Customer Reviews

Beloved Stranger / Summer Storm

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Back Cover - Summer Storm is the romantic tale of a struglling actor who is dazzled away from his beautiful young wife by the glitter of a Hollywood starlet . . . until his own stardom shows him the difference between tinsel and true love.

Really didn't enjoy this story; it was a struggle to get through it. Kit and Mary met and married soon after college. He becomes a big time Hollywood actor with all that entails and she becomes a doctor teaching at a local college. They meet up again. Because he has decided he wants his estranged wife of 4 years back. They really only shared married life together for 7 months. They were so in love and then she became pregnant. He was scared because they had so many dreams and so he suggested an abortion. Her religious views were a no go on that front. He went off to film a movie and through himself full throttle into it. Hardly calling and when he did was completely distracted. Then of course there were tabloid articles linking him to a starlet. Mary didn't know what to believe because of the distractedness of her husband when she did speak to him and the fact that they were hardly together if at all. She goes in to labor a little early and the baby is born dead. Kit wasn't even there. Apparently he was spending the weekend at the starlet's ranch and wasn't reached until the day after the baby's death. He rushes across the county to his wife and she tells him to get out and that she never wants to see him again. Of course he does. I didn't like him at all. Not because of the starlet thing but because he pretty much abandoned his wife in her hour of need. He walked out then of course they were married all this time and neither of them had gotten a divorce or legal separation. He claims that when he did make love with the starlet it was after Mary had told him to get out that he was faithful to her when they were really married. Um . . . . HELLO they were still really married. I guess I found it hard to believe that she just accepts this especially since she was supposedly so stuck in religious aspects from her upbringing. No sex before marriage, marriage forever, no adultery. Yet he did!! There really didn't seem to be much chemistry between these to characters either and once again the reader is left wondering why in the world an author puts infidelity into a book and yet really doesn't solve that issue. For this reader it wasn't even just that. It is the fact that Kit left Mary to pursue this film and didn't seem to be to connected to her through the entire process of the filming. Instead he seemd to be more concerned with getting what he wanted and at the expense of everyone: his wife and even this unborn child that he didn't seem to even grieve for at all.

I don't think Kit loved Mary at all. He walked away he never stood his ground and fought for her. Even later in the story he was willing to leave again. Seemed that Mary had to want to be with him. She had to be willing to set aside everything to catch his star!

I love the first novel in this two in one binding--Beloved Stranger...it bears many similarities to a Regency moved into the 20th sentury...the two characters meet during a snow storm, are instantly attracted to each other, have sex and then move apart--only for the young virginal female lead to become pregnant--what should have seemed stale and contrived works because of the likeability of the characters (not the niceness because they have very realistic faults) and the juxtaposition of their very opposite natures--Wolf's leads are from two very different worlds--one a NY Yankee outfielder and the other a fledgling novelist with a lack of self-confidence. And yet, like many of her charcters in the 19th century books-- good manners and sense of responsibility create an environment that allows them time to develop a relationship and realize that their first magical meeting was a once in a lifetime chance at true happiness....
The second novel I really did not care for and never re-read...don't even remember much about it expect it is about estranged actors who are brought together again under an accident of fate and manage to heal the rift in their relationship--since they never stopped loving each other...