Description

(from Doubleday, Doran dustjacket) Followers of Ruby Ayres' many absorbing romances will eagerly take up the story of Lisa Sumner, a girl for whom circumstances spelled a defeat but whose high-spirited courage carried her on to happiness. Lisa's troubles started when she was nineteen, on the day that her father came home with the news that they were penniless. It looked, then, as though to have security and protection she would have to marry unattractive old Alfred who had been so long and despairingly in love with her. But at a little restaurant on Jermyn Street, where she and Alfred, no engaged, had dinner, Lisa saw Michael Wyllarde. Michael did not see Lisa -- at least not until the next day when she returned to the restaurant alone and let him think she was a Miss Ferrier he was expecting to meet there. When he discovered that she was the daughter of an old financial enemy, he sent her home brusquely, as though she were an irritating child. Lisa, however, was not one to stay home when tere were battles to be fought: and soon she faced Michael again, this time in defense of her father. How Lisa and Michael, each equally headstrong and proudly independent, found their lives, and suddenly their hearts, entangled, makes a story packed with vivid human interest and romantic charm.

Notes

This is a personal growth story, but not a stand-out for the trope. It takes Lisa so long to start in to the "becoming a better person" bit that you've pretty much lost all patience with her. She's a beautiful ("the flower of the flock"), spoiled, selfish, unpleasant person for, literally, 80% of the book, and Ayres struggles to rehabilitate her in the final act. Also, the morality of her father being [minor spoiler alert] a white-collar criminal is treated pretty casually, with not the slightest effort on Lisa's part to make things right for any of his victims, even when she lucks into the resources to do so. Not this author's best.

Tags

1930s, English, Europe, England, beautiful/handsome, determined, f/m, female, fiction, hair, blond(e), love at first sight, materialistic, personal growth/becoming a better person, poor, riches to rags, romance, selfish, tall, third-person, young

Flags

suicide