Header PromotionWonder and Wild Desire by Jeanne Stephens (SR 80)
This is one of those books where the heroine's sister gets pregnant by the hero's irresponsible younger brother. In this case, we have Carrie Franklin who has been raising her nephew Mike ever since her younger sister died shortly after giving birth. Carrie has been just scraping by but when she gets laid off, her roommate takes it upon herself to phone the older brother of the baby's father. Josh Revell is initially skeptical about the claim and comes across quite strongly and negatively but he has Carrie and her sister investigated and concludes that they were both young and innocent, morally upstanding young women and that Mike is most likely his brother's son (the brother having died in a car accident before the birth, but after having denied the child and thoroughly rejecting the Franklin sisters). Josh wants to raise the boy as a Revell and proposes marriage. Carrie is revolted by the Revell name after the way the baby's father treated them but agrees in the face of Josh's custody threats and her own monetary concerns (she's broke and can't find a new job). Unfortunately they both take their pre-existing prejudices into the marriage (Josh's from his late wife, about infidelity) and they get off to a rocky start the first night when Josh makes it clear he prefers a real marriage. But while Carrie starts falling for him she is also tormented by Jessica who her mother in law tells her everyone thought Josh would marry...Will their marriage have a chance?
I really enjoy this common baby sort of opening situation but while I was prepared to make the usual excuses since this was published before I was born, there wasn't enough shown of Carrie and Josh connecting at all to make the book enjoyable I mean, I love the angst but in most books of this sort of situation we at least get to see that they connect on a physical level if nothing else, but here they have sex three times the entire duration and only once does Carrie not recoil in disgust both before and after. Also I thought it was too bad that there were some things which might've been positives in other books that just didn't work here, for instance Josh calling Carrie on her martyr complex (because she didn't phone him for help after the baby was born – which in other books I might agree with, but here it just seemed that Carrie felt so disenfranchised and helpless as to have no other option – she couldn't exactly afford a paternity suit could she) or Carrie calling their first time having sex "rape" (and really it wasn't even forced seduction!). There was a lot of room for improvement and I would've liked to see more motivation for the meticulous ways the hero and heroine acted (like the hero doesn't bother to explain that he's not having an affair with Jessica and doesn't realize until the very end that Jessica had been making insinuations because he just never bothered to look into it – why not?!; and they didn't use any birth control but it's not explained that maybe Josh was trying to trap Carrie further into the marriage or anything – it's just not addressed). All in all the book reads even more dated than it actually is – I hadn't read the copyright before reading and thought it must be from the 60's or at least early 70's and was surprised to see it dated 1981!
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