Customer Reviews

For Our Children's Sake LP: Heart to Heart (Harlequin Romance Large Print)

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For Our Children's Sake by Natasha Oakley

Harlequin Romance # 3838 - March 2005

Heart to Heart themed series

Seven years before, Lucy Grayson and her husband had undergone IVF to conceive their daughter Chloe. And since Michael's death from a brain tumour, Chloe is Lucy's world. But there was a mistake at the fertility clinic, and Chloe isn't her biological daughter. Chloe is Dominic and Eloise Grayling's daughter. Tragically Dominic lost his wife Eloise in child-birth for his daughter Abby, only Abby belongs to Lucy. Dominic knows that there's no possible way he could ever give up Abby, but he has a strong need to know his biological daughter. Meeting the beautiful widow, Dominic knows that she feels exactly as he does. The only solution is for them to marry. It'll be a marriage of convenience, for the sake of the girls. Lucy is certain, that though Eloise has been dead for more than six years, she's still very much alive in Dominic's house and memories. But is marriage for the sake of the girls enough?

This is a deeply emotional love story. Your heart breaks for both Lucy and Dominic as they struggle with their own personal torment to find the right thing to do. Thrown in to add extra tension are Dominic's possessive in-laws and their neice, who has always dreamt of being the next Mrs. Grayling. This is Ms. Oakley's debut and it is wonderful. I found myself routing for both Lucy and Dominic right from the beginning, and Chloe and Abby are delightful. Well done!

For Our Children's Sake earned Natasha Oakley a RT Reviewer's Choice nomination for Best First Series Romance.

This story is exceedingly silly - BUT, it might have been a good read, if only the heroine hadn't given up her house, her job and her spine, just to marry the man who fathered her biological daughter. (She's got HIS biological child, due to a mix-up in the IVF clinic.) I could have accepted the marriage of convenience, so that they can each be close to their biological child (and there's the convenient fact that they are both madly attracted to each other). But the spineless and helpless heroine who dumps everything to do what the hero tells her, really annoyed me. The hero is not much to write home about either - he's a stiff, and too controlling, taking over the heroine too much (but then, she allows it.)

If the author had only written stronger, more attractive characters, and given the reader a more reasonable give-n-take between them, this would have been a good quick romantic read. As it is, it's pretty poor.