A Secret Splendor

 

SANDRA BROWN

Stats for my copy: Mass market paperback, Mira, 1983. Previously published under the pseudonym Erin St. Claire.

How acquired: Received from a BookCrossing member.

My thoughts: First off, this review will be full of spoilers.

Second, I generally love everything Sandra Brown writes, though I am partial to her mystery/thrillers. Of all her books I’ve read since being on Goodreads, I’ve given them either four or five stars, with the exception of STING, which I disliked so much I only gave it one star. So this is my first time giving her three stars.

Third, I work in the adoption and surrogacy fields. I’m always a little leery of reading a book with an adoption plotline, for fear it will be shown in a negative or unrealistic way. But A SECRET SPLENDOR is the first book I’ve come across with a surrogacy plotline. And that’s where all my issues lie.

Arden was in a bad marriage to an OB/GYN. After running his practice into the ground and going into debt, her husband agreed to find a woman to be a surrogate for a rich couple, who were paying him $100,000.00. The woman he finds? His wife, Arden. She’s reluctant, but then agrees on the condition that after the baby is born, she gets half the money, a divorce, and custody of their son, Joey, who was ill. I can’t for the life of me remember what was wrong with him, cancer or something. So her husband takes her to his clinic and inseminates her with the client’s sperm.

Arden would be what is now referred to as a traditional surrogate, in that she is the biological mother of the child. Traditional surrogacy is not practiced very often these days. In fact, in the state where I live, traditional surrogacy is not legally recognized, and is treated by the court as an adoption. But at the time this book was written, there probably weren’t many laws regarding surrogacy. Although even if there were laws, the way Arden’s husband handled this situation was probably illegal anyway. My state did not have any laws on the books until 2019.

Fast forward to after the divorce, and Joey dies. Distraught, Arden begins thinking about the other child she gave birth to, and decides she needs to find him or her. She never met the rich couple, and did not see the baby after it was born. She doesn’t even know if it’s a boy or girl. Well, by chance she sees a famous tennis player on TV who looks familiar, and then suddenly remembers a couple she saw when leaving the hospital, who were surrounded by paparazzi, and she realizes that the tennis player is the father. I kept hoping that when she got to know him she would learn that he was not in fact the father, but no, her instincts are correct. He’s now a widower, and the child, a boy, is 22 months old. Every time Arden thought about needing to see her child, I wanted to say he’s not your child, he’s their child.

Anyway, she finally manages to meet the tennis player, Drew, and starts dating him. And of course they fall in love with each other. Pretty soon she’s married to him and “step-mother” to the child, Matt. And she keeps thinking she needs to come clean and tell Drew who she is, but she puts it off because she doesn’t want him to think she only married him to be with the child. Also because she’s a cowardly liar.

And then the ex shows up, and blackmails her, and at first she gives him money, but then she finally gets a backbone and tells him she’s not paying anymore and she’s going to tell Drew the truth, but she goes shopping first, which gives the ex time to go to Drew and spill the beans himself. And of course Drew is furious, and storms out to go do his tennis stuff, and Arden gets angry that Drew is angry, even though he has every right to be angry, and just before he comes home a week later she packs up and leaves.

Of course, in the end, Drew tracks her down and they talk it out and profess their love and get their happy ever after, while I’m just frustrated, because the synopsis doesn’t say anything about surrogacy, just that there are “half-truths, secrets and unspeakable lies” surrounding Matt’s birth, so when I started this book I had no idea what I was in for.

To her credit, I really liked Drew. Sandra Brown has an uncanny ability to write wonderful heroes and I always fall in love with them (except the hero of STING, who I just could not feel any sympathy or empathy for). And I do like her writing. So the book still gets three stars from me.