For many years, I thought Betty Neels based her beloved Dutch doctor characters on her own husband. Am I the only one a little scandalized to discover that her husband was Dutch, but a sailor not a rich medical professional, and those dishy Dutch doctors were her coworkers. Betty, I’m shocked!
If you’re shocked, too, don’t worry, regardless of her possibly wandering eye in her own life, everything in Betty Neels’ books follows the same happy formula. Lost, lonely girl meets handsome Dutch doctor who is either immediately smitten with her or will soon fall for her charms, of which there are many. In most of her stories, the girl is a nurse, and that is true in this book, Three for a Wedding, in which Phoebe agrees to take her sister’s place at a hospital in Holland so her sister can rush off to be married. No, her sister isn’t in a delicate way, she just can’t wait to start her life of sitting at home twiddling her thumbs while her husband earns the money. This book was written in 1973, after all, and Betty Neels always wrote about 10-20 years behind the times so it definitely feels like it came from the 1950s.
Still, it has its charms and the gentle romance at the heart of every Neels book is in full bloom. Phoebe is lovely and competent and level-headed. The Doctor… whose name is really not that important, is it? I mean, they’re all pretty interchangeable. Okay, fine, I checked. It’s Lucius. Now, go ahead and forget it, you won’t need it again. What was I saying? Oh yes, the Doctor this time has a son, but not from an inconvenient ex but through adoption, whew, bullet dodged!
Instead of an ex, the Doctor has a governess problem, and boy is that governess, Maureen, a problem. Mostly because the Doctor is a lunkhead who can’t see how evil this Maureen person is. There’s giving someone the benefit of the doubt, and then there is willful blindness. Maureen is cartoonishly evil and needs to be vanquished, or at the very least fired.
There are more coincidences in this book than in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and that’s saying a lot. For instance, at one point Phoebe and the Doctor are walking down the street, talking about getting a dog for his son and someone chooses that moment to kick a scrawny puppy into the street and slam the door. I don’t know about you, but I can’t count the number of times that’s happened to me. You’re just walking down a city street, and someone kicks a puppy into your path. Totally common. Happens every day.
Somehow, things work out, and the dumb Doctor finally sees the light and he and Phoebe and the boy and his dog all live happily ever after.
I make fun, not because I dislike these books, in fact, I adore them, but the silliness is part of the fun. If the silliness doesn’t appeal, then this isn’t the book for you. No worries. Check in on my next review and maybe that one will be more to your taste. (Spoiler alert, the next one is another Betty Neels romance. Oops!)
4 Nostalgia-and-a-Puppy Stars
