 Contemporary Romance |
REAL LOVE Marcella Sanders BET/Arabesque February 2000 (3) Melanie Schuster |
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PLOT SYNOPSIS: |
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REVIEW: |
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REAL
LOVE, the latest offering from Marcella Sanders, reminded me strongly of
her other title, LOVE BY DESIGN.
It is fact features the brother of that book’s hero in his own story.
Nick Parker and Monique McRay dated once before, but not for very long.
Monique had trouble getting close to people since her a fiancé from
years before broke her heart. He rejected Monique
after finding out that she was adopted and had spent her early years in an
orphanage. Since then, Monique has
kept a close guard on her heart, even from Nick Parker who has never made a
secret of how he feels about her. As
much as she would like to care for Nick, Monique can’t chance another
rejection. When her newest
beauty salon runs into financial trouble, Monique turns to Nick for help. As a lawyer, Nick is in a position to help untangle her legal
difficulties. It so happens that
Monique can help Nick, too. In
order to fulfill his dream of opening a camp for inner-city kids, Nick needs the
land he can get in an inheritance if he marries before his cousin. He
persuades Monique to go along with his outrageous scheme because unbeknownst to
her, he truly cares about her. Once the marriage
takes place, Nick lets her known that he wants to make it a permanent marriage
because he loves her. In fact, when
he finds out that she is adopted, he could not possibly care less. She is the woman he wants and the heck with the rest of it.
But Monique cannot let herself believe in Nick’s love.
When the agreed upon six months of marriage is over, she fully intends to
walk away and not look back. Even
though she knows she will be leaving her heart in the process… This was an
intriguing basis for a book, but I have to confess that I did not see the
problem. It was hard for me to
accept that a woman as intelligent as Monique, who had the good fortune to be
adopted by people who loved and treasured her, was still so hung up on the
thought that she had been adopted that she would let it sabotage her
relationships. I also found it hard to understand why she continued to push away a man who was rich, handsome, honorable and crazy about her! Please! A lot of women have given up a lot more for a whole lot less, I must say. It made her seem self-involved and cold, the way she kept pushing Nick away. Time after time he tried to be there for her, to be romantic and loving and convince her of his love and she blew him off. I would have felt a lot warmer towards her if I had not been convinced that he truly loved her. But with he so obviously besotted, I found myself yelling at poor Monique—like she could hear me, or something—to get a clue! And
I could not help but be disappointed in the final denouement of Monique’s
adoption. There was so much more
that could have come out of that situation than what was presented.
I was looking forward to a really interesting dynamic and was left
wanting. Overall, Ms Sanders has an engaging style and does a good job of creating a sense of place and characters who are real enough for this reviewer to speak to. But with Nick Parker, as with his brother Brant in LOVE BY DESIGN, she writes men who are so delicious that their women seem a bit addled for not giving in to the passion they are offered. Maybe I’m being a bit nit picky, but if I had a man like Nick Parker after me, I would have taken his REAL LOVE in a heartbeat! |
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24th February 1999 |
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