Reviews for Bachelor Available!

The average rating for Bachelor Available! based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-06-01 00:00:00 Ray Ray It was okay. Not crazy about books about actresses. Was clean with just a few kisses and very little profanity.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-07-10 00:00:00 Yarees Sanders Only by Chance (1996) is the waifiest of waif tales from Betty, and I have to say I loved it! Betty unapologetically pulled out all the heart-tugging stops in this one, with a lonely-but-plucky heroine, Henrietta Cowper, who actually grew up in an orphanage, where she was well educated, brought up to be what BN�s Faithful Family Retainers like to call a �proper lady,� and taught to count her blessings. She even has a cat named Dickens, and rescues a kitten she names Oliver Twist (because he likes second helpings). Our orphan lives in a garret! And scrapes by working at two part-time menial jobs that barely keep our poor as a church mouse heroine in Oxfam castoffs. Betty went all out this time, no half measures! For all her troubles, Henrietta is likeable and cheerful most of the time, making the best of the least and keeping her chin up despite being extremely lonely in London and one misstep away from financial disaster. And it occurs�she gets sick, and even National Health can�t prevent the loss of her jobs and her awful little room. Left with a jam-jar full of change and a week's pay, Henrietta is in dire straits. Good thing she�s previously met our hero, the wealthy and aristocratic Adam Ross-Pitt (who remains Mr. Ross-Pitt, except in Henrietta�s thoughts, to the very end). Adam is a world-renowned brain surgeon who splits his time between his London practice and his ancestral rambling country cottage. He is an RBD who has little time for anything outside of his work, and who spends his rare leisure hours at his country home, gardening and walking his dog. He is kind but impatient, with a temper that occasionally gets an airing and a reluctant compulsion to make sure this chance-met young woman who deserves better from life is cared for and happy. He first meets Henrietta when she steps on his foot as she�s rescuing the kitten upon leaving the hospital where they both work, and next sees her when she falls ill and is taken to the clinic he quietly finances and volunteers services at. He�s not particularly happy to find himself feeling responsible for our heroine, but as fortune would have it, when she loses everything after a hospital stay, he is able to help her get a job that would give her both a home and some stability. Henrietta ends up working as a �Girl Friday� at a stately home in Adam�s village, which is opened to the public on certain days of the week. Most of Betty�s books have the sense of being set in Edwardian or late Victorian times, and this one even more than most, with only fab cars and modern medicine suggesting more current times. Henrietta�s experiences working at the manor house and building for herself a home in the quaint village where its set and a family among the FFRs she encounters is really endearing. The romance is secondary, really, although it�s sweet and angsty as our heroine secretly falls for the out-of-reach RBD, not realizing that he�s coming to his own Dawning Realization. Betty really nails it in this one, I think because she went all out in her sweet nostalgia for an idealized and more innocent England, which may be the real star here. Some hero PoV keeps us in the know about the hero�s growing feelings without falling into the trap of unbelievable instalove on his part, and there�s a sweetness and even an intensity to this one that is sometimes lacking in her later books. I often state that I prefer Betty�s earlier tales to her later ones, but I�ve found that every so often, in her mid-1990s period in particular, she still hit it out of the park. The Mistletoe Kiss, published a year later, was one of the standouts for me from this period, but I think I actually enjoyed ObC even more. While Cinderella tales are not my favorite Betty stories, for various reasons this one just worked. Like its MCs, it was a real charmer!