feelings? He proposes only when the h chases him across Britain.
And I grew tired of everybody talking about the ex-girlfriend’s beauty and saying that of course the h can’t hold a candle to her.

[Bookaddict · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was much more about drooling over the archaeological Inca site than a romance. I think it would have helped if we had seen some feeling coming from the H than just friendship. There needed to be more comeuppance for the evil “bff” and ex fiancé than there was. Who could possibly be any kind of friends after what they did! Crazy! I also didn’t really understand the back love story of H and OW.

[Beebs · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a romance, this is kiinda so-so. The H is giving off such confusing signals that it's hard to tell how he feels for much of the book.

But as a sort of time-capsule of a specific type of archaological expedition in Central America, it's kind of amazing. The description of the "lost city" they were excavating and discovering and all the time spent there was interesting to read about (for me anyway), and it just had a romantic feel overall despite the sort of will they-won't-they feel of the main romance.

So, yeah- starts out with the heroine, who is a like features reporter for a small regional newspaper in England, having discovered that her roommate and bff since school and her fiance have been cheating on her, is called out to interview this famous explorer/archaeologist/writer. When she gets to his house, he's not there, and she's having an emotional breakdown in his back yard, when she sees a very famous recently very married woman, someone who allegedly was his former """"mistress""" (don't get me started on the misuse of "mistress" in romance novel-land), looking out the window.

In an unprecedented act of self-serving-ness in a state of bitterness at all men, especially cheaters, she ends up blackmailing the famous explorer/archeologist/writer dude into getting her a job, because her fiance is at the same newspaper and she doesn't want to face him anymore.

He sarcastically offers her the place of his personal assistant on his next months-long trek and stay in the Amazonian jungle to excavate a lost but recently found Incan city, and she accepts.

He's very angry for her for blackmailing her and gives her absolutely zero help on getting through the rainforest to the site (they finally get there, and turns out they could have taken a HELICOPTER instead of hacking through the forest!), but once there he thaws out a tiny bit and spends the rest of the time alternating acting like he has feelings for her and acting like he couldn't care less. They have a fake relationship bc some of the other single dudes are hitting on her too hard and disrupting the morale of the camp, but h never can tell whether he is actually coming to care for her or not.

Can't recall how it's resolved, but really the reading about the excavating, lost city, etc. was nice. Very good description and felt like you were there.

Also heroine got to rub it in her ex and ex bff's faces that she's gotten over their betrayal and moved all the way on, so that's satisfying.

Oh and also getting together with the H and going on to live a nice ruins-exploring life together. XD

[Last Chance Saloon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unexpectedly I did not like this one (and I normally very much enjoy old Jane Donnelly books). It's well written and the heroine has depth and is brave, but I did not like the hero at all. His obsession with a woman who left him to marry a rich man and willingness to take her back was hard to overcome - he had no pride. Too much emphasis on the beauty of the OW was tedious and he continued being rude to the heroine for a long time. There was no chemistry between them and the change from calling her 'bright-eyes' to 'lover' was cringeworthy. Nothing interesting happened in the jungle - the whole thing was pointless! So whilst the heroine was well rounded, everything else was lacklustre. But it might just be me as others have loved it.

[Tonya Warner]

A good story.



Sally is betrayed by her best friend and fiance and blackmails Adam in to letting her work for him. He takes her to the Amazon to Purumaxi and the study of the Incas. Very intriguing.

[Hortensia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una Harlequin sencillita de leer para finalizar el año, aún así estuvo bastante entretenida. Por cierto, al leerla recordé que debo tratar de aprender más de los Incas. Las culturas antiguas son fascinantes. ¿Ven como también estas novelitas aportan algo?