I meant to be reading and posting reviews from my backlog of NetGalley titles, but I've actually been binge reading Betty Neels' novels...about ten of them in the past couple of months. I've left short reviews for some of them on Goodreads, but haven't posted much of those here until now, because I didn't feel up to writing about the same general plotline over and over again. Betty Neels' novels are a fine example of the word, "formulaic."
My interest in Betty Neels' work this year started off with a Harlequin manga version of "A Kiss for Julie." I eventually found the original version of this novel on Hoopla Digital, a web and mobile platform that gives access to digital content such as e-books and movies, which my local library started using this year. Hoopla has around 87 of Ms. Neels' books in its library.
As I mentioned before, and in a previous review of a Betty Neels' novel, her work is quite predictable. The plot generally goes as follows: an older, rich, handsome doctor (usually of Dutch background, but sometimes may be English) and a younger, plain looking, hard-on-her-luck English nurse fall in love with each other. There may be variations to these characters; sometimes the female protagonist has an occupation other than being a nurse, and sometimes she may actually be beautiful. Sometimes, the hero has a girlfriend or fiancée. Sometimes, the heroine has supportive parents, but sometimes not.
Often, though, Neels' novels start off with the hero not having much of a memorable impression of the heroine when they meet (often, he forgets her as soon as she is out of sight), but the heroine usually remembers him quite well. The hero and heroine usually don't get along initially. Many times, the heroine finds the hero's mannerisms quite rude and gruff for her tastes. However, after repeated exposure to each other, they become attracted to one another.
I find many of Neels' heroes to be rather overbearing. They take charge of situations that steer the heroines into doing things the men's way, well intentioned or not. In a couple of novels, the heroes went around the heroines and made arrangements to stop the women's employment without consulting them in the first place. Wow. The men also often vacillate between hot and cold in their feelings and keep their women guessing about whether they have a real relationship or not. This is because many of them prioritize relationships with other women above the one that they have with the heroines so that the heroines are uncertain of the place that they have in their love interests' lives. This is something that I've found mind boggling; how can there be any certainty of romance between the hero and heroine if he's giving the impression that the other woman is more important to him than the heroine?
However, with the predictability of Neels' plots, I know that the couple will get together by Chapter 9. Sometimes I view the romantic resolutions with disbelief. One plotline had the hero revealing that, no, he's not in a romantic relationship with someone else (after letting the heroine believe for eight chapters that he was in love with another woman), and yes, he's madly in love with the heroine, and that he has made arrangements for them to marry in a few hours. I wanted to say, "You've just let the heroine know that you're both actually in a romantic relationship...how about taking the time to build it now, because she didn't realize that you were even in one with her!"
Now that I've trashed Betty Neels' plots, I'd like to tell you what I like about her work. For starters, her stories are generally clean. In fact, I noticed this from reading the manga adaptations of several of her titles, and this was confirmed from actually reading some of the original books. You don't have to worry about reading a bedroom scene, and the kissing doesn't get too hot and heavy.
I also think that she does a good job of presenting the romantic tension between the characters. The reader is more aware of what's going on than the poor heroine as Neels writes in third person, and one can read both the hero's and heroine's points of view. Now, I try to figure out when the hero is starting to fall for the heroine as I'm reading. In my earlier reading of her work, I was as uncertain as the heroine as I would only consider her perspective, but now it's fun to guess when the hero's feelings start, especially before he is aware of them.
It's a guilty pleasure for me to read about a handsome man falling for a plain looking girl.
Finally, sometimes, it's nice to know what to expect. Given the predictability of Neels' books, I know that there are going to be happy endings for the couples in her books.
Review: Betty Neels' Pineapple Girl
A Dutch doctor and an English nurse (who thinks that she's not good enough for him) fall in love. Clean, but here's another Betty Neels story in which the male protagonist blows hot and cold, is sufficiently unclear about his intentions, and doesn't explain himself to the heroine right up to the last minute. To top if off, he expects her to marry him on the afternoon that he finally clarifies his mysterious and ambivalent behaviour. I think that I'm being a bit kind in that assessment, because I thought that Timon had a bit of a mean streak compared to some of Neels' other heroes. Maybe because I'm at an age where I really don't think that a girl should experience that kind of behaviour from the man who is supposedly in love with her, I find that I would like to strangle the doctor for behaving like a jerk.
Review: Betty Neels' The Magic of Living
Another handsome Dutch doctor, and another plain looking English nurse fall in love with each other. This time, the nurse has to deal with a sly cousin who is competing for the doctor's affections. The hero was a bit nicer than the one in the previous Neels' novel that I read (Pineapple Girl), so this one was easier to swallow. However, I think that I'd be a bit ticked off if my fiancé arranged for me to resign from my job without consulting with me about it first, even if I got to marry his handsomeness in the end.
Betty Neels' A Secret Infatuation
This time, a handsome Dutch doctor and a beautiful English nurse fall in love with each other. However, the doctor is engaged to another woman, but he takes his sweet time in breaking up with her. In the meantime, he seems to find plenty of opportunities to spend time with the nurse, even though he's still engaged. If you think about it, he's kind of being unfaithful to his fiancée. He seems to not want to be the one to initiate the break up, even though he realizes that the relationship isn't going to work. And the nurse...well, she can't seem to stay away from the doctor, even though she knows that he's taken. She seems to keep torturing herself by fishing for information about the doctor's relationship with his fiancée, and the doctor isn't gentle in his responses to her when this happens.
There are quite a few Betty Neels' novels in which the hero already has a girlfriend or fiancée before he meets the heroine, but usually by the midpoint of the story, he will have made a decisive move in ending that relationship before moving onto the heroine (at least, this is my impression from the other Betty Neels' novels that I've read to date). In "A Secret Infatuation," the doctor remains in the engagement practically right up to the last chapter, despite calling the heroine, "his love," and kissing her a few chapters earlier. It's just sort of strange to point out the unfaithfulness in a Betty Neels' book, and generally, I hate stories in which the heroine is the "other woman." It seems that because the fiancée is an unpleasant and unsympathetic character, and because she wasn't the right woman for the hero anyways, the protagonists' unfaithfulness is glossed over and minimized.
Just something to think about.
Betty Neels' The Mistletoe Kiss
In the Mistletoe Kiss, we've got a handsome Dutch doctor and a plain looking phone/switchboard operator at the hospital where they both work. The doctor is engaged, but that doesn't keep our protagonists from falling in love with each other. The fiancée is a nasty social climber, however, she happens to be from a rich and cultured background. She doesn't love the doctor; instead she only loves what he can bring into their upcoming marriage and she fully expects the doctor to provide the lifestyle that she is accustomed to, even though he has hinted to her that he wants to live a quieter life than what she may be expecting.
I've mentioned a lot about the nasty fiancée because, although the plot is very similar to the last Betty Neels novel that I read, A Secret Infatuation. The doctor, Ruerd, starts falling for the heroine while he is still engaged, but in the Mistletoe Kiss, Ruerd is more decisive in making a clean break with the fiancee than the doctor in A Secret Infatuation. Also, the fiancée eventually crosses the line into unfaithfulness, so the outcome was a bit easier for me to accept this time around. However, the heroine is the other woman, even before the fiancée exhibits indiscrete behaviour. Emmy is more sympathetic than the heroine from A Secret Infatuation because she didn't pursue the doctor as the other heroine did.
I wonder what would happen in a Betty Neels' novel if the heroine had a firmer backbone and didn't permit the hero to run roughshod over her boundaries? In both The Mistletoe Kiss, and in A Secret Infatuation, the heroes got a bit pushy, interfering in the heroines' lives, even though they had no business in doing so since they were already engaged to other women. I think that, given the nature of Neels' formulaic writing, that it highly unlikely that I will find out.
