Guilty Love (Harlequin Presents)
24yo secretary becomes uncomfortable when her boss of 6 months Hero suddenly starts asking her personal questions especially about her 4-year marriage. She does her best to keep things formal with Hero, given that her unpredictably-violent husband has already leveled accusations about their relationship. Their attraction to each other & her husband's abuse heightens to the point of murder. She is anguished by it all & leaves town, rejecting Hero's pleas for her to stand by him during the court trial. How do they recover from such trauma? Do they have a chance at a future together?
I seriously thought that this book was from the 70s or early 80s. I couldn't believe it was published in 1994! It doesn't fit the typical HP (Harlequin Presents) mold. Reading this book reminded of those Lifetime Movie Channel movies about love & murder. It dealt with issues of disability, alcoholism, domestic violence, codependency, workplace romance, infidelity, & trauma. And then there's murder, court trial, stalking, imprisonment, & amnesia. All this in 210 pages! I sometimes wasn't sure if Hero was a good or bad guy. This book kept me on my toes until the end when everything was explained.
This was definitely a meaty book & I liked it because of that. Many things about this book such as the main characters & cheating were not straightforward. I wasn't sure who was the bad guy or the good guy. Or even if I liked Hero or heroine because things changed as another aspect gets added into the mix.
-------------SOME SPOILERS: Don't read below if you don't want to know the book's details---------------------
The cheating had different elements to it. Heroine was married to a husband who became a very different man after his accident 2 years earlier. He became abusive yet she forgave him every time because she was still holding on to the man she remembered him to be. She had many mixed emotions about her unpredictable husband. Here comes strong & stable Hero who was giving her enough space while unknowingly fulfilling some of her needs she wasn't getting from her failing marriage. The cheating was mostly emotional. There were 2 kissing incidences before her husband died. Her feelings for Hero only added to her growing roller-coaster of emotions. Add in the death of her husband right after he was trying to kill her, followed by a long trial for Hero's manslaughter conviction & his imprisonment and we get a very emotionally-shaken heroine. I really liked that her getting therapy was mentioned at the end. She needed it!
I liked how Lamb strung the reader along with doubts about Hero. I wasn't sure if Hero already had designs for heroine but was being clever about showing it. Or if he really was unintentionally swept along into it just like heroine. It seemed like heroine also had doubts about Hero. She seemed so scared of him that she moved out of town right away after her husband died with specific instructions that Hero not be told where she was going. She even hid from him with help from her family, when she found out he was being released from prison. He seemed really threatening & definitely acting like her stalker towards the end. I wasn't sure how this was all going to end well soon. But it did and I was surprised at how Lamb put it all together.
Read it you're looking for an unpredictable & atypical HP.
I seriously thought that this book was from the 70s or early 80s. I couldn't believe it was published in 1994! It doesn't fit the typical HP (Harlequin Presents) mold. Reading this book reminded of those Lifetime Movie Channel movies about love & murder. It dealt with issues of disability, alcoholism, domestic violence, codependency, workplace romance, infidelity, & trauma. And then there's murder, court trial, stalking, imprisonment, & amnesia. All this in 210 pages! I sometimes wasn't sure if Hero was a good or bad guy. This book kept me on my toes until the end when everything was explained.
This was definitely a meaty book & I liked it because of that. Many things about this book such as the main characters & cheating were not straightforward. I wasn't sure who was the bad guy or the good guy. Or even if I liked Hero or heroine because things changed as another aspect gets added into the mix.
-------------SOME SPOILERS: Don't read below if you don't want to know the book's details---------------------
The cheating had different elements to it. Heroine was married to a husband who became a very different man after his accident 2 years earlier. He became abusive yet she forgave him every time because she was still holding on to the man she remembered him to be. She had many mixed emotions about her unpredictable husband. Here comes strong & stable Hero who was giving her enough space while unknowingly fulfilling some of her needs she wasn't getting from her failing marriage. The cheating was mostly emotional. There were 2 kissing incidences before her husband died. Her feelings for Hero only added to her growing roller-coaster of emotions. Add in the death of her husband right after he was trying to kill her, followed by a long trial for Hero's manslaughter conviction & his imprisonment and we get a very emotionally-shaken heroine. I really liked that her getting therapy was mentioned at the end. She needed it!
I liked how Lamb strung the reader along with doubts about Hero. I wasn't sure if Hero already had designs for heroine but was being clever about showing it. Or if he really was unintentionally swept along into it just like heroine. It seemed like heroine also had doubts about Hero. She seemed so scared of him that she moved out of town right away after her husband died with specific instructions that Hero not be told where she was going. She even hid from him with help from her family, when she found out he was being released from prison. He seemed really threatening & definitely acting like her stalker towards the end. I wasn't sure how this was all going to end well soon. But it did and I was surprised at how Lamb put it all together.
Read it you're looking for an unpredictable & atypical HP.