Floodtide

by Kay Thorpe

Could Dale Ryland show him how to love again?

As a brilliant sculptor, Jos Blakeman breathed life into slabs of marble, stone and bronze. As a man, he inspired fiery passion in journalist Dale Ryland--something her fiance had never done.

Jos had sculpted Dale's so-called perfect body, and then married her in order to possess it exclusively. But would he ever love the flesh-and-blood woman the way he now worshipped the bronze image? Dale feared not.

To Jos, the statue was the more trustworthy of the two....

Genres: Harlequin Presents, Harlequin, Romance

191 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1981

About the author

Kay Thorpe was born on 1935 in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, UK. An avid reader from the time when words on paper began to make sense, she developed a lively imagination of her own, making up stories for the entertainment of her young friends. After leaving school, she tried a variety of jobs, including dental nursing, and a spell in the Women's Royal Airforce from which she emerged knowing a whole lot more about life - if only as an observer.

In 1960, she married with Tony, but didn't begin thinking about trying her hand at writing for a living until she gave up work some four years later to have a baby, John. Having read Mills & Boon novels herself, and done some market research in the local library asking readers what it was they particularly liked about the books, she decided to aim for a particular market, and was fortunate to have her very first, completed manuscript accepted - The Last of the Mallorys, published in 1968. Since then she has written over seventy five books, which doesn't begin to compare with the output of some Mills & Boon authors, but still leaves her wondering where all those words came from.

Sometimes, she finds she has become two different people: the writer at her happiest when involved in the world of books and authors; and the housewife, turning her hands to the everyday needs of husband and son. Once in a while, she finds it difficult to step from one role to the other. She likes cooking, for instance, but she finds that it can be an irritating interruption when she's preoccupied with work on a novel, so the quality of her efforts in the kitchen tend to be a little erratic. She says, "As my husband once remarked, my writing gives life a fascinating element of uncertainly: one day a perfect coq au vin, the next day a couple of burned chops!"

Luckily Kay has daily professional help with her housework, and that leaves her time to indulge in her hobbies. Like many other Mills & Boon authors, she admits to being a voracious consumer of books, a quality she shares with her readers. She likes music and horseback riding, which she does in the countryside near her home. But her favorite hobby is travel - especially to places that will make good settings for her books.

Kay now lives on the outskirts of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, along with husband, Tony, and a huge tabby cat called Mad Max, her one son having flown the coop. Some day she'll think about retiring, but not yet awhile.

Reviews

[⚔Irunía⚔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story made me ✨depressed✨ so the only logical response I can come up with?
— Thank Miss Thorpe religiously for four hours every day for all the misery and pain this heroine and I had been dragged through.

His gaze went over her face, lingering on her mouth. 'You have a very sensuous lower lip, did you know that? Right now it's quivering in anticipation. I don't think we should disappoint it.'

I was fascinated enough to linger around, with my eyes glued to the screen, my brain — exhausted, my chest feeling strangely tight and heavy.

The beginning of the book, which was quite innocent, amusing even... — their first meeting, forced proximity, a web of lies slowly unfolding, morbid attraction — cocooned me in a deceptively dangerous sense of comfort and safety.

I should have known better than to let myself be fooled into believing that with the hero like that I would be getting a light romantic comedy with ingenious, witty banter between a grumpy man and a little sunshine woman who plots and schemes to trick him into giving her an exclusive interview (that's what any unscrupulous journalist chasing after a scoop would do, right?) 🧘🏽‍♀️

I dare say it's for a reason that the majority of fairytales end with a “let's get married and live happily ever after” line, w/o trudging further in the dark, mysterious forest called "married life".

✨SPOILERS✨

Jos Blakeman's (H) words and actions cut deep, like a sharpened crystal.

He, a cynical man who doesn't believe in love (but overcompensates for it in abundance with the firm, unhinged, unblinking, blind faith in his artistic genius *spills water all over the floor* *that confidence? that delusion?? I WANT. No, I NEED THEM*), married Dale (h) in haste. Why? There was no other way to sate his rapidly growing obsession with her perfection and who was Jos to deny himself (and his artistic genius) anything?? Our artist didn't let minor details like the girl's engagement to another man and her sharp unwillingness to become his wife put him off in the slightest. In fact, he took care of both issues with utmost efficiency, having resorted to the most unethical methods possible.

What's in the disgrace that refuses to be apologetic?
What's in the man who doesn't wait around for the forbidden fruit to fall into his lap?



So, Jos forced Dale (who had already been halfway through in love with him, her fiancé be damned ✌🏻) to marry him, Jos tore apart her mind and heart, Jos forgot deliberately didn't piece them back together. (It was comical and heartbreaking. Probably more comical than heartbreaking after all)

' The way you make me feel isn't slow and gentle. It's like a fire I can't put out.' He moved his hands to cup her breasts, his touch possessive the way it always was.
'All I know is I can't have enough of you, Dale. No matter how many times I take you it will never be enough! You're in my blood.'

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO FEEL AFTER THAT BITTERSWEET HAPPILY EVER AFTER?

He confessed to the overwhelming obsession with the heroine that he had been brooding and harboring. The obsession that demanded, like a starved beast it was, to be fed off her attention, tenderness, thoughts, passion, body. Love? Don't be so vulgar. 🗿🚬 Love wasn't even in the equation .

Like a deadly snake Jos captured his prey, gazing at her with a cold, empty glint in his unblinking eyes, while throwing meticulously coils around her mind, body and soul.

I can vividly envision how by the end of their marriage he will have squeezed the will to live out of her, bleeding her white...



What can I say? I happen to fear and love cold-blooded snakes.



But in reality the last straw that made me surrender in defeated silence was what turned out to be one of the most unexpected plot twists of the story (for me).

She paused then and took a drink of her coffee as if to steady herself, not lifting her eyes. 'The truth is, I lost my head that night Jos drove me home. Without going into detail, I made it pretty clear to him that I was available any time he gave the word. He was very kind about it, very considerate—said he understood that women my age often went through these emotional crises, but he wasn't the one to resolve it for me.' This time she did look up, lips twisted. 'Not much of a mother, am I, trying to steal my own daughter's husband?'

????????????????????????????????????

Near the end of the book, Dale was left with truly no one else to turn to. Apparently, upon musing over her story the author came to the conclusion that marrying a venomous snake wasn't a tough enough ordeal for her heroine. So, naturally, Miss Thorpe decided to throw the abysmal mother into the mix, turning her from a caring, wise woman and mother (even if somewhat reserved and crisp by nature) into a conniving, lying, unscrupulous bitch who had no qualms about stealing her own daughter's husband and cheating on her husband.

I don't know if I was more stunned by her acting skills and the sheer audacity to act cool, sophisticated and patronising after confessing to the failed attempt at ruining her daughter's marriage (just to get it on a time or two), or angry.

I was feeling ✨violent✨.

Dale who had forgiven her mother 2 (two) seconds away didn't help my case. I was seething with frustration but Dale? Dale passed it off as something not worthy of her attention. Was it a relief that her husband didn't succumb to her mother's advances that warranted this type of reaction? Miss Thorpe set high moral standards for her characters, no doubt about it. None.

There was definitely something about the whole thing and the way it was written that got (CRAWLED) under my skin.

I welcomed the discomfort and affliction.

On second thought, I have no idea how the author managed to evoke so many emotions in little, normally emotionless me. To make me feel anything at all about these people. Both characters were folks with lost moral compass at their best performance. They both sounded miserable and cornered at the end. I ATE IT UP. 🍭🍭

Fascinating. Depressing. Gloomy. Enrapturing. AMUSING.FairyTale .

[Naksed · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story is SO fucked up, with two highly unlikable protags, and an abrupt ending to boot, but I couldn’t put it down.

Heroine is an ambitious journalist who fakes her way into the retreat of a very reclusive sculptor because she wants to scoop an interview with him. The taciturn artist is very successful and well known for his bronze sculptures, particularly his female nudes, but he has never granted an interview before. Aside from knowing he escorts glam girls from time to time, nothing is known about his private life or what makes him tick.

A flood strands the heroine at the hero’s isolated country retreat for a couple of days. She thinks she can surreptitiously get him to open up to her for enough material for her scoop, plus she is feeling very attracted to him and vice versa. She has a nice but dull fiancé waiting back in London but he has never made her feel the spark she feels with the artist guy. She toys with the idea of having a fling with him and they do exchange passionate kisses but she stops short of crossing the line and the hero respects that. Incredible for an old timey Harley, I know!

The hero eventually gets suspicious about heroine’s cover story cause seriously, she was an idiot and terrible at lying, not very good material for an investigative journalist at all. He blackmails her into posing in the nude for him and in exchange, he will give her the interview she sought. She agrees and he makes many sketches of her from every angle and position. He deems her body perfectly symmetrical and tries again to change her mind about a fling with him, even throwing an offer of marriage of sexvenience to her, but she demurs. She returns to her fiancé in London, who himself has been out of town and has no idea she just spent two nights with a notorious artist, nor does she enlighten him.

Back in London about a month later, the hero invites the heroine and her fiancé to his newest exhibit. Lo and behold, the star attraction is the nude sculpture of the heroine complete with her very recognizable facial features. The fiancé is shocked and seething. The heroine is almost relieved that the engagement is broken, because the guy was too dull, but she was too scared or cowardly to take the first step herself. Her conservative father is also very upset because he was looking forward to this son-in-law, while her mother, who seems to be a wannabe OW who unfortunately had to settle for a boring husband, encourages her daughter to THOT so she can live vicariously through her. What a family! It gets better...

The hero bullies the heroine into eloping because he wants to own this perfect specimen of womanhood. It would be too awkward to hug the cold bronze statue at night! He makes the usual Harlequin Hero noises about not believing in love, but wanting to enjoy this unique, burning, irrational passion between them for as long as it lasts. The heroine is sexually enthralled to him but aside from nighttime bedroom gymnastics, she is pretty miserable. The hero ignores her and spends all his time in his studio but he made her quit her job and he is very possessive. He basically wants her home where he has easy access to her when he wants. The result is that when he is not taking her to bed, she is sitting around miserably bored, and doodling around with some paints which she is too nervous to show her husband the Genius Artist since they are so amateur.

The heroine is so neurotic and unhappy that when her mom (the OW manque) comes for a visit, she starts imagining that something is brewing between her much older husband (he is 35 to heroine’s 23) and her still attractive mom (who is a young 47). She is unbearably rude to them both and he punishes her by pounding her into the mattress and then taunting her that he actually wouldn’t mind having an affair with her attractive mom, only she is too classy and loves her daughter too much to be that tacky (implying that heroine herself is vastly tacky for even thinking these accusations, let alone making them).

The heroine mopes around some more and then one day runs into her mom who sheepishly confesses that she DID proposition her own son-in-law and it was him who was too classy to reciprocate and let her down gently. She urges the heroine to tell hero she loves him and not mess up her chance like she did twenty years ago when she settled for her boring, conservative husband. My jaw was dropped twenty feet underground by the tackiness overload of this crazy bitch giving wise marital advice to her daughter but the heroine seemed to take it all in stride and rush back home. After another plot twist that reveals hero’s Great Traumatik Past of the usual mommy issues he has growing up, heroine decides to confess her love to the hero, hoping she can thaw out his ice. The hero is not quite emotionally ready to return the L word but does admit he can’t live without her. He is willing to have her teach him about her kind of love....

Well, if that’s not romance, I don’t know what it 🤨

[StMargarets · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everyone is awful in this story. Heroine is a journalist who plots to trick the sculptor hero into giving her an interview. She is stranded in a flood (see title) and has to stay alone with the hero until the water recedes. Heroine is engaged to a dry stick and ends up lying to him over and over about her involvement with the hero until he sees her nude statue at the hero's art exhibit.

Hero, for his part, "forces" the heroine to strip down in exchange for an interview. He also threatens to "own" her after initiates his plan to break the heroine's engagement. (The H/h do not have sex until the heroine breaks her engagement, but it's a near thing several times)

His behavior is no better after they are married. He ignores the heroine while he completes two commissions - unless he wants sex. He also flirts with the heroine's mother and is "tempted" to take what the woman is offering.

Yes, heroine's mother is living a lie in her marriage and made a pass at the hero.

Don't worry. It's a happy ending because the heroine says I love you to the hero. LOL.

I'm leaving out the half-brother who fills us in on the hero's backstory (not interesting) and the bromance between the heroine's sanctimonious father and her boring fiance as well as the heroine's attempts at painting that the hero doesn't encourage. Like I said, everyone is awful in this one.

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

3/2/22 Definitely one of the best stares in m&b land! Almost as good as my guy on (heresy!) He's cute. He's a psycho. This is another where I was only able to figure out the artist by springing for the paper copy and getting an up close look—no visible sig but the paint handling is pretty obviously that of Alessandro Biffignandi.

5/9/21 Hqn Cover art by Will Davies. Rather subdued. The sculpture on the cover is not how H's sculpture of h is described but why quibble.

Floodtide is more entertaining then it should be considering the MCs are a pair of dolts and there's scant romance in it. Nitwit newby journalist Dale tracks down skeevy famous sculptor Jos Blakeman at his hidden lair. She wants to finagle an interview with him so she lies and misrepresents herself, hides her engagement ring in her bag, invades his privacy by sneaking a look at his work while he's in the shower and wears a lot of beige!—clearly she's entitled and obnoxious but she's a rather bland example of her type. Anyway who really cares about Dale when the splendidly asinine Jos, also a stock character H, incapable of feeling or believing in emotion blah blah blah completely owns this story.

He was wearing the same dusty jeans, but the white cotton tee-shirt was clean. Across the front was emblazoned the slogan 'Happiness Is', followed by a question mark. 'Supply your own answer,' he said, catching her glance. 'It wiles away many an hour.' Such a dork but I love how deadpan he is—not even an upturned corner of a chiseled lip—I think it's funny, I think KT thinks it's funny, but what does Jos think? Maybe the guy understands irony—abstraction(s) not so much. The descriptions of his work are even worse better. He makes very conventional figurative sculptures: nude women and young girls (there's a gross description of one), erotically intertwined couples, an occasional wrinkled old man head (this proves serious male artist is serious in HPLAND) and dolphins! So uncool and yet within the world of Floodtide he's taken for an edgy genius and most of the fun comes from both MCs and everyone else making pretentiously loony and contradictory statements about him, his art, and Dale as she's embodied within it. He sees himself as part of an artistic continuum—Michelangelo—Rodin—Jos Blakeman; and knowing squat about anything Dale totally agrees. He's a magic man, he's got the magic hands—she's willing to do the cleanup because she imagines it would be very bad if he got dishpan hands. She's simply amazed that he's refused to have them insured against injury! I think they should be dipped in gold.

For his part, Jos takes one look at her with his x-ray eyes and decides she has a "perfectly balanced skeletal structure" (lol, like what does this even mean?) and blackmails her into modeling for him. In reality he's a wanker getting rich off T&A sculpture; pretending there's deep meaning in the totally subjective concept of perfection in order to get Dale naked. But having touched her perfect body with his mind he decides he must own it by steamrolling her into marriage. The sculpture produced from the sketches of her becomes the centerpiece of his exhibition and as he intended, brings about the long overdue breakup with her fiancé. Her mother thinks she'd be a fool not to grab him but Dale very reasonably wonders what's going to happen to a relationship based solely on her physical perfection as she ages? Mom—fount of dubiously self-referential wisdom, vicariously thrilled by Dale's connection to the exciting Jos responds: It's your skeletal structure they're all raving about, not your voluptuous curves...Perfectly formed, the art critic said. It makes me feel quite unique to have given birth to such a prodigy. and having reached this nadir of nonsense KT wisely drops the skeleton talk.

But while Dale is away trying to figure out her own mind, Jos secretly turns in her notice at work and gives up her apartment on her behalf. Arriving back at her own doorstep and informed of his overbearing behavior she's gratified to find there's nothing left to do but let the dominating tide overwhelm her as he throws her on the bed and ravishes her.

This book gets less fun after their marriage. He's dominant in and out of the bedroom, but he's also deeply conventional, hypocritical and withholding. She's submissive—even about the things she claimed she wouldn't tolerate when her fiancé suggested them like living in a large traditional home and being forbidden to have a job. But she's bored and lonely and for his part Jos would definitely be bored with her too if he wasn't busy being an important artist all day because when he does bother to notice her he's frustrated she's not able to occupy herself. He tells her to find a hobby—maybe dabble with his old painting supplies. Well she does but then hesitates to show him her paintings when he implies she's just sitting around all day. She's finally cajoled into it when her mother reminds Dale that she's got a really hot dude and ought to be willing to do all the emotional work to keep him. So Dale gets up the nerve to show them to Jos and quelle surprise he's a total jerk; claims they're as bad as her writing and calls her a coward. She should tell both to get bent next time they offer advise!

Because it's barely a romance at this point I feel proud of Dale for not giving too much of herself away. She has to decide if she's willing to take a risk and assume the emotional work in the face of Jos's indifference and total lack of affection—after all this is the primary role a vintage Harley heroine is expected to perform—but the choice feels especially stark in Floodtide—it's going to be grunt work—mocked if noticed and definitely unvalued.

There is some very bad behavior on her mother's part but she confesses honestly enough, though Dale is more forgiving than mom had any right to expect. I agree with Naksed that the scene is pretty jaw dropping so see her great review for the details. Me? I'm not letting it distract me from Jos's flaws! Among other things he isn't nearly as honest about the incident; he lies about what actually happened so he can accuse Dale of being a horrible person who doesn't deserve such a great mother. The point of the object lesson in forgiving one's mother is clearer when it's revealed that Jos has mommy issues—of course he does. It turns out his mother divorced his artist father, who renounced all paternal rights, while Jos was a baby; he was then adopted by her new husband.

trying to imagine how she would have felt over a discovery like that at sixteen was useless, because she wasn't Jos...Neither did it help overmuch to know the reason for his inability to feel for others. In fact, it underlined a certain weakness on his part because he had allowed it to colour his whole life. No matter how painful the truth had been, his parents had provided him with a home and a family, had given him their name. They had deserved better than the treatment he had meted out.

This clear-eyed view of Jos's limitations is crucial if Dale is going to make the relationship work; in this particular book it even passes for a glimmer of hope because close on the heels of this insight Dale makes her decision. As difficult as he is she can't live without him so she declares her love and Jos, barely rising to the low expectations KT places on him, reiterates that he wants her—she's in his blood—but he offers no ILY. Presumably his rough voice and agreement to kiss her tenderly sometimes is enough for Dale but his lack of affection and empathy worries me. It's an abrupt ending offering a WIP rather than an HEA; seems about right for this oddly funny but frustrating book that I'll certainly want to read again.

[Maverickgirl31 · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this was an interesting read.
Like a lot of books I've read from this period by KT, the heroine is engaged to boring but stable dude that she just can't manage to have sex with even though she knows they are getting married. Then she meets the charismatic hero and goes from protecting her virginity to reminding herself of all the reasons she shouldn't have sex with him. Reason number one: He's a ladies man. Reason number two: He's not interested in marriage. Reason number three: She's engaged to someone else. So then she immediately fails at seducing the fiance and decides it's not mean to be. After she runs away with the hero, they fight like cats and dogs and her nipples won't stop being erect.

I actually thought Jos was cool. He was kind of low maintenance and if Dale's self esteem hadn't been so low, she could have worked out how to talk to him without the future of their relationship somehow hanging on every conversation.

The twist with the mom as the other woman was different.

[DamsonDreamer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grateful to Iris for recommending this nutso gem with its ice cold, uber entitled arrogant sculptor H, Jos, and supine journalist h, Dale. I reserve 4 stars for rereaders and I've settled on 3 as I don't fancy returning to this one, compelling though it was. They meet when she uses subterfuge to beard him in his artistic retreat in the fens for an interview, taking advantage of floods to seek shelter. He's an ass from the off, essentially, but hey, very fuckable. She's already dully affianced and virginal so doesn't succumb but is definitely feeling his mojo and gets blackmailed into posing nude. Surprise, surprise, this guy really loves his nudes. He's a spiritual heir to Rodin dontcha know (lol, this guy is not short in the ego department). He even proposes marriage out of some (run, girl, run) whacko desire to possess her gorgeous symmetry (?) in every way. She high tails back to London and her father-seal-of-approval fiance but Jos reels her in, wanting prepub sight of her article and sending her an invite plus one to his preview. Of course she takes dull fiance (Roger) and of course her recognizable nude is in pride of place. Cue massively overdue fall out with unsuitable Roger (who really feels aggrieved that she's given Jos what he hasn't had the pleasure of, even though he's her actual fiance). Not only is the wedding to Roger off but this hard bitten journo turns into a limp noodle, allowing H to hand in her notice on her job and flat and marry her at once.
The marriage is grim in terms of any connection other than the purely physical and she drifts about without meaning or purpose in her life, dabbling at painting. It's not fun to read. The next wtf moment is the arrival of her mother, about whom I felt a little fond because she'd done her level best to warn her of the inadvisability of Roger and was clearly dissatisfied in her own marriage. What I didn't expect was for her to make a play for her own daughter's husband. Straight out of Take A Break that one. Somehow, the now bloodless and insipid Dale shrugs this off, forgivingly and having had some of the Hs (not especially) traumatic backstory off his estranged half brother, offers her unconditional love to this emotionally unavailable possessive nutjob in an ending so abrupt it could have been edited by Dewhursts the butchers. If you haven't read it, I'd say it was worthwhile but it's not a remotely romantic tale.

[Floqueta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Journalist Dale Ryland finds her opportunity to meet the famous sculptor Jos Blakeman and try to obtain an interview he has never given. During a floodtide, she appears in the grounds surrounding the secluded house where he is secretly staying and asks for refuge. At the beginning she feigns that she doesn’t know his identity, but she soon gives herself away and Jos proposes a bargain. She will act as a modell for him and she will obtain her interview. And it soon becomes evident that Jos knows how to manipulate the situations to suit his desires. And a strong desire is what he feels for Dale. She doesn’t want to give in to his desire because she has a fiancé.
I like stories with a H or h artist and this was no exception. I found this is an interesting and entertaining story, but I don’t give it 5 stars but 4 because of its abrupt ending.

[RomLibrary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could Dale Ryland show him how to love again?

As a brilliant sculptor, Jos Blakeman breathed life into slabs of marble, stone and bronze. As a man, he inspired fiery passion in journalist Dale Ryland--something her fiance had never done.

Jos had sculpted Dale's so-called perfect body, and then married her in order to possess it exclusively. But would he ever love the flesh-and-blood woman the way he now worshipped the bronze image? Dale feared not.

To Jos, the statue was the more trustworthy of the two...

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

It started ok but it went down hill from there. Jos' obsession with Dale was creepy and even when his story was out it wasn't enough to make since to me. Her mother was just gross and the ending just killed the book for me. Don't waste your reading time on this one. By the way Kay thorpe is one of my favorite authors not sure what happened with this book.

[More Books Than Time · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing much happens plotwise and the people story isn't strong enough to overcome the lack. Setting is minimal.

[ANGELIA · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lots of things wrong with this one, like the h being a top reporter in her early 20's????? (I'm getting sick of these stories where the H or h are prodigies who outshine everyone else. I actually read one book where the H takes over the family business at 16!!!!! WFT!!!!!) She uses devious means to get an exclusive interview with the H, a famous but nonconformist (even for an artist) sculptor, who actually blackmails her into posing nude for him! She gives in (and almost gives in sexually), despite being engaged, but since her fiancé doesn't turn her on, I guess it's okay. (Another wrong: she gets engaged to a guy she doesn't really love because it makes her snobbish, conservative dad happy and apparently her mom too, and she hates to rock the boat.)

When her uptight fiancé sees the sculpture of her at the H's exhibit, that's the end of that "romance". Now, that makes sense, but not the marriage between the H and h, as he acts as though he only wants her perfect body (he's enthralled by her form, a real work of art) and when they're not in bed, he's content to concentrate on his art and push her to the background and doesn't pay any attention to her own artistic efforts. He also pays too much attention to another woman, a sculptor like him, as well as to his oversexed mother-in-law!!

Yes, the worst wrong of all: Mom'd bored with boring Dad, who doesn't make her lady bits tingle like her daughter's husband does!!! (GROSS!!!) She actually comes on to him, and while he turns her down (thank God), after an argument with the h, he implies that he just might take her up on the offer!! TALK ABOUT A JERK!!!

Naturally, everything gets put to rights at the end, but it leaves you asking, "Who cares???"