When Colette Moore was a teen her father died and her mother eventually met another man and remarried – and lived to regret it. Lewis Whitney is not a nice man and his daughter Elspeth makes their lives miserable. Colette hates her but she does envy her her boyfriend, Greek Luke Marlis. But as Elspeth likes to tell her, no man would want her because of the horrible disfiguring birthmark that stretches from her nose to her throat, and indeed when Colette eavesdrops on them she hears Luke echo those thoughts after Elspeth tells him Colette's got a crush on him. Things come to a head one night when Colette is coming back late from a wedding which Luke was also at and her stepfather is threatening her – Luke breaks it off with Elspeth and Colette agrees to marry Davy Maddox so that she and her mother can move out of the Whitneys' home. Life is great with Davy but Colette never forgets her love for Luke...until the car crash that kills Davy and her mother and nearly kills Colette too. As a result, they have to do 8 operations on Colette and rebuild her nose entirely, completely removing the birthmark.
3 years later her housekeeper (Davy inherited money) convinces her to travel and see the world...and her cruise ship catches fire just near Luke's island. In an amazing coincidence, Luke rescues Colette when she has to jump from the burning ship and takes her to stay at his place as other islanders are doing as well. He doesn't recognize her and she tells him her name is Jennifer, but he makes it clear that he wants her in his bed. Colette can admit to herself that she wants Luke to fall in love with her so they can live HEA, but his cousin Petros warns her that Luke has an understanding with another girl and is just using her...
I've read this a few times and it's because of the penultimate scene where Luke figures out who Colette really is that I can do that. Re-reading this, I've got to say that for the rest of the book Luke is really unimpressive – he's ok in England but in the present in Greece he orders Colette around and shows no consideration for her feelings – kind of reminding me of her stepfather, who Luke hated in England. So I guess I'm not a big fan of most of the book, but I am a sucker for these girls who were wronged finding happiness with the men who wronged them (once those men realize how wrong it was to wrong them), and I really liked the reveal scene as mentioned above, so overall I have fond memories of this book.
I read this one too this
I read this one too this year. I don't really love the premise it's based on, but I do like the chemistry and revelation.