Anne Mather wrote a bunch of romance novels for the Harlequin Presents imprint back when I was first starting to notice boys. Harlequin Presents are slim novels. In my youth the girl was young and virginal and the hero always declared love and proposed in the last few pages. If he touched her boob once, I and all my friends were scandalized and thrilled. So Anne Mather's novel Dangerous Temptations, at twice the length and written later for a different imprint, looked to me like it would have a more experienced heroine who would wind up in bed with the hero at least a few times. I wondered how else this novel might differ from my old faves.

Plot: Jake's identical twin convinces him to take a suitcase with questionable contents from the US to England, but the plane crashes and he comes to with amnesia, thinking he's his twin and the husband of the heroine whom he sort of already loves. The subplot involves the twin being a white collar crook in over his head to a casino owner.

There were elements I liked and those I didn't. I liked the romantic scenes and the sex scenes (not overly clinical, more euphamistic and emotional but its still obvious they're having sex); props to Ms. Mathers on knowing her craft! I liked Jake, a hardworking and smart man who's gorgeous despite being an everyman type in other respects and who was emotionally battlescarred from Vietnam. He's different from the in-control mogul type so prevalent in 70s/80s era Harlequin Presents. The heroine, on the other hand, was the same passive type I grew up reading. Ms. Mather, could you not have given her a passion about something more than the hero? And give her a spine? She let everyone keep her in this tiny low-expectation, low-salary, delayed-gratification life. This worked in Presents as a formula because it gave the heroine no impediment to being embedded in the hero's world. I expect it in a Presents so I'm not disappointed. But here, I expected more. I can't even remember her name. It was hard to see why the hero would fall in love with her.

I don't think the author took enough advantage of opportunities to raise the tension (sexual, personal, and otherwise) in the subplot. For instance, with more communication they could have been more of a team against the bad guys.

I enjoyed reading Dangerous Temptations, though, in the same way I like watching a movie on Lifetime on a morning when I don't intend to change out of my pajamas. The novel is an easy and fun past time. I still like Anne Mathers and will read other romances she writes. ( )