REVIEW: Ten Ways To Win Her Man by Beverly Bird

I’m cur­rently going through a few of my cat­e­gories right now and I remem­ber enjoy­ing Bev­erly Bird’s cat­e­gory romance, Com­pro­mis­ing Posi­tions. Since then I’ve col­lected a few of her titles. Today I decided to tackle “Ten Ways To Win Her Man”, a Sil­hou­ette Romance writ­ten in 2001.

So, it’s a bat­tle of wills. Danielle Dempsey Har­ring­ton is a cor­po­rate princess who’s look­ing for­ward to break­ing ground on her new multi-million dol­lar resort on Gold Beach near the Pacific Ocean. Maxwell Pad­gett, an envi­ron­men­tal lob­by­ist, has other plans for her resort, like hav­ing it never see the light of day because her resort would encroach on the habi­tat of his semi­palmated palm plovers.

Like Danielle, I’d never heard of palm plovers. But accord­ing to Max, palm plovers are shore­birds that are bor­der­ing on extinc­tion and Danielle’s resort threat­ens their nest­ing cycle. Max fails to con­vince her to stop the project in his first face to face meet with her so he moves on to plan B.

Despite dif­fer­ing views, the two are attracted to each other. Danielle is at a loss on how to attract and keep Maxwell’s atten­tion so she enlists the help of her sec­re­tary and friend, Angelique to give her some tips. She tells her for starters, to ditch the suits and wear shorter skirts.

This advice proves effec­tual when Max alerts the media and stages a protest against her project. Danielle learns of the protest and imme­di­ately goes to squash the bad PR. She drops a bomb­shell of her own that leaves Max look­ing dis­tracted by her new look.

Max proves to be a dif­fi­cult catch for her and Danielle finds her­self doing things out of her com­fort zone and “not her style.” She’s dis­com­fited and at a loss. She’s a CEO with a MBA who doesn’t know how to flirt or cap­ture a man’s atten­tion espe­cially when it’s one-way. Danielle strug­gles because for the first time in her life she’s found some­one she wants to keep. Only he doesn’t feel moved to reciprocate.

What she likes is that Max sees past the wealth and sees how lonely she is in her ivory tower. He calls her Dani to soften her up that she’s resis­tant to at first but then embraces the change. Which per­sona to keep? Danielle, the CEO and busi­ness­woman or Dani, the woman who wants to be loved, have chil­dren and build a garden?

Max’s resis­tance to Dani’s atten­tions stems from his being a throw­away kid with no fam­ily struc­ture or foun­da­tion. Peo­ple have come and go in his life and it’s made an impres­sion. He feels that noth­ing ever lasts and that he’s bound to just move on like all peo­ple do. He fears the worst and is ner­vous and scared of his feel­ings for Dani. He doesn’t want to hurt her.

So how did I like it? I loved it. The story was well writ­ten and smart. Great dia­logue, too. Both char­ac­ters act like adults and there’s actual char­ac­ter growth moreso with Dani than with Max. With Max it was almost like a light switch went off but it wasn’t a snap judge­ment in decid­ing his future either. He proved to be a for­mi­da­ble adver­sary and was very hard catch for Dani. But is he worth the effort?

Dani sheds the mem­o­ries, the hurt, the pain, the fear and decides to live life by her rules and not those of her labor union father, who rarely spent any­time with her or her dead hus­band who was 26 years her senior who was more of a father fig­ure than a hus­band. I liked Dani. She wasn’t afraid to go after what she wanted even if it meant doing stuff “not her style” or fail­ing or humil­i­at­ing her­self. She proved to be resource­ful , per­sis­tent and resilient. She knew when to walk away, too.

Ten Ways To Win Her Man was good read. The author wasn’t preachy with her “save the envi­ron­ment” mes­sage that was used as the major source of con­flict. I won’t say how it was resolved either. I will say the author made me sym­pa­thetic to those shore­birds. If there were flaws, it wasn’t dis­tract­ing enough to notice. Both char­ac­ters were really lik­able and I came away think­ing that their happy end­ing was well deserved. Cat­e­gories don’t enjoy a long shelf life but this one should be easy to find used. If you see it, grab it. It’s a good story. B.

Up next is a Bev­erly Bird roman­tic sus­pense, “In the Line of Fire” dated 2002, Sil. Inti­mate Moments.

For Fur­ther Reading

• REVIEW: Burn Out by Rebecca Don­ner (MINX)
• Ain’t Mis­be­hav­ing, Jeanne Grant
• The Wrong Man For Her, Kathryn Shay [Guest Review]
• Ōoku: The Inner Cham­bers, Fumi Yoshinaga
• Vam­pire Knight Story & Art by Mat­suri Hino
• REVIEW: Rain­wa­ter by San­dra Brown
• “When Love Isn’t Enough” by Kath­leen Gilles Seidel
• REVIEW: Trust Me On This by Jen­nifer Crusie
• Office Romance: His Girl Fri­day by Diana Palmer
• REVIEW: Make Me Yours by Betina Krahn

Tagged as: Beverly Bird, Corporate Princess, environmentalism, Romance, Silhouette Romance