Reviews for Catch a Dream

The average rating for Catch a Dream based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-07-11 00:00:00 Lior Frank 5 stars for the heroine, 1 for the hero. Mustachioed, virile, half-Greek H and feisty English Rose h meet in Greece because their respective cousins' short-lived affair in England resulted in a pregnancy and now there must be a shotgun wedding. For some reason, the H concentrates all his disgusting gold digging tart comments towards the h so we know right away he is attracted to her despite the fact that he thinks she is the mastermind behind an extortion/blackmail plot against his wealthy Greek family. H's cousin reluctantly offers to marry h's cousin to preserve family honor. To seal the deal, he gives the pregnant bride-to-be a very expensive emerald and diamond engagement ring that is a family heirloom. h and h's cousin then return to England until further concrete plans can be arranged for the wedding. Before wedding plans can be made though, h's cousin miscarries. In typical flaky manner, she decides to pawn the ring to pay for a ticket to Australia to visit her ex-boyfriend, the guy she was seeing before she got involved with H's cousin. H has to spend an enormous fortune to get the ring back from the pawn shop. As usual, he holds the h, not their respective cousins, solely responsible for this financial loss and demands she pay him back by working for him as "secretary" back in Greece. They end up in this small beach town not too far from Athens where H's ancestors used to live and pirate, and they built a bunch of tall towers out of the rocky hills so they could fight war against each other. There are still cannon balls in the tower that hero has made his home in and heroine ends up using a couple of them to weigh down the trap door that separates her bedroom from the H's bedroom, in case he decides to become rapey during the night! It doesn't take long before the hero makes a pass at her, hoping she will pay him back in bed rather than at the typewriter. Heroine is wildly attracted but reluctant to be used by this jerk as his summer plaything so she says no. Angry, he proceeds to painfully twist the heroine's nipple!!! WTF???? When did this turn into The Three Stooges? He also brings an odious, snobby, German Glamazon OW around to make the heroine jealous. The heroine holds her own with the OW but in the end, the OW orchestrates a humiliating public scene accusing her of being a con artist who bilked H's family out of a valuable family heirloom ring. It wasn't the hero who slandered the heroine to the OW, it was his cousin, but hero does admit he is the one who put the idea into his cousin's head in the first place, back in the early days of their acquaintance when he still considered the h a combination of Mata Hari and Bonnie & Clyde. After spending the summer with the h in a quasi-work, quasi-friendly relationship, he has come to know and appreciate the heroine for the straightforward, honest, ethical person she is, especially after she underwent a grueling ordeal to rescue him when he had a dangerous accident rock climbing. Plus, the h's flaky cousin did end up sending two cheques to the hero to pay him back for the trouble over the ring. So he now knows his accusations were wholly unfounded. h's cousin is a flaky girl who gets herself into trouble but means no harm. And h obviously cares for and is protective of her cousin but in no way, shape or form would she have dreamed up a conspiracy to steal the H's valuable family heirloom. Hero immediately takes the OW to task for her accusations and sincerely apologizes to heroine. Sorry but it was too little, too late for me to redeem him. It needed to be a Giant Grovel and it needed to be in an equally public space such as the OW chose to berate the heroine, not a whispered few words in privacy, away from the eyes of the people who witnessed the heroine's humiliation. But apparently, it was enough of a redemption for the heroine, who finally avows her love for him and he for her. They promise each other to meet back in London and explore their newfound feelings. A last minute "dark moment" occurs when h returns to her flat and finds her flaky, neglectful mom in hysterics. She has left Husband Number Three and now wants to cry (or rather rant and rave) on her daughter's shoulder. All the poison her mom spews in heroine's ear about how love is an impossibility, marriage is a joke, and men are monsters, shake the heroine's beliefs in her own tentative relationship with the hero. So she drives him away when he arrives in England and then goes into decline. But slowly and surely, she gets back into herself and realizes that she is letting her mom destroy her chance at happiness. The mom's experience with love and marriage had colored heroine's perception for her entire life, unfairly so since there are plenty of examples of long wedded bliss in her circle of friends and acquaintances. So she decides she is finally going to be free of her mother's shadow. It was a joyous moment for me when the heroine finally told the hysterical mother off, calmly, reasonably and politely but very, very definitively. So we leave the h and H in what I truly hope and pray is their rainbow and unicorn HEA, with the heroine now sporting that infamous emerald and diamond family heirloom ring which, quite frankly, I would have hastily returned to the family vault due to its negative past connotations :~{

Review # 2 was written on 2017-09-20 00:00:00 Ken Rapoza More evil woman than should be allowed. in one book. The hero has her head on straight, or much as a girl can being raised by a narcissistic mother who flits from man to man then whines to her daughter about them. The h's aunt and cousin aren't much better than the mother. All this man drama and emotional neediness has created a heroine who does not think much of marriage which is problematic in a Harlequin. PLOT First the heroine is dragged to Greece by her shallow, weepy and PREGNANT cousin who has fallen for a Greek after breaking up with her Aussie. The search brings up not one Greek man, but two. Like the heroine, the second banana Greek has more smarts and spine. In gratitude for the h helping Shallow Cousin find her lover, the cousin steals an expensive engagement ring from the H's family. After a convenient miscarriage, the cousin hocks the emerald and runs to Australia and her old beau. The hero being Greek demands his revenge, and the h goes to Greece to be his secretary. It's a pretty dry romance, but is livened up by another evil succubus on the hunt, a smarmy German snake, and the annoyingly narcissistic mother shows up at the bitter end. Smackdown alert: Minor and major comeuppances. The evil German OW gets an epic smackdown from none other than the hero! There is some strong arming and the B word may have even been used. After some anti-marriage angst, the H and h separate. The h finally tells her emotional vampire of a mother that she won't play puppet anymore and HEA. I think the funniest moment is when the h tells the H that she's afraid of marriage because of her mother. His response after a mere five minutes with mom is, "I can see why."