Cover Story

by Jane Donnelly

"He's Not My Type!"

Newspaper boss Adam Schofield didn't normally have problems attracting women. Rich, successful and dynamic, he had most of the qualities that appealed to the opposite sex.

But Millie was impervious to his charms. Adam was the man who had tried to wreck her brother's life. And she had every intention of making him pay for it....

Genres: Harlequin Romance

188 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

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

[Naksed · Rating 1 out of 5]

Small-town, journalist heroine colludes with her sleazy, city publicist, half-brother, to set up tycoon hero for some lurid headlines. This despicable pair has been working hand in hand for a couple of years ruining perfectly decent people's lives, taking skeletons out of their closets, exposing them and their families, including innocent spouses and children, for public humiliation.

The half-brother's motivation is money because he can sell these stories to the tabloids and earn free publicity for his low-life clients. The heroine's motivation is a lot sicker: she is trying to punish her long-dead deadbeat dad, a philanderer and cheater who led a double life. Because he hurt her, she now must hurt all the cheaters out there.

Problem is when it comes to the hero, the more she digs, the less trash she finds. But even when it becomes clear that not only is the hero a decent guy, he has fallen hopelessly in love with her, she goes on with the lying and the cheating.

JD has written a lot of unlikable heroines, sometimes being able to redeem them. In this case, she failed, for me. I saw no reason why the hero took her back other than he was stupidly in love, a condition that normally affects HPlandia heroines. Oh well.

[More Books Than Time · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cover Story was a solid 4 star read right until the ending. She had planned to betray him and did look for dirt from his friends and taped conversations, right until she fell for him. In the past she had helped her illegitimate brother get incriminating stories on other people, and she had almost ruined the marriage of one of H's close friends and did hurt his career.

She regrets this now that she loves H and had dinner with his friends and saw first hand how much the couple loved each other, but H knows she did this and that she had planned more. Yet he is in love with her? When she played a false persona to get close to him? It would take a Herculean effort from a top author to make that believable and it just doesn't quite work.

A side note, I started Cover Story quite a while ago while waiting somewhere and put it aside, not for any particular reason, then decided to finish today. Unlike most HPs, I had no problem remembering the story or the characters, which is a tribute to the quality of the story. I often find I don't recall, or get story lines mixed up with some of the bland, interchangeable HPs and Harlequins out there. (I also read a lot and the titles tend to be uninformative.)

I got my copy from the Harlequin website to read on Glose.

[Priscilla · Rating 1 out of 5]

Defeitos em protagonistas costumam ser um recurso usado por escritores para humanizar os personagens, para torná-los mais acessíveis e simpáticos aos nossos olhos. Porém, quando se coloca a heroína da trama cometendo atos desprezíveis por pura vingança, é preciso uma boa trama de redenção para redimí-la... e não foi o que aconteceu aqui.

Melissa é uma pessoa amarga, de mente pequena, que por ter sido machucada pelo pai decide que todos os homens de caráter similar devem pagar. Sua intenção de justiceira teria sido louvável se ela estivesse tentando proteger as pessoas, mas fica claro durante a história que sua única justificativa é a histeria.

Chega a dar pena do par romântico.