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A Very Private Man
- GenresHarlequin Romance
192 pages, Paperback
Published August 6, 1999
1 person is currently reading
12 people want to read
About the author
Jane Donnelly
144 books28 followersJane 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.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 10, 2020
Wealthy, beautiful, spoiled heroine has been living an enchanted life as the granddaughter of a Romanian Count, a war hero who immigrated to England after WWII and made a fortune as a financial wizard.
Until hero, an investigative reporter with a personal grudge against the Count, infiltrates heroine’s life under a false identity, and digs up enough dirt to expose him in the press as a Bernie Madoff type conman.
Heroine, who had fallen in lust with the hero under his assumed identity and had even adopted a stray dog with him, is crushed by the double whammy of having been used and dumped, as well as her entire life crumbling around her ears. Valiantly, she rallies, putting everything they have up for sale to satisfy creditors and making plans to turn their home into a boarding house.
The hero doesn’t let up with his verbal and emotional torture. He shows up at the auction with his gloating girlfriend and buys up heroine’s earrings that she had worn on their last date together for his girlfriend to wear. He makes a big show of moving next door to heroine with his girlfriend, who cruelly taunts the heroine like kicking a puppy when he’s already down and hero just watches it all, kicks the heroine out of his apartment and later takes his girlfriend out to dinner. He continues to threaten heroine by implying that he is writing a tell-all book that will expose her grandfather as a war collaborator instead of hero. He slut-shames her and calls her stupid, seeming to blame HER for everything even though she had no idea what her grandfather was up to until the hero’s expose. Her grandfather had been universally liked and respected and she had been the pampered, orphaned granddaughter who lived a sheltered life surrounded by loving friends. The hero gave me the impression of a French revolutionary wanting to guillotine a daughter of the aristocracy because of what she represents rather than for any deliberate wrongdoing.
The author wants me to swallow the fairy tale in the last chapter of the book that the hero was in love with the heroine the whole time, that he never slept with the girlfriend and was only trying to use her to make her jealous. And the heroine just dissolved into a puddle of goo at his feet. EPIC FAIL from Jane Donnelly but then again, she NEVER really writes convincing love stories in my opinion. Tales of obsession, lust, infidelity, psychosis? Yes. For a real romance, heed my warning and look elsewhere.
Until hero, an investigative reporter with a personal grudge against the Count, infiltrates heroine’s life under a false identity, and digs up enough dirt to expose him in the press as a Bernie Madoff type conman.
Heroine, who had fallen in lust with the hero under his assumed identity and had even adopted a stray dog with him, is crushed by the double whammy of having been used and dumped, as well as her entire life crumbling around her ears. Valiantly, she rallies, putting everything they have up for sale to satisfy creditors and making plans to turn their home into a boarding house.
The hero doesn’t let up with his verbal and emotional torture. He shows up at the auction with his gloating girlfriend and buys up heroine’s earrings that she had worn on their last date together for his girlfriend to wear. He makes a big show of moving next door to heroine with his girlfriend, who cruelly taunts the heroine like kicking a puppy when he’s already down and hero just watches it all, kicks the heroine out of his apartment and later takes his girlfriend out to dinner. He continues to threaten heroine by implying that he is writing a tell-all book that will expose her grandfather as a war collaborator instead of hero. He slut-shames her and calls her stupid, seeming to blame HER for everything even though she had no idea what her grandfather was up to until the hero’s expose. Her grandfather had been universally liked and respected and she had been the pampered, orphaned granddaughter who lived a sheltered life surrounded by loving friends. The hero gave me the impression of a French revolutionary wanting to guillotine a daughter of the aristocracy because of what she represents rather than for any deliberate wrongdoing.
The author wants me to swallow the fairy tale in the last chapter of the book that the hero was in love with the heroine the whole time, that he never slept with the girlfriend and was only trying to use her to make her jealous. And the heroine just dissolved into a puddle of goo at his feet. EPIC FAIL from Jane Donnelly but then again, she NEVER really writes convincing love stories in my opinion. Tales of obsession, lust, infidelity, psychosis? Yes. For a real romance, heed my warning and look elsewhere.
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