Catch A Falling Star

by Rena Young

The Ice Maiden, Ilona Craig was called by most people in the music business. And before, it had amused her. Now it hurt. Because the ice had been melted by one man, Alistair McLean. She'd surrendered herself completely to him and he had betrayed her. He was using her, one of Australia's brightest singing stars, to salvage the fortunes of his nearly bankrupt record company. Somehow, she had to make him pay....

Genres: Harlequin Romance

187 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1984

Reviews

[StMargarets · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one stood out because the heroine enjoyed a steak in the hospital the night before her surgery on her vocal cords.

Steak and hospital food just don’t compute.

Neither did this romance. Heroine is a well-known singer in Australia. H/h have known each other since heroine was a child and was taken in by his mother after the death of her parents.

Hero has been out of the country making money for ten years. They meet again when heroine stays at his beach shack and hero makes a surprise visit. Heroine is barely able to speak and hero makes her see a doctor.

Heroine has surgery. It’s a success. The dark moment comes when the heroine finds out the hero is the owner of the record label that is trying to sign her. She thinks his care of her was all for business – not for love.

They talk it out for an HEA.

So much of this story was manufactured angst. Heroine pretends to be sophisticated, so hero slut-shames her until he finds out she’s a virgin. Heroine sticks her head in the sand about her vocal chords, but her problems are quickly fixed.

There is more page time spent on how the heroine checked out of the hospital without being seen by fans and how the heroine switched tapes on the hero after the black moment, than any kind of characterization.

[Connie N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was just OK for me. I know that I find this era of Harlequin to often be annoying, but I still keep finding and reading them. When I originally read this type of book during the 80's, as a young woman, I had no problem with them and enjoyed the alpha male/dependent female romance, apparently. How times have changed! Now I find them incredibly frustrating. The premise of these books is very predictable, which is fine. Usually the male main character is overwhelmingly dominant, a competitive businessman or some such. And the woman is often virginal, usually some sort of victim or dealing with a life-changing problem. They'll get together, fall in love, but then one of them (usually the female) will have some sort of misunderstanding and break things off in a dramatic manner. And the man will chase her down to save the day/make up/declare his undying love. The beginning and ending work for me (it's what I expect, after all), but the process drives me crazy with snap judgments, a flair for over-dramatizing, and the inability to listen. In this case, Ilona is a singer who is taking a break at her foster mother's fishing shack. Her childhood crush, her foster brother, arrives and gets involved in her life. When Ilona discovers a secret about him, she runs away without asking for any explanation or discussion. Very childish. All ends happily, however. Since this book was published in 1984, I shouldn't have been surprised by the characters. And it was interesting to hear a little about the music business, as well as the setting of Australia.