Customer Reviews

Sweet Betrayal

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Teacher heroine hates that she's attracted to new owner of the estate, who her family works for & who she had a crush on as a kid. She's been mad at him since age 13 when he walked out on her older sister, who he was engaged to be married to, when she informed him that she was pregnant. Heroine becomes more upset with hero b/c he appears to make changes in the estate, which affects her & her family's livelihood. But, as she spends more time with him, she feels confused as she sees that she's not as bad she thought he was.

Brooks' writing is fine. I just didn't care for the main characters. Heroine was rude, judgmental, quick to speak, & doesn't take time to listen to hero. When hero tries to correct her assumptions, she doesn't give him the respect to do so b/c she's CONSTANTLY interrupting him. I don't know how many times she said "I hate you" to hero & not let him explain himself. So, I don't see why hero would be attracted to someone who interrupts him a lot, judges him harshly, & insults him constantly....Oh yeah, his daddy used to do the same thing to him. Needless to say, their romance has a dysfunctional bent. Their slapping each other (albeit at different times) just spices up their "romance". Interestingly enough, heroine takes on the typical role of bad-romance-novel hero (judgmental & verbally abusive) & hero the typical bad-romance-novel heroine (doormat, emotionally passive, & stops eating b/c so distraught).

Read if you're in the mood for some dysfunction.

Candice Baker is so confused about poor Cameron Strythe she doesn't know what to believe, 10 yrs ago she had a crush on him, now even when her heart tries to tell her, that he is a darling man, she won't believe he isn't a slime ball. Candy's sister Michelle, hurt Cam 10 yrs-ago, when she found she was pregnant, it seems that Cam was the only man in the village with didn't ride that bicycle. Now Candy has the chance to get revenge on Cam, but she is confused at her parents acceptance of Cam, with open arms. It's not until she has a talk with her older sister, the amoral Michelle, that she finds Michelle wants to eat her cake and have it too. Michelle and her husband Tim have an open marriage, where they both can have other lovers and not mind a bit.
Candy finds out the child she thought Cam abandoned wasn't his child and he is guilty of nothing but falling in love with the wrong woman.
Candy learns not only that but that the man she admired Uncle Charles(Cam's father) wasn't the sweet old man she thought him to be, in fact he was a mean, hateful person who liked to browbeat and shame Cam when ever he got the chance, and Michelle gave him the best weapon he could find. Knowing the child wasn't Cam's held no water to Charles, because only he had Michelle's parents knew the truth, Charles used the desertion of the child as a club to get rid of Cam.
It worked, Cam went to Australia and made good. But when Charles died, Cam returned only to find Candy had picked up the club his father had dropped because of death and now she used it when ever she got the chance.
Cam fell in love with Candy, but I couldn't see why, until much later in the book. And because of that it kept me from putting the book down until the sweet end.
From the back of the book: 'Once bitten, twice shy. Nothing could fade the bitter memories Candy had of Cameron Strythe. How could he have been so callous, abandoning her pregnant sister all those years ago? He'd disrupted their lives, and he was still disturbing Candy's peace of mind with his dynamic presence and all too charming manner...
But this man has betrayed her sister and, Candy vowed, it was her absolute duty to exact a full and meaningful revenge-at any cost!'
"Helen Brooks pens a superb story with rich characters, sparkling interplay and a riveting emotional conflict."-Romantic Times.