Elda MingerCritiques

A cute little Christmas novella l

Synopsis:

When Colorado rancher Ben Tanner discovers that his brother Brad has left town after getting Annie Brand pregnant, he decides to help her. Annie is from the wrong side of the tracks, a woman who has worked determinedly to improve her life. She refuses his help at first, until Ben convinces her it's the right thing to do for the child. He offers her a marriage of convenience until her baby is born and at least one year old.

Both Ben and Annie have been hurt before, and are independent people. Neither count on falling in love. But then Brad comes back into town, and he's looking for Annie . . .

My review:

I LOVED it! will be reading more of Ms Minger's books!

Over all this was a decent book. The author did repeat herself multiples times which was a little annoying and I felt she didn't give enough background of Tara's character. Fell a little flat for me but it was a quick and easy read. I did feel it was a HUGE stretch to believe that a 15 year old boy looked at an 11 year old girl and instantly knew he wanted to be with her.

sweet½

Very sweet romance between Annie who is from the wrong side of the tracks and Ben, who is from a wealthy family. But things aren't quite what they appear between Annie and Ben. First, Annie didn't start her romance with Ben, she started her romance with his little brother Brad and that got her in big trouble. Trouble that would come to fruition in just nine short months. But Ben was there to save the day, always there to save the family. And he offered Annie a chance at a better life for her and her unborn child. It would also keep a child of his blood close to him, now all he had to do was convince Annie that she was also a part of his family, no matter what his mother or brother said.½

When I started reading this, a story about a man who hires a private investigator to track down his girlfriend of 12 years ago, and then stalks her, I didn't think I'd enjoy it. Even less once I established that Jake McCrae, a Harley Davidson owning actor, who likes walking around shirtless, takes girls on dates to diners and buys them 12 bouquets of flowers without a second thought, was the biggest cliche in the history of mankind.

But damn... this is good. Well written, evenly paced and really romantic. I'd happily read this again, and I'll be definitely lending 'The Last Seduction' to my other M&B loving friends.

I'd loved The Fling, The Dare, and Elda Minger's story in Fantasy, so I bought this as soon as it came out.

The night before Tess Sommerville's wedding, she's out with friends and runs into her high school crush, Will Tremere. They dance, and he gives her his number, telling her if things don't work out with the wedding, to give him a call.

Tess had been having second thoughts already, and seeing Will made it even worse. So she finds herself at the church where they're to be married in the morning, and gets a pretty hard-to-miss "sign" when she discovers her fiance and the minister's daughter having sex in the church.

Fate obviously had a hand in this, so Tess calls Will and invites herself along--he's driving cross-country to deliver a car to a friend.

Will's... well, he's pretty darn perfect. He gives Tess a shoulder to cry on and privacy when she needs it, screens her calls and intercedes for her the first day or so, then is there to support her when she handles her own calls.

Tess's best friend comes up with a fabulous sting for the cheating boyfriend.

The Kiss is a real fairy-tale of a romance, complete with the wicked (oh, okay, she's just self-serving) stepmother, and a knight in shining armor (that would be Will). Tess's journey is both a literal and figurative one--the further they travel, the more she learns about herself, and the more she's able to stand up for herself.

My only quibbles with the story are that some of the characters are a little exaggerated--Will's a little too perfect, the stepmother and ex-fiance are a little too nasty. But then again, isn't that the way it is with fairy tales? They're larger than life.

And you know I couldn't get through this without referencing the Amazon reviews. Plbbbtttthhh to all those reviewers who said it wasn't a romance because there wasn't any sex. Sheesh. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, and they... okay, we don't see them living happily ever after, but it's a pretty good bet that they will. That spells romance in my book. If you absolutely must have sex scenes, read this, then hop on over to Literotica to get your fix.

This is a very early book from Elda Minger, and it shows.

Aspiring actress Genie Bouchet is hired/pressured by her wealthy, successful novelist sister Valerie to impersonate her during a week-long talk show interview.

Unfortunately for Genie, talk show host Pierce Stanton plans to use her appearance on his show to expose Valerie as the heartless homewrecker who had an affair with his sister's husband, destroying their marriage.

Maybe this is why conventional wisdom says not to write romances with celebrity-type characters. They're just not sympathetic. At least not in this book. Valerie is a spoiled, controlling witch panicked at the thought of being seen in public because she's pregnant. Pierce uses his celebrity to try to ruin Valerie's career. And all Genie does is sit around moaning about not being famous yet.

Both Genie and Pierce have sister issues. Genie complains about her sister, but at the same time, she takes her money. I'm not too sympathetic there. Pierce is so hung up on his sister's divorce that years later, he's still out to get "the other woman."

And to top that off, it's a Big Secret story. As happens in almost every Big Secret story, Genie has multiple chances to come clean about her identity, but she keeps putting it off. If you've read any books at all, it's not going to be a spoiler to say that she loses her chance to tell him herself. Maybe it's not fair to complain about a cliche in a 22-year-old book, but I suspect the cliche has been around longer than that.

The thing is, I wouldn't mind the cliche so much if I liked the characters. If I could sympathize with Genie getting in over her head with the lie, or with wanting to protect her sister, it would be fine. And I'd be okay with both Genie and Pierce needing to get over their hang-ups about their sisters if there wasn't the whole deception muddle thrown into the middle of it.

But like I said, it's a 22-year-old book, and Elda Minger has written much better books in the meantime, so I'm not too terribly disappointed in this one.

Overdone, but you can see the bones of a good story here. Quibbles first: as I said, it's overdone, and needs a good editing. Or maybe a ham-handed editor is responsible for this. Ice cream isn't just ice cream, it's a "cool dessert" (no, I'm not getting over that one any time soon). It sounds as if I'm dissing the whole book based on one phrase, but I'm not--that's just the best example of how the whole book is. There's a great story there, but for me, it kind of got lost under an avalanche of superfluous adjectives, adverbs, and descriptive passages. The story, though, was excellent. It's a reunion story, which you know I love anyway, and there are twists. Outsider returns to small town for her high school reunion where everyone thinks she's a huge success because of some embellishment from her friends. She's an author, sold her first book, but hasn't been able to sell another. So she encounters a whole host of reactions: from excitement and pride to envy and resentment. And there's the man she came back for: a rancher, whose life has been taking care of the ranch and his younger brothers and his psychologically ill mother after his father died. Both of them are harboring feelings for each other from the past, and both of them are afraid they're not good enough for the other and don't want to tie them down/cause them pain. This book's from 1997, and it's easy to see how a few years later she's become such a good author. I have her latest in my TBR pile.