Because I Wanted You - Softcover

Garrett, Annie

3.32

50 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312966598 ISBN 13: 9780312966591

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1998

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When a reporter threatens to topple her life of wealth and fame as a talk-show hostess by exposing a dark secret from her humble past in rural Appalachia, Ruby Maxwell finds herself fighting for survival in the public spotlight. Original.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Garrett's second novel (Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground, 1988) is more polished and less flaky than her debut, though still basically predictable, fun-loving fluff. Beautiful, high-spirited Ruby Maxwell has reached the top. She's now the host of her own top-rated talk show and a nationally known and beloved TV personality; her boyfriend, Paul Carrigan, is a kind and wealthy socialite who's inherited his grandmother's Fifth Avenue penthouse and wants to marry her; and she might agree might agree to take him up on it, if only she can come to terms with her troubled past. Back in Kentucky's Appalachian country, Ruby was the only girl in a sprawling, dirt-poor, uneducated family. When at 18 she fell in love with her young and dashing high-school teacher, she felt, for the first time ever, truly special and valued for her intellect; when she became pregnant with his child, however, her parents laid down the law, and her father, in a routine drunken stupor, actually tried to shoot the father of her infant daughter. A desperate, love-sick Ruby did the only thing she could: Along with an equally caged-in Kentucky cousin, she escaped to New York with her earnings from the local burger joint, leaving her daughter behind in the care of her mother. It takes a slimy Village Voice reporter out to make a buck to reintroduce Ruby--once she's made it big in the Big Apple--to her mother, father, and daughter, now living in an East Village squatters' community, having lost their Kentucky home. Ruby is afraid to tell Paul about her family, but more afraid to marry a man she doesn't love. But before you can say ``Cinderella story,'' she's worked everything out in prime-time style. Garrett seems to like the poor-mountain-boy/girl-made-good theme. So, apparently, do her fans. Others might find it thin and unsurprising stuff. (Literary Guild alternate selection) -- Copyright �1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:

Talk-show host Ruby Maxwell has it all: a top-rated show, an image as America's sweetheart, and an adoring lover who wants to marry her. But Ruby has secrets she has kept hidden for almost a decade, secrets that come closer to the surface when a reporter calls claiming Ruby's father referred him. As her carefully constructed veneer begins to crack, Ruby faces difficult choices regarding the family she left behind and erased from her life. With those choices comes a chance to recapture a past love and find the happiness she has denied herself for too long. Annie Garrett is the pseudonym of entertainment journalist Kelli Pryor, whose first novel was Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground (1996). Like Angel, her second novel is a Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild selection and is highly recommended wherever her first novel proved popular. Melanie Duncan

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