Healing in the Hills

by Ruth Clemence

When her fiance Peter died a few days before their wedding Ismay was completely shattered — but not for the usual reasons. Overlying her natural grief at Peter’s death were feelings of guilt and — yes — relief; for Ismay had known that she did not love Peter as much as she ought and had lacked the courage to let him down at the last moment. The offer of a job in the Lake District, looking after an invalid teenager, came just at the right moment, for in the peace and beauty of those hills Ismay felt she could get her sense of values back. But she soon found that she had only exchanged one uncomfortable situation for another, for all too soon she found herself falling in love with Lewis Kynoch, who was not for her. For after all, even if there had not been his beautiful Felicity as a barrier between them, what reason did Lewis have for thinking of her as anything but a capable nurse?

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Naksed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. It was a nice vintage story with interesting secondary characters and a deliciously evil OW. The problem was that the secondary characters, including a couple of colorful OMs, a lovely pair of teenage wards with various disabilities, and even a few glamorous in-laws, were all much more interesting than the dull doctor hero who likes to spend all his free time fishing and is too proud to go after the heroine he is obviously besotted with. He had one moment early in the story that was exciting as he wallopped the heroine with his punishing lips while in the throes of a bitter jealousy. The heroine wallops him back both with her lips and subsequently with a nice, bright red, five-fingered mark on his cheek. As it turns out, that was the one and only time the hero was "pro-active" in his courtship, and it was obviously out of character for him, so I think this will be a dull, uneventful doctor-nurse marriage in a sleepy, English country town. That is, unless the psycho/nympho OW makes a return from her "tour in the United States."

[Bookaddict · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was slow and silly. The h had to be a real idiot to jump to the conclusion about the H and OW. I was disappointed that his brother didn’t dump her at the end of the book. She was a horrible wife and mother.

[Ashley]

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CompNtBk
Own in paperback.

FS: “Ismay Carroll sat in a high, straight-backed chair by the dinning-room window.”

LS: “She was happy she hadn’t had to settle for less.”