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The Palace of Gold
Peter Crosby required a cheerful and competent female to take charge of three children and help to run a farm in Swaziland. "Courage, good temper and common sense also needed as there are crocodiles at the bottom of the garden," the advert continued. Jean applied for the job and found that the crocodiles were the least of her worries.
188 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1973
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 27, 2024
Hilary Wilde must have time traveled to the future and used chatgpt to fashion this novel. It’s so strange – like a robot wrote it.
Or – this is Hilary Wilde’s world and we’re just living in it for 188 pages.
Either way, it makes no sense and there isn’t a convincing character, situation or emotion in the whole story.
For example:
Heroine finds out about a nanny/housekeeper position in Swaziland from her roommate reading aloud from the help wanted ads.
Sounds fine. What’s so odd about that?
Well, roommate is about to walk out the door to go on a two-week holiday in Majorca. Who reads the want ads right before leaving? Plus, roommate loves her job.
That’s just the beginning of weirdness. The heroine is intrigued and wonders where Swaziland is. A convenient atlas is on the bookshelf. (Southern Africa, fyi)
Then she switches on the TV where the hero is on a talk show discussing that very ad.
TV cuts out just as he is going to reveal why he needs a nanny/housekeeper for three children.
Heroine mulls all this over for a few days. Then she sees his photograph in a tabloid, accompanying a ballerina to a posh event. He’s an esteemed economist – so of course the tabloids are going to follow him. (LOL)
The heroine decides to apply for the job since (a) she hates her job as a typist in a huge London firm (b) she can’t return to her home on the Isle of Mann because she’s estranged from her family.
Oh, dear. Why is she estranged?
She’s not as smart as her brother and not as beautiful as her sister. And she’s really tall – 5’11”. She never felt welcome.
Okaaaaaay.
Hero interviews her. Asks her a million questions that would give any HR department the vapors and then suggest they marry before embarking to Africa in order to shield her from gossip.
She agrees.
The 3 children (Hero’s orphaned niece and two nephews) she eventually meets are just as strange and robotic. The girl is angry heroine isn’t the beautiful ballerina she thought she was getting as a surrogate mother. The older boy is too depressed to pay her any attention and the youngest is acting out.
Heroine doesn’t really bond with any of them – she just drops them off at school everyday. Hero locks himself in a study everyday and never talks to the heroine.
There’s an OW. A gossipy grapevine. An OM. Lots of rain. Crocodiles and a raging river.
And nothing happens.
Really.
The author/robot mentions them and then drops them. Finally the hero declares that he fell in love at first sight with the heroine. Heroine says she must have fallen in love with him when she saw him on TV.
And that’s it.
Oh, they’re moving out of Africa because the kids really didn’t like it there and all the hero’s sacrifices to keep them on the farm their father started really weren’t necessary.
So, yeah. AI romance writing still needs a lot of fine tuning.
Or – this is Hilary Wilde’s world and we’re just living in it for 188 pages.
Either way, it makes no sense and there isn’t a convincing character, situation or emotion in the whole story.
For example:
Heroine finds out about a nanny/housekeeper position in Swaziland from her roommate reading aloud from the help wanted ads.
Sounds fine. What’s so odd about that?
Well, roommate is about to walk out the door to go on a two-week holiday in Majorca. Who reads the want ads right before leaving? Plus, roommate loves her job.
That’s just the beginning of weirdness. The heroine is intrigued and wonders where Swaziland is. A convenient atlas is on the bookshelf. (Southern Africa, fyi)
Then she switches on the TV where the hero is on a talk show discussing that very ad.
TV cuts out just as he is going to reveal why he needs a nanny/housekeeper for three children.
Heroine mulls all this over for a few days. Then she sees his photograph in a tabloid, accompanying a ballerina to a posh event. He’s an esteemed economist – so of course the tabloids are going to follow him. (LOL)
The heroine decides to apply for the job since (a) she hates her job as a typist in a huge London firm (b) she can’t return to her home on the Isle of Mann because she’s estranged from her family.
Oh, dear. Why is she estranged?
She’s not as smart as her brother and not as beautiful as her sister. And she’s really tall – 5’11”. She never felt welcome.
Okaaaaaay.
Hero interviews her. Asks her a million questions that would give any HR department the vapors and then suggest they marry before embarking to Africa in order to shield her from gossip.
She agrees.
The 3 children (Hero’s orphaned niece and two nephews) she eventually meets are just as strange and robotic. The girl is angry heroine isn’t the beautiful ballerina she thought she was getting as a surrogate mother. The older boy is too depressed to pay her any attention and the youngest is acting out.
Heroine doesn’t really bond with any of them – she just drops them off at school everyday. Hero locks himself in a study everyday and never talks to the heroine.
There’s an OW. A gossipy grapevine. An OM. Lots of rain. Crocodiles and a raging river.
And nothing happens.
Really.
The author/robot mentions them and then drops them. Finally the hero declares that he fell in love at first sight with the heroine. Heroine says she must have fallen in love with him when she saw him on TV.
And that’s it.
Oh, they’re moving out of Africa because the kids really didn’t like it there and all the hero’s sacrifices to keep them on the farm their father started really weren’t necessary.
So, yeah. AI romance writing still needs a lot of fine tuning.
January 11, 2021
I have read plenty of chaste vintage romances where the protagonists do nothing more than converse and have misunderstandings until the final big Love Declaration on the last page of the novel. Yet reading between the lines, there is more eroticism, romance, and sexual tension than in the most graphic contemporary novels, so that the reader is invested in and totally believes the HEA. Violet Winspear was a master of it. One of my favorite romances if not my favorite of all time is Roumelia Lane’s Nurse at Noongwalla where the main characters don’t even bother saying the words, they show by their action how desperately they are devoted to each other.
This book Palace of Gold by Hilary Wilde on the other hand was an EPIC fail. The author completely missed the mark of how to build up a relationship between the main characters despite having so much potential to create scenes between them as they are stuck in a marriage of convenience at an isolated farm in the wilds. While authors in this genre excel at showing the reader how an outwardly cruel, aloof or sarcastic hero really feels inside, with his actions and body language and behavior contrasting his rude, destructive words, she did not give her hero any nuance at all. He remained a one dimensional piece of cardboard. No feelings, no physical attraction towards the heroine, no jealousy, no interest at all in her. She might as well have been a piece of furniture, which to be honest, she kind of was. There is only so much Debbie Downer navel gazing I can take from the heroine before she turns annoying and I start rooting against her!
The abrupt love declaration at the end was therefore completely implausible. I could have even bought it if the guy was supposed to be a mechanical cold emotionless workaholic robot and the author showed us how the spirited heroine thawed him out and made him human. But that wasn’t the case either. In fact, she went out of her way to demonstrate that he had ALL THE FEELZ when it came to the OW, no problem expressing his admiration, awe, gratitude, affection and tenderness, and yes, deep deep attraction to her both through words and behavior. And to add insult to injury, author made the OW a likable Mary Sue so I didn’t even have the joy to hate her and see her thwarted in the end (She, as opposed to heroine, got a genuine HEA with a very worthy OM).
This book Palace of Gold by Hilary Wilde on the other hand was an EPIC fail. The author completely missed the mark of how to build up a relationship between the main characters despite having so much potential to create scenes between them as they are stuck in a marriage of convenience at an isolated farm in the wilds. While authors in this genre excel at showing the reader how an outwardly cruel, aloof or sarcastic hero really feels inside, with his actions and body language and behavior contrasting his rude, destructive words, she did not give her hero any nuance at all. He remained a one dimensional piece of cardboard. No feelings, no physical attraction towards the heroine, no jealousy, no interest at all in her. She might as well have been a piece of furniture, which to be honest, she kind of was. There is only so much Debbie Downer navel gazing I can take from the heroine before she turns annoying and I start rooting against her!
The abrupt love declaration at the end was therefore completely implausible. I could have even bought it if the guy was supposed to be a mechanical cold emotionless workaholic robot and the author showed us how the spirited heroine thawed him out and made him human. But that wasn’t the case either. In fact, she went out of her way to demonstrate that he had ALL THE FEELZ when it came to the OW, no problem expressing his admiration, awe, gratitude, affection and tenderness, and yes, deep deep attraction to her both through words and behavior. And to add insult to injury, author made the OW a likable Mary Sue so I didn’t even have the joy to hate her and see her thwarted in the end (She, as opposed to heroine, got a genuine HEA with a very worthy OM).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 1, 2021
Naksed's review says it all -- a cold fish H, long-suffering h, and a perfect OW. Nope nope nope nope nope.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews