Safe Harbor

    Sheila Dexter is in her third year of nurse training. She's just been moved from the Children's Ward to the Geriatric Ward where she works under Dr. Anton Mathews, the handsome new doctor that has just moved to town with his 6 year old son. Many believe the widower will be looking to remarry to give his child a mother and every woman at the hospital hopes she will become the next Mrs. Mathews. One woman in particular is Nurse Majors, who is head nurse of the Geriatric Ward and has become obsessed with Dr. Mathews despite him showing no interest in her. 

    When Sheila begins working there Nurse Majors instantly sees the young redhead as a threat and becomes quite harsh towards her. Taking any chance to correct her and gossip to Dr. Mathews about Sheila supposed boyfriends.

    Sheila is scheduled to work on Christmas day and as she approaches the hospital she sees a sad little boy out front. In an attempt to cheer him up Sheila takes him to see the hospital Christmas tree and gives him a bar of chocolate as a gift before finding out he is Peter Mathews, Dr. Mathew's son. Anton is pleased to find out about Sheila's kind treatment to the boy and surprised by Peter's instant fondness of Sheila.

    When Sheila has a day off she goes into town to shop and runs into Anton and Peter. At the child's insistence Sheila joins them on an outing to the park, lunch at a teashop, then back to their house so Peter can show Sheila his Christmas presents. 

    Despite Peter insisting he wants Sheila to visit them again Anton does not invite her as he worries about a relationship between the two. Both because of Nurse Majors insistence that Sheila is in a relationship with both a student doctor at the hospital and an airman (who is actually her brother) and because of the 10 year age gap between them.

    Soon rumor begins circulating around the hospital of Sheila's day off being spent with Dr. Mathews. Infuriated Nurse Majors claims Sheila is not suitable for the Geriatric Ward and has her moved to Men's Surgery Ward, away from Anton.

    After taking her final exams Sheila's brother Sam pays a visit and takes her out for a celebratory dinner. Sheila suggests they go to the tearoom she went with Peter and Anton. While there Peter and his nanny come in and they share a table. Peter and Sam hit it off with Peter deciding he wants to be an airman too when he grows up. 

    Peter drives them home and when Anton sees Sam he becomes cold, thinking this is the man Nurse Majors had told him about. But when Sheila introduces him as her brother Anton becomes friendly and realizes he must really have fallen for Sheila if he's acting so foolish. Again Peter insists Sheila will have to come visit him again but this still does not happen as Anton becomes distant from her at the hospital.

    Just as Sheila starts thinking about making the next move and calling Anton, he calls her. Peter is missing and he wants to know if Sheila has heard from or seen the boy. Worried Sheila has Anton come pick her up to search for Peter and she suggests going to the park where they find him. Peter is mad because Sheila has not come to visit him and Anton confesses it's his fault. They take the boy home and put him to bed then confess their love for each other before embracing. 

    This book is "A Romantic Novelette" which was a series put out by Globe Publishing Corps as part of their Mini Mag line. Mini Mags were little booklets you would pick up in the checkout line of grocery stores and, to my understanding, were attempting to compete with Dell Publishing's line of "Purse Books". Purse Books were typically made up of articles from magazines published by Dell. I'm not sure if the same is true for Globe Mini Mags but titles such as "Lose Weight While You Sleep" and "Bible Heeling Foods" keep me uninterested in finding out.

    However I was intrigued when I saw these Novelettes. They're just under 100 pages making them very quick reads. I think I've mentioned before how I prefer books I can read quickly. I'm a "I got to know what happens" type of person when it comes to books so I hate having to set them down and prefer ones I can read in one sitting. Clearly these are perfect for that.

    Safe Harbor is listed as book #213 and inside the back cover lists Novelette books #180 - #191 however I'm not sure if that means there are that many novelettes or if that is just the publishing number of everything in the Mini Mag line and books #001 - #179 are their usual "How to Read Your Cats Mind" type stuff. I'll have to do more research on it.

    Anyways, on to the actual book review. I didn't know what to expect from this. The back cover says "As Sheila and Anton discovered, you have to be willing to gamble when you play the game of love!".

    "Gamble"..."play the game"... this made me think the book took place in a casino, maybe Monte Carlo, Vegas, Atlantic City even. So it certainly was a surprise to find it's set in a British hospital. Despite being disappointed I tried to give it a fair go.

    It wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. I wasn't much of a fan of the drama with the hospital patients and more liked the stuff with Sheila and Anton, Peter, Sam, her friend Molly, etc. Like most romance books I found myself annoyed with the lack of communication between the characters. A lot of romance plots are fueled by keeping the characters from talking or discussing things with each other for absolutely no reason other than the storyline needs to keep going for another 50 - 100 pages. I think it's a huge mark of poor writing but to be fair I wasn't expecting a 49 cent grocery store romance book to be on par with Jane Austin. With that in mind, it's not bad.