From the back cover:

Once when she was a very young, very unhappy schoolgirl, she scrawled a note, stuck it in a bottle, and flung it into the dark waters of a winter sea. A few weeks later a letter arrived--from a mysterious stranger who miraculously seemed to understand all the unfulfilled yearnings of her heart.

Her name is Corrie Modena, alias Columbine. For years she has confided her secrets only to Harlequin, whose letters are tender, encouraging, and sustain her dreams. Then one evening she meets the man who will demand to know her as a woman. Guy de Chardonnet shows her London, Paris, Biarritz, and the world spins wildly in his arms. But Corrie, youthful, free-spirited, is not worldly enough to understand the mystery that is Guy, a man who is too sophisticated, too successful, too seductive to be anything but dangerous. Yet they llove...and grow even more estranged.

Her heart broken, but her musical career about to soar, Corrie writes ever more intimately to her beloved confidant. Harlequin and Columbine. They had no secrets from one another--except their names...

---Well, it's not to difficult to figure out what's going to happen here, BUT this is actually a pretty darn good book--good enough to put me on an obsessive online search for it. I read it in the 80s, and something about it stayed with me. I really liked the whole British Columbine-Harlequin correspondence thing, I guess. And it's got a great heroine you can't help but enjoy and relate to. But if it weren't decently written, nothing about the plot or characters would have stayed with me. I was sure this book was entitled "The Harlequin," and of course thinking that was its title made finding it almost impossible. Thankfully someone on abebooks.com's booksleuth recognized the plot and finally remembered the actual title. After all that work to find it, I admit I was a teensy bit disappointed rereading it...I'd remembered it as a vintage hardcover (meaning I was sure it had been written in the 50s or 60s), and I'd thought it was less of a mass paperback romance kind of book.

However, fans of romance involving hidden identities, mysterious correspondence, "soaring opera careers," and "a man who is too sophisticated, too successful, too seductive to be anything but dangerous"

[read rich, arrogant, womanizing JERK]

who turns out to be a sensitive, altruistic, creative romantic underneath all that nefarious

[that's putting it kindly. I would prefer to call him something else]

behavior

[which NEVER happens in real life]

will love this book, which I'm giving a high rating for personal nostalgia and excellent writing for the genre.

[except for the one obligatory, dumb sex scene]

Happy reading! ( )