Kept for Her Baby (Mills & Boon Modern) [Paperback]

Warning May Contain Spoilers:

So I don't know what made me go off Kate Walker as an author but after reading the well-written Good Greek Wife? - I thought I'd give this a chance.

I liked the H - he dealt with the blow of her walking out well, he didn't fob off the child to nannies but instead bonded with it. You can understand the initial marital distance also that he had with the h - they got married because she was pregnant and both understand that. More importantly - he was FAITHFUL - had he not been this review would have been very very different.

When she came back he was justifiably angry but not cruel and I felt after what she had been through that this was essential to the plot and characters. Her feelings, symptoms, condition were dealt with well considering the word limitation and I liked that the book didn't end with oh yes everything rosy now and all the fear is gone, she with good reason feared a return of her Post-Natal Psychosis with another pregnancy which was very realistic.

All in all, considering I've not had in the distant past good experiences with this authors H's - a streak of sensitivity in her H's is welcome.

Ok so I had a sample sent to my kindle three times since this book was published and didn't order it. In the beginning Ricardo was so cold and heartless I just couldn't go on reading and this was just the first two paragraphs of chapter one!! This time I was bored and so I read it, what a surprise!! Ricardo was awesome, rich, handsome and the humanity of the guy just kicked my butt. He was also very in love with Lucia/ Lucy his wife. She left him for six long months with their new born baby and just a note. When the story starts off it sounds like he married her, she had the baby and he kicked her out...nothing could be further from what happened. I don't want to tell you the story, but please read it because it was very very good. I recommend this book highly.

*Spoilers Throughout*

Lucy left her husband, Ricardo, and new born baby with a nothing but a short note before she vanished and finally months later she is back. But how is her husband going to react to his runaway wife come home?

I really wanted to like this, I read the other review about how the hero was a good guy and I was prepared to like him, but I am sorry to say, although he isn't cruel the way the typical Harlequin hero is cruel, his own sadisticness was almost worse from my point of view. He's the type of hero I hate, he sleeps with Lucy when she is a virgin, and since she doesn't sleep with him on their first date when she doesn't know he's rich, and waits until the second when she knows he as money she has to be a money grubbing slut, because all VIRGINS have sex on the first date . . . *eyeroll* I guess he never heard of the third date rule, or knew that virgin means she doesn't sleep around. As he proposes he tells her he doesn't want her, doesn't want to be married and that she obviously tricked him into getting her pregnant, being he obviously assumed as a VIRGIN she would be on the pill. The only good thing I can really say for him is that he's a good father.

She comes back after she left for six months and she tells him she's been ill, he doesn't believe her until she faints in the middle of a fight with him. But does he ease up on her and stop fighting with her? Does he do anything to make her feel safe and secure after he finds out she left because of postpartum depression? No, he goes on and tells her that he's been with oodles of other women while she was gone, that he doesn't trust her, tests her repeatedly and tries to buy her off again and again so he doesn't have to share custody of their son. Oh and did I mention that he left her penniless when she left? Oh yeah, he's a real stand up guy.

For me, a lot of his behavior is utterly unacceptable because she is so fragile and he comes and stomps on her, and then in her inner dialogue she says stuff like she would stay and watch him run around on her so long as she could see him everyday. It made me want to throw up. The poor woman is suffering from massive guilt because she abandoned her child and has such low self-esteem that she would honestly be willing to put up with anything to be near her husband and child. But, it seems as if it's the author who is so ignorant about issue of postpartum psychosis, Lucy's real ailment that she didn't want to own up to when she admitted to the depression. I have a feeling that the author doesn't mean for Ricardo to come off as such an insensitive bully but that is sure how I read the guy.

He is going to kick her out when she confesses that she never told him how she was feeling and how she was manic and depressed before she left, because she was scared of him. Lucy was suffering from psychosis! She could have thought Ricardo was trying to kill her, or Satan or anything because she was not rational. She was literally insane and to have Ricardo feel hurt by what someone out of their rational mind felt was childish, immature and hurtful about the seriousness of her condition.

Not only that but the pacing is off. The whole book takes place in between 48-72 hours, with a few flashbacks. Neither character is able to be honest with the other, both lying about how they feel and how they view their marriage because neither is willing to actually admit that they care about the other. Just FYI, Ricardo lied about the cheating, he just said it hurt her more than she was already hurting, like I said, he's a real stand up guy. I like how the author tired to do something different but for me it just plan didn't work, Lucy was far too damaged and fragile and Ricardo was too heartless and cold. The only think I did like was Marco, the baby, even though he was basically a plot device, the scenes with Lucy and him were touching and didn't seem forced.

2 Stars.