Enchantment in Blue

by Flora Kidd

Rosalind had scarcely married Perry Sefton before she was a widow, and in her heartbreak she neither knew nor cared that she was now sole heiress to Perry's vast fortune.

But how could she convince his family -- and in particular his formidable cousin Justin Trevelyan -- that she had never given Perry's money a thought?

Genres: Harlequin Romance

187 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Flora Mildred Cartwright was born on 1926 in Liverpool, England, UK. The youngest of four children, Flora and her family lived in the same house until she was a teen. In 1949, she graduated from Liverpool University, where she met Robert Kidd, her husband. They moved to her beloved Scotland, where she began teaching, writing, and raised their four children: Richard, Patricia, Peter and David.

Flora Kidd published her first novel, Visit To Rowanbank, in 1966 at Mills & Boon. In 1977, the family moved to Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, where she continued her romance career with Mills & Boon until 1989, when she retired. In 1994, she published the first of the The Marco Polo Project novels, to support a project to build a replica of the 19th century ship Marco Polo.

Flora Kidd passed away on March 19, 2008 at Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.

Reviews

[Naksed · Rating 3 out of 5]

a diver moves about the sea in the way one flies in dreams, slowly, drifting through a strange enchanted world

That is the "enchantment in blue" Flora Kidd refers to in the title to her Harlequin romance, set in the Bahamas. Our poor little English waif arrives there to recuperate from the accidental death of her young husband. She ends up falling in love both with the enchanting underwater blue kingdom of the Carribbean sea and with her husband's cold, cynical cousin. I think the reason this book does not devolve into a typhoon of tackiness is that the author does a great job of showing how the heroine's gradual disillusion with her late husband, as she finds out who he really was as opposed to who he pretended to be, dwindles the love that she thought she felt for him until it becomes dust. That allows her to fall in love with the hero, and eventually causes her to sacrifice that love for his own good, or so she believes. It was a quite nicely written, kind of dreamy story with a wonderful setting and well-rounded cast of secondary characters, a jaded Alpha hero believably transformed by the power of love, and a heroine who only looks meek, but whose quiet intelligence and steel spine won me over.

The reason I was compelled to give a low rating was that the portrayal of the OW was cringeworthy. From her unfavorable description by all the anglo characters as a swarthy foreigner with big lips, big white teeth, big hips, teak skin, and wiry dark hair, who may even resort to voodoo in order to defeat her rival, the whole thing was nauseatingly over-the-top. Okay, we get it, the English rose heroine is going to win the day, not the slutty OW but did you have to be so over-the-top with the racism JEEZ. I know this is a vintage romance and I have to allow for a lot of gross tropes that would NEVER make it to publication today etc etc etc. but I truly believe just because you are an old timey author though, it doesn't give you a pass for being racist. And I give ratings based on my emotional response to a book. So even though I enjoyed some aspects of the book, I could not in good conscience compartmentalize in order to give a high rating. Sorry, but that's how it goes. If you want to give this one a try, by all means do, but at least you know what you'll be getting...

[Usagi Tsukino · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only Trevelyan that can exist is the Inquisitor, not this sh*tty character.

[Lynn Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

published sept 1975