Mountain Heritage

by Elizabeth Ashton

Young Mea Marlow met Lucian Becker in Switzerland - the first man she had met, in fact, since leaving school - and lost no time falling in love with him. But Lucian, it was clear, had been earmarked by Mea's beautiful mother as her next husband, so Mea would just have to forget him. But how could she do that when he was impossible to avoid?

Genres: Harlequin Romance

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1976

About the author

Elizabeth Ashton was a British writer of romance novels to Mills & Boon from 1969 to 1990.

Reviews

[Fiona Marsden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mea Marlow met Lucian Becker when she came to join her recently widowed mother in Switzerland after leaving school. Lucian is rich and charming and shares Mea's passion for mountain climbing. But her mother seems to have earmarked him as her own property.

There are complications that involve her stepfather's will, an arranged marriage, an inheritance, and a very selfish mother.

To top things off, Mea finally learns the identity of her real father which explains quite a lot about why she and her mother are so unlike.

Lucian is a lovely hero, very determined in the most charming way. But Mea, still childishly angry with her stepfather, allows her resentment to push him away.

The ending is nicely tied up, with a satisfying resolution for both parents and hero and heroine. A very enjoyable read.

[Nightwitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

The heroine of this one is twenty (?), very young and naive, and somewhat obnoxiously so, but thankfully it's not overwhelming. I mean, yes, the hero does refer to her constantly as "child" and she's convinced that he's engaged to her mother (he obviously is not - I refer you back to "very young and naive" - and Ashton spends way too much time dwelling on the forty-something mother's extreme and sorrowful agedness and decrepitude), but there are a lot of fun mountain-climbing details and secondary characters and the hero doesn't actually have sex with the heroine even when she drunkenly attempts to seduce him in her bedroom, so as seventies romances go this could be much worse. Actually pretty enjoyable, although I feel like I understand why "Swiss banker" never caught on in the Harlequin Presents stable.