The Last Honest Woman (1988) (Mills & Boon)Grade: B-
Genre: contemporary romance
Sex scenes: mild
Source: own
O'Hurley: (1) The Last Honest Woman
I really should stop reading books that I own and start cracking on my NetGalley backlog, but when these are NR books, I really can’t help it, especially since Waiting for Nick gave me a tantalising glimpse of the O’Hurley family that I just can’t get out of my mind.
Abby O’Hurley Rockwell has put
off offers to write biographies of her late, infamous husband’s life for a long
time, but now that a few years have passed and she desperately needs the money,
now is the time. She’s letting accredited biographer Dylan Crosby into the
farmhouse she shares with her two sons while he gets his interviews with her
and she must be careful to not reveal too much of the truth …
Dylan Crosby is good at his job
and he’s going to require the perfect balance of aggressive questioning and honest
intimacy in order to get the truth out of Abby and do this book justice. Chuck
Rockwell was infamous in gaming circuits and only became more so when his young
wife stopped appearing at the racetrack and he flaunted his affairs in her
face. Now that he’s long dead and buried while his two young sons have
flourished, Dylan is determined that this book will invade where no other
journalist or camera has gone before as he provides the most honest biography
he can.
As Dylan’s job requires him to
move into Abby’s home and into her son’s lives while he gathers all the
information he needs, he can’t help but feel that even as the solid writer and
observer he is, his own initial assumptions about this woman were deeply wrong.
He enters what seems like a perfectly normal, happy family environment, but
when the children are at school and Dylan has Abby to himself, he begins to
realise that life for Abby was not as much of the media portrayed it and
despite the contract between them, Abby has too many secrets that she’s hiding
from him. Will she be able to find the strength to let the truth be told once
and for all?
I met the O’Hurley family in Waiting for Nick and like the
Stanislaskis, they’re a big, loud and beautiful bunch of people. Of course, they
weren’t always that big and The Last
Honest Woman has allowed me to go right back to the beginning of their
story to see how they’ve become the family that I’ve already met. This is a
charming introduction to the series and while it’s not NR’s best starter to a
series, I’m already hooked.
I love Abby. She’s the epitome of
a strong NR heroine and there’s not much more that I can respect than a heroine
than one who has brought up her two young sons alone when her husband first
abandons her then leaves her penniless. For too long, Abby has kept the truth
about her relationship with Chuck private, even from her kids. While she plans
to keep the deepest truths from Dylan, she finds that the more time she spends in
his company she becomes more disposed to answer his questions and reveal to him
truths that she’s only ever told her sisters, if at all.
Dylan expected Abby to have a
house full of servants to keep house and bring up her kids for her; he couldn’t
have been more wrong and I love that. Abby doesn’t do anything to get rid of
the seed that he’s planted in his mind and when he finds out that he has been
wrong all along, humbled is just one word that describes how Dylan is feeling. He
doesn’t expect to fall for Abby and her sons like he does, but once he realises
it, there’s no going back.
As usual, the children are
charming. They’re young enough to welcome and accept Dylan into their lives
instantly as a new and exciting playmate, yet Ben is old enough to be wary of
Dylan’s relationship with his mother and the book he’s writing about his
father. I may have read a different version of the same thing tens of times
before, but it’s a NR classic for a reason and I love it. Ben and Chris aren’t
my favourite kids, but they’re definitely up there.
The O’Hurley family is awesome.
Trace is the oldest kid and the most reclusive of them all. Then came the
O’Hurley triplets and what a triple act they made. Frank and Chantal O’Hurley
have been performers all their life and tour the country with their children in
tow. Once the O’Hurley triplets are old enough, they join in the show and it’s
wonderful to hear about the adventures they had across the country. Frank is a
brilliant personality and a man I would love to see more of during the rest of
the series. Reconciling the image of Abby as a showgirl is difficult given the
character we’re presented with in the book, but it’s an intriguing picture and
it’s so NR to think up a family like this.
Abby’s sisters have created completely
different lives for themselves, mostly because they were able to pursue their
careers where Abby married young. They’re an actress and Broadway star
respectively, taking the performing that’s in their blood and following it to
its natural conclusion. Their temperaments and natures are still very different
and I can’t wait to get my hands on their stories. I managed to pick up a copy
of Without a Trace when I bought The Last Honest Woman but I’m steering
clear for the time being so that I can read the books in order. It’s lucky that
we haven’t got more than an impression of Trace yet, otherwise I would be
cracking open that cover like a woman possessed.
I think this is going to be a great series. NR's older, family-based ones are like my drug and I just wish she did more of these today. Coming from a large family myself, I can relate to the lifestyle and I wish we had teh same banter and sense of togetherness that I see reflected in all her books. Of course, there's no such thing as a perfect family in the real world but it is nice to become absorbed in fiction for a few hours under NR's spell. Can't wait to find Dance to the Piper - let's see if I can finish this series this year.
Image courtesy of Book Depository
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