This HaBO is from Jen, who is looking for an older Mills & Boon title:
When I was young (probably too young), I sometimes used to sneak my grandmother’s romance novels from beside her bed to read in secret. I only remember a handful, but out of those, one sticks out.
As far as I remember, the hero is a tycoon of some sort who launches a contest to discover (I think?!) who would become his wife. He’s cold and dismissive, your typical millionaire alpha. The heroine, I believe, is an ordinary young woman – maybe a journalist seeking info on the hero, though I could be mixing that up – who enters the contest, though she dislikes the hero. There are various rounds in the contest, but the one bit I distinctly remember took place on the hero’s fancy yacht, at night, and the heroine feels out of place. She is given a glass of champagne – not just any champagne, but pink champagne, possibly with a raspberry in it. (The idea of pink champagne really stuck with me, I guess.)
The book was most likely a Mills & Boon, available here in the UK during the late 1990s/early 2000s.
I have such fond memories of those books, and I’d love to see how I find them nowadays!
I could also go for some pink champagne.
Could it be by Ann Weale? Girl from the sea, or Antigua Kiss. I have read them in days gone by. Not sure I could stomach them now though
No help whatsoever here but sounds like a precursor to “The Bachelor”. Knowing the recaps here she won’t be eating that raspberry !
Pretty sure it is not Mayor of Casterbridge where the man sells his wife to get some money, eventually becomes Mayor of another town and his secret is found out.
Seriously, though, seems to me I read this ages and ages ago. Does the hero have some sort of special needs child?
Honestly? Forget the book. It probably didn’t age well.
BUT, go get that pink champagne! WIth raspberries!! That’s always going to be a classic. 🙂 Cheers!
Gloriamarie – I don’t remember that aspect, but that’s no reason to believe he doesn’t. Maybe I dreamed this book out of aspects of other books?
Meg – I *should* get some pink champagne! I have the power to just go buy some. Maybe I will. 🙂
This is more of a Survivor contest: The Wedding Adventure. Silhouette in the US.
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00KV647KC/?coliid=I1PN8YI4CNTQTD&colid=235PZJ1VDMGM&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
For the record, while I admire the color of pink champagne, I find the taste vile as it is gaggingly sweet to me. I have no sweet tooth. If you want to give me champagne, make it brût, please.
I wish I remembered more details of the book I am thinking of, but after a while all the HR blur together in my mind. I guess that is why I have stopped reading it. Seems to be the same plots, same people over and over no matter who the author is. Which is unfair to the authors who work hard.
Right now I am a PNR kick and I daresay eventually, I will fill the same about it. Despite the hard-working authors.
What will I read then?