Spellbound

Jayne Castle: Ecstasy Romance

by Jayne Castle, Jayne Ann Krentz

"Who would have thought there was so much soft excitement under that sophisticated veneer?" he whispered. "What other secrets are you hiding, sweet witch?"

Secrets...the word clicked in Lacey Holbrook's mind and reason flooded back. Yes, she had secrets. Why else had she conjured Jed Merlin back from the past. Why else had she insisted on turning the bohemian maverick into a urbane gentleman? He was essential to her plans. Yes, she had secrets. Dangerous secrets. And she must not forget their urgency just because he had walked back into her life, bewitched her with kisses, and touched her with a magic she was almost powerless to resist.

Genres: Romance, Category Romance, Suspense, M F Romance, Fiction

188 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 1982

About the author

The author of over 40 consecutive New York Times bestsellers, JAYNE ANN KRENTZ writes romantic-suspense, often with a psychic and paranormal twist, in three different worlds: Contemporary (as Jayne Ann Krentz), historical (as Amanda Quick) and futuristic (as Jayne Castle). There are over 30 million copies of her books in print.

She earned a B.A. in History from the University of California at Santa Cruz and went on to obtain a Masters degree in Library Science from San Jose State University in California. Before she began writing full time she worked as a librarian in both academic and corporate libraries.

Ms. Krentz is married and lives with her husband, Frank, in Seattle, Washington.

Pseudonyms:
Jayne Ann Krentz
Amanda Quick
Stephanie James
Jayne Bentley
Jayne Taylor
Amanda Glass

Reviews

[reeder (reviews) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been trying to recap the plot of this book for three weeks now. I give up. The plot exists as an excuse to reconnect the heroine with her girlhood crush so they can be all judgey and snark at each other, but they don't actually *do* anything plot-related.

The divorced heroine discovers that the urbane man she's been dating recently is actually a diamond smuggler, so she decides to escape his clutches without revealing what she's learned. She's going to pretend to cheat on him so he'll dump her. To accomplish this, she contacts the hero's father's lawyer and tells him she has an IOU for an old loan from her deceased father. In lieu of the money, she will accept the escort services of a tall, dark, and handsome man and a brief stay at the wealthy man's secure estate in Carmel. Instead of the fake date she ordered, the 5'9" scruffy hero shows up to let her know his father has died but he's here to pay off the debt. (Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?)

Both protagonists are very off-putting, insulting one another's appearance and leaping to judgments based on stereotypes. She thinks he's a trust fund baby with no work ethic, while he dismisses her as a superficial gold-digger incapable of commitment...and possibly a witch (she's an interior decorator and most of her apartment is done dramatically in black, to demonstrate the latest minimalist trends). She insults his height; he retaliates by telling the statuesque heroine he prefers his women small and fragile. It's pretty nasty and makes them both seem shallow and spiteful. (We've already seen a much less bitter version of warring stereotypical assumptions in Velvet Touch.)

But she does need his help, so she gives him a makeover to transform his exterior into (a slightly shorter version of) the man of her dreams. He rejects some of her efforts because metrosexuality was not a thing in the 80s, but quips that she'll now find him impossible to resist.

And he's right. That evening they go out on a date at a fancy club where the soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend socializes, in the hopes that news she's two-timing him will trickle back to him. After dinner, dancing, and flirting, the hero sneaks into her bed and she gets swept up in his desire. However, once the sex is over, she's full of self-loathing for letting him use her as a one-night stand. (This scene is sooo bad on consent issues. Not only does he sneak in while she's sleeping and override her initial protests, but the only reason he's staying at her apartment is that he threatened not to help her if she made him stay in a hotel. It's like double sexual assault on top of blackmail. We need Law and Order: Vintage Romance.)

The next morning, the heroine tells him to leave. She'll use some other method to get rid of her unwanted suitor. As they're arguing, her sexy romance novelist neighbor drops in with a package that's just been delivered: it's the unwanted suitor's signature kiss-off gift (a diamond pendant, but this one has no diamond because the heroine had never slept with him). Yay! Mission accomplished.

But the hero -- who is beginning to piece together the truth about the heroine beneath her façade -- wants to pursue their relationship, so he convinces her to spend the planned two weeks at his home with him. Even though she no longer needs the safety of the Carmel estate to protect her from the potentially villainous ex-bf, the heroine agrees...with the condition that there will be NO SEX.

However, as they're driving up Highway 1, an aggressive driver tries to run them off the road. While the hero uses his amazing reflexes to steer them clear of disaster, the heroine recognizes the driver as her erstwhile escort's partner in crime. She's horrified she has dragged the hero into danger and even more horrified when she discovers he wasn't driving her to the old family estate in Carmel with its high walls and guard dogs, but to a small cottage in Santa Cruz. It turns out his father died bankrupt and all the assets were sold off; the hero now makes his money in tofu production.

Well, terrific. He's not a lazy bum living off inherited wealth, but the heroine frets that a beach cottage won't provide any protection when her killer ex-boyfriend shows up. After sex on the beach (the activity, not the cocktail) and a tour of the hero's tofu production facilities and the Santa Cruz boardwalk, the heroine tries to sneak out of the hero's cottage in the middle of the night. The cottage's extremely elaborate security system goes off, and the enraged hero drags her back to the bedroom. He thinks she's spooked by commitment; she explains she was only trying to protect him by leaving until her criminal ex could be caught.

It turns out that, after college, the hero refused to go into his father's business and went seeking adventure and self-discovery in Southeast Asia, where he worked on freighters and was occasionally tapped by an unnamed U.S. government agency to spy on smugglers. He still has contacts at the agency and it is they, not the hero and heroine, who capture the criminal ex-boyfriend and his partner. As the heroine notes, it was almost anticlimactic. (Lacey, dear, it was actually anticlimactic. Your whole criminal ex-bf plot was such a fizzle that it was resolved off page.)

The heroine insists she has to go back to L.A. to put her affairs in order. Three weeks later, the heroine is at a party at her sexy romance novelist neighbor's apartment when the hero sweeps in and demands that she marry him. The romance novelist is thrilled to see a scene from one of her novels brought to life: "He's a natural! The only thing I'll change about him is his height! A couple of inches taller...No, no, I can just make the heroine shorter!"

The embarrassed heroine swears she'll marry him if he'll just get her out of there, so he sweeps her up in his arms and carries her across the way to her apartment, where she explains that the party he interrupted was a farewell party. She has sold her interior design business and was planning to move to his home in Santa Cruz in a couple of days. He bursts into laughter because he had grown so impatient waiting for her that he sold the tofu company and has come to L.A. to live with her. (The Gift of the Magi!) They vow to marry and build a new entrepreneurial empire together.

I wanted to give a bonus third star for the ending, but I can't ignore the fact that the action plot isn't at all integrated with the romance plot. Yes, it's sparked by the heroine falling for the surface flash of the criminal ex, which is basically the inverse of her reaction to the hero...but that's another problem. How many times does she have to learn not to judge a book by its cover? Plus, as much as I loved the ironic ending, the book kind of wafted off into airy optimism. I don't necessarily need to know their career plans, but a hint of where they plan to live once they stop making out on the couch would have been welcome.

JAK checklist
Pacific Northwest setting: Nope, another California book: Los Angeles and Santa Cruz.
Familiar professions: I think JAK rivals Penny Jordan for the number of interior designer heroines. While tofu production is entrepreneurial, JAK definitely broke the mold with the hero's business.
What's in a name?: His last name is Merlin. Need I say more?
Marital status: She's divorced. He has never married because his parents' divorce embittered him...and he notes that he may have been looking for his soulmate in the wrong size category.
Age: She's 29; he's 36.
Heroine's eye exam: Hazel (which for JAK usually means blue/green instead of the more common brown/green; oddly, I don't think she provides any additional color detail in her references to this heroine's eyes)
Hero's eye exam: Tawny (TAWNY?), later described as golden brown.
Hair color: Hers is nut-brown; his is light brown shot through with gold. Also, he starts out with a full beard. Yikes!
Pets: None.
Vehicles spell success: She owns an Audi, which he insists on driving because alpha male.
Metaphors are for flogging: The protagonists fling a lot of "witch" and "magician/sorcerer" appellations around in their first makeout session, but other than that, not a lot of weight was given to the title. Instead, the hero was described as a panther so many times, I wouldn't have been surprised if this suddenly morphed into a shifter romance.
Hero threatens to spank heroine: There's a fair amount of manhandling and some outright wrestling as the hero has to demonstrate that he's stronger, despite their similar heights, but I don't recall any spanking threats.
The Family Man Forecast: The theme of not being each other's type is also explored (excessively) in Family Man, though here the lesson is that we need to look beneath the surface while in Family Man the lesson is that what we really need is different from what we imagine we want.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I always think it's going to be fun to read romance novels from the early 80s. Then I read one and it's painful and I come away happy that romance novels have evolved and are no longer word versions of soap operas. Fair warning, there are spoilers, but seriously....it was published in the 1980s.

Lacey wants her boyfriend to break up with her so she calls in Jed to both act as a love interest and to take her to his father's estate to keep her safe. She hopes to accomplish this by making Jed shave his beard and not telling him anything about why she needs him, so that's a good start. When the boyfriend breaks up with her, Lacey thinks things are all good...until he tries to run her and Jed off a cliff. In a unique twist (and a span of 2 days) Lacey has fallen in love with Jed and now wants to leave him to keep him safe, despite Jed going Alpha male and insisting she stay with him because now he can't live without her either.

Where do I even start? Some other reviews said this was pretty standard for the time period in which it was written, so I feel bad tearing it apart, but on the other hand, it was really silly. I'm not a fan of insta-love, so that was one strike, though I suppose one might argue that the backstory of the hero and heroine knowing each other when they were young might negate that whole insta-love thing. Then there's the fact that Lacey gives Jed some convoluted story of how she needs a diamond because that's how the guy she's seeing breaks up with women, and then she doesn't even get the diamond (because she never slept with him), but she's still happy because he broke off the relationship. What was the point of the diamond in the first place? To highlight what a super douche the guy was?

After getting through the sloggy plot and the over dramatic dialogue (much of which happens in the throes of passion), the main conflict just sort of ends with Jed being like, "I have connections and they arrested your ex-boyfriend." I didn't even get a dramatic fight scene where the villain goes to shoot the heroine and the hero tackles him to the ground. Even though by this time, Jed has gone alpha enough to tell Lacey she needs to leave L.A. because it's bad for her and she should be with him because SCREW WOMEN'S INDEPENDENCE!

So Lacey says she needs space, goes back to LA, doesn't tell Jed she's selling her company because she wants to surprise him with "Take me, Jed, I'm yours." Then Jed shows up to get her and tells her that he sold HIS company (which was a tofu manufacturing company, btw) because he wanted to be with her enough to join her in LA.

And then they laugh (because unemployment is funny) and prepare for their happy ever after.

The characters weren't horrrible in the beginning, but it wasn't long before they drove me nuts, especially Jed's habit of calling the heroine "Lacey, lady" (though maybe it's just a dialect I can't get my mind around) and the constant "magic" and "wizard" references to Jed, since his last name is Merlin.

The Romance Factor gets 2/5 because I just wasn't buying it, and the Sex Factor gets the same, but only because sex happens. Being that this is pretty old school, there was no steam (at least not for a grown woman...I might have thought it was pretty scandalous if I was sneaking this book at 13).

Though I wanted to like it as a silly, outdated read, I really just couldn't deal by the time it was over.

[Farah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lacey and Jed were very interesting together .. they both matched each other in strength .. even physically as both of them were separated by an inch in height and Lacy was described as a strong woman .. they were very intriguing but the lack of communication between them was tedious most of the time .. things would have been a lot easier if they just told each other what they knew also Rick's story ended in a very anti climatic way. Overall it lacked a more interesting conclusion but the last scene between Lacey and Jed made that up .. a fun read.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. I smiled a great deal. The characters enjoyed their dialogue. Also getting to know each other in interesting ways. "Never judge a book by its cover" is very true of the books characters although they both do it.
Second reading - Still a fun book. Delightful dialogue and fun story. Looking at someone's attire and assuming what and who they are is definitely making an "ass out of u and me".

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot is a little unbelievable but the characters are basically good. Ms. Krentz's hero, Jed Merlin, is not autocratic (until the end) like previous heroes while the heroine, Lacey Holbrook, is getting to that stage. Published in 1982 and a Candlelight Ecstasy Romance, it is pretty typical of this genre.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

The heroine is a bit of an Amazon, the hero is a tofu entrepreneur. The plot is ridiculous and the pacing is a little slow, but this one isn't nearly as rapetastic as most of the stuff from this period. All in all, this was more fun than I was expecting.

[Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Her characters are always different than expected. I enjoyed all of her 80's books and took them for the era they were in and what was selling. I do wish they were all in Kindle Format!

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very quick read between two strong personalities.

[Usagi Tsukino · Rating 1 out of 5]

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