Customer Reviews

Charlie's Dad (Mills & Boon Romance)

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`It wasn't so much that he had left her alone and pregnant - that was something she had come to terms with years ago - it was the fact that he had forgotten her existence, while she ...she had had him indelibly etched on her memory. She had as much chance of forgetting him as of failing to recognise her reflection when she looked in a mirror, but that changed nothing (148)'

Alexandra Scott's second book Charlie's Dad incorporates many components of the romance genre. An illegitimate child, unrequited love, abandonment, an arranged marriage, amnesia, dramatic misunderstandings, and sexual tension all collide to make Charlie's Dad a success. While similar romances in the Mills and Boon genre can be sensational and blunt, Scott has ensured her plot and particularly her heroine are understated and empathetic. Ellie Osborne is a widowed businesswoman with a seven year-old daughter, Charlie. She is a strong assertive woman, who reveals a caring and soft side in her role as a mother. The hero, Ben Congreve, is quite well rounded for a male character in the romance genre. He is described as successful, charming and confident. Charlie is the product of the romance between Ellie and Ben when they were in their early twenties. However, Ben abandons Ellie (then called Helen) before he knows she is pregnant, and when he meets her again seven years later he fails to recognise her. She is understandable angry and determined not to let him back into her life. However, his fantastic rapport with Charlie makes it hard for her to deny him access when it is obviously what both the man and the child want.

While having the Mills and Boon insignia assures the reader that they will be given a certain standard of book and a happy ending, myriad types and qualities exist. Charlie's Dad is an intriguing story that is very well written and offers a more intriguing plot than many more simple stories which start to be all too familiar to the reader. However, while the novel raises interesting issues, and includes the necessary steamy attraction between Ellie and Ben, the plot at times becomes convoluted and too far out of the reach of reality. For example, Ben has the excuse for not remembering his `one true love' of his temporary amnesia, which befell him just after he had left Ellie, but which had been conveniently remedied by the time he met her the second time. Also the moral standards of our contemporary society, reflected in most romance novels, can prove to be too overpowering at times, in this case interrupting the natural flow of the plot. Scott's insistence on Ellie's moral fortitude and purity is belied by the fact that she had fallen pregnant to a casual lover, but we are urged to forgive her as she was young and in love. This is typical of the romance genre where love conquers all, however it is made believable because of the escapism inherent in the romance genre.