After reading and five-starring THROUGH THE SMOKE by this author, I knew I had to give her other books a try. As before, this was a buddy-read with my friend Sarah.
THROUGH THE SMOKE was a traditional gothic romance told in the mode of Jane Eyre (in fact the author lists it as an inspiration in her foreword). By contrast, HONOR BOUND feels like one of those 90s bodice-rippers. The author's style actually kind of reminded me of a cross between Danelle Harmon and Meredith Duran in this, so I think if you enjoy either of those authors, you'll like this a lot.
The story starts out with a wedding, as Jeanette is to be wedded to an older member of British aristocracy to provide money for her titled but land poor family after fleeing the Revolution. However, as she waits for her wedding night, Jeanette learns that her husband is an impotent creep who plans to have his friends gang-r*pe her on the wedding night. And as if that weren't awful enough, they plan to place bets on who will successfully impregnate her! UGH.
She runs away, which is how she meets the hero, Treynor, who is a lieutenant aboard a ship. He and his men are at port and preparing to sail away. They have their meet-cute in an inn where he at first mistakes her for a prostitute when she accidentally ends up in his room, which I thought was a great homage to the bodice-rippers where this was a surprisingly common trope (SWEET SAVAGE LOVE definitely had this!). Unlike the bodice-rippers, he doesn't succeed: she knees him in the balls.
The bulk of this story takes place aboard the ship with Jeanette in drag. This part of the story seems to have bored a lot of readers but it reminded me of one of my favorite books, THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE. I can't imagine how much research the author poured into this book to make the nautical setting so vivid and larger than life. She did the same thing with her coal mining community in THROUGH THE SMOKE and I am just amazed. It made me an instant fan and I'm happy to report that this second effort from her did not disappoint.
Only nitpicky things I can nitpick about are that the pacing wasn't quite as good as THROUGH THE SMOKE, especially towards the end, where it dragged a little, only to end up kind of abruptly. I really wish there was an epilogue even though I don't think the ending dissuited the story. I loved Jeanette and Treynor was a great hero, but I also wanted more from him. He sometimes felt like a somewhat stereotypical tortured bastard hero who hates the rich/titled folk for being what he's not, etc., although I will say that I liked how the book ended with him making amends with his estranged mom.
I realized something about myself today. I like pirate romances, but I don't like goofy pirate romances. Catherine Hart really tested my patience with SPLENDOR and this one was even worse, because at least SPLENDOR had a curse hanging over the hero's head like the sword of Damocles to sort of draw out the tension and provide some stakes.
Cliff's notes edition of what I did read:
-Hero is a blockade runner who liberates Americans from the Evil British -Heroine wears glasses but we're told how much prettier she is without them -Hero drives his ship alllll the way to the U.S. just because he read the Georgian equivalent of a BuzzFeed article talking about, idk, 11 Reasons the Sea Wolf Is the Most Misunderstood Pirate, Actually -Heroine basically thinks the hero is a pirate strippergram (but make it PG) that her brother sent over to fuck with her
SEA OF RUIN has been on my radar since it came out because I kind of have a soft spot for old school pirate romances and the cover design had a decidedly retro bent to it, like the author (and the artist, obvi) was trying to pay homage to the bodice-rippers of yore. As someone who loves the bodice-rippers of yore, I was super into that. And the only thing better than reading a modern day throwback is conning several of your friends to read it with you, so thanks to Rebecca, Aaliyah, and Koistyfishy for joining me on this "sea of ruin."
The book is written in first person and has a very melodramatic, breathless style to the narration that reminded me a lot of Natasha Peters's works, a bodice-ripper author from the '70s and '80s who wrote books in the first person that followed a heroine over the years as she grew up and was shaped by the chaotic elements in her life. Specifically, this reminded me of SAVAGE SURRENDER, which also had a bratty heroine who was kind of kick-butt and a toxic romance with a dangerous, obsessive hero who was not to be crossed.
Was this a perfect book? No, but there was a lot to like about it. It seemed really well-researched and I loved the scenery, the fight scenes, the descriptions of the taverns and the ships. All of it was quite nicely done and added a lot to the story. I also liked Bennett, even though she was a bit of a Mary Sue. She suffered as most authors don't let their precious Sues suffer, and I think this kept her from feeling too two-dimensional. There were several scenes in this book that were very hard to read, involving death, torture, tragedy, and rape, which definitely gave this book more of an old skool flavor.
I'm not usually into M/F/M books but I liked that element in this book, too. The idea of a love triangle between a female pirate captain and her pirate husband and a pirate hunter was intriguing to me. They also all had chemistry, which is, I imagine, hard to do. I also liked that the men had distinctly different personalities, even though they were both incredibly dangerous. Priest is fire and impulsivity and filled with animal passions, whereas Ashley is more of a cold and icy type with a frozen maelstrom underneath. They also cracked me up. Priest's orange allergy leads to not one but TWO rather convenient exercises to further the plot, and can we not forget Ashley's midnight self-pleasuring sessions on the balcony of his ship? SO. DRAMATIC. How did the author come up with this stuff?
If you're not into dark romances or the politically incorrect bodice-rippers of olde, I would not recommend SEA OF RUIN. Actually, I would not recommend SEA OF RUIN for a lot of reasons, because I feel like it embodies a lot of the tropes that romance novels of the present day are trying frantically to distance themselves from. But that's kind of messy, because for a lot of people, Kathleen Woodiwiss and Christine Monson and Johanna Lindsey were the authors people cut their teeth on for the first time, so I like the idea of a bodice-ripper Renaissance written for a modern audience, but with all of the chaotic, crazy tropes that created a booming industry with some of the best cover artists around.
You be the judge, though.
P.S. Docking a half star because, like the bodice-ripper predecessors, the sex scenes in this book were too purple and went on for waaaaaay too long. Sex scenes are like red pepper flakes: I love a liberal sprinkling but please, for the love of God, don't serve me an entire PLATE of them.
When my friend Heather texted me a picture of the gorgeous stepback inside this book, I was like, "OMG, did you buy that? Do you wanna BR?" Because as it turns out, I've been craving a pirate romance for a while and this was just the thing to send me back out onto the literary high seas like a scurvy sea dog setting sail.
SPLENDOR is SUCH a weird book, though. I have read a number of pirate romances and I've never picked up anything like this, for better or for worse. Devlin is a successful and rather feared (albeit gentlemanly) pirate, but one day he and his falcon are struck by St. Elmo's fire in a storm, and faster than you can say "great balls of lightning," he and his bird both turn invisible.
Eden lives with her mother and is being courted by a schemer who wants to use her father's business for ill. He's not afraid to leverage her debts to do it too. But the answer to her problems comes in unexpected form, when pirates arrive to Charles Town, where she lives, and it turns out she's the only human alive who can see the invisible pirate Devlin in the flesh. Also, when she touches him, he briefly turns visible. WHAT.
You can imagine the kinds of shenanigans this turns up, but just in case you can't, it involves late-night schemes, fires, suspicious mothers, nosy maids, and even Blackbeard the pirate himself. It's also a bit of a makeover story because Eden starts out a tall and awkward wallflower heroine, but ends up developing confidence-- not just in her appearance but later, in her sexuality-- which was kind of refreshing because it was her inner changes that ended up making her more beautiful.
I'm giving this a 2.5 because it went on way too long. About 100 pages too long, actually. It felt like the author was just circling around to bulk up the page count. And even though the banter was cute, eventually it got a little tiresome because it felt like Eden and Devlin didn't really accomplish anything with their bickering. I like romantic fights to be emotionally constructive. This was definitely the most non-rapey pirate romance I've ever read, though. I'd recommend it to people who like happy, cutesy reads. This read like Jude Deveraux or something from the Love Spell imprint from Dorchester. I didn't hate it but it ended up being not too my taste. Don't forget to check out Heather's review, too!
If Anne Stuart writes it, I will read it. I don't make the rules here, that's just how this works. THE WICKED HOUSE OF ROHAN is, I think, the prequel to her House of Rohan series. The hero in this short, Alistair, is the cousin to the hero in RUTHLESS. The heroine is a waif who is on the verge of starvation and agrees to sell herself as the virginal sacrifice to the Heavenly Host's sinister midnight games.
Unless... someone else gets to her first.
I really wanted this to be a full-length story because I think the premise was really great and the whole childhood friends to lovers trope is kind of a weakness to mine, especially if they make a pit stop to enemies land before they become lovers. This kind of read like someone ripped out the sex scene in a full length romance novel and was like, "Here you go!" and while I have no complaints about that given that this is currently free to read, it did feel... lacking.
I think you'll appreciate this short story more if you're already a fan of Anne Stuart's work but it's not a bad introduction to her style and it was pretty steamy for what it was.
When I found out that Jade Parker was the YA pen name for romance author, Lorraine Heath, I bumped this way up my to-read list. I don't normally go in for the fluffy set, but Lorraine Heath, along with Jude Deveraux, is an author who has yet to disappoint me. It would be like finding out that Lisa Kleypas had a secret line of young adult mysteries (although as far as I know, she doesn't); I'd be all over that like white on rice. You gotta support your faves.
TO CATCH A PIRATE starts off intensely. Annalisa is aboard her father's ship delivering some of King George's gold to build a board when they are attacked by pirates. Held at knifepoint, the pirate is about to steal her mother's necklace, and maybe her tongue, but he settles for her ring and a kiss-- and the king's gold.
One year later, Annalisa's father is thrown in jail for conspiring with pirates. Determined to clear his name, she has counterfeited a marque and set out as a privateer to arrest and interrogate James. James, on the other hand, was marooned on a deserted island as punishment for accepting a worthless ring as payment and falling for a pair of pretty eyes. When he is captured by Annalisa, he finds himself intrigued by her anew-- if there's one thing a pirate likes, it's danger.
This is part of Scholastic's Point imprint. Not many people know that, in addition to horror, they dabbled in romance as well. This is YA so there's mostly just kissing, but there is sexy kissing and sexy swordfighting, as well, and there is a surprising amount of action. Mutinies and public floggings and seedy New Orleans taverns. After reading THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE, I found myself thirsting for more adventures on the high seas, and this book really delivered. It doesn't have that irritating "YA" tone that a lot of the books coming out these days have. Maybe it's because Heath is so used to writing adult romances that she doesn't condescend to her audience at all.
If you're looking for a light romance, and you like reading about pirates who aren't rapey, I think you'll really enjoy this book. It's got dangerous boys, lots of kissing, and a strong heroine who doesn't take any shit. The ending was satisfying and I wish I'd read this when I was a teen. I think I would have loved it even more than I did now, reading it for the first time as an adult.
I think this might be my next historical romance. It's been a while since I read a Laura Kinsale and this one is calling to me~I think this might be my next historical romance. It's been a while since I read a Laura Kinsale and this one is calling to me~...more
This book is the epitome of "I cured your sad dick with my magic vajayjay" and if that is triggering in any way to you, you will not enjoy this book.
WICKED INTENTIONS has been on my to-read list for a while and I put off reading it because I started with DUKE OF SIN and none of the other Maiden Lane books I picked up after it could match my love for Val. But I've been on a morally grey historical romance kick lately and a negative review for this book describing it as too dark and too smutty had me thinking that I had better read this asap.*
*Anyone who tells you that negative reviews hurt sales is lying
Lazarus is a lord who is searching the dark streets of London for the man who murdered his mistress. For help, he goes to Temperence Makepeace, who runs a children's home for orphans. After the death of their only benefactor, the home is on its last legs and all of the inhabitants are in danger of returning to the streets, so Lazarus offers to pay Temperance the money she needs for her help with the investigation.
***WARNING: SPOILERS TO COME***
This book is darker than the pastel cover would lead you to expect, which is perhaps another reason why some people don't like this book. It's not quite gothic, but it is gothic-adjacent, and doesn't whitewash the hardscrabble life of the Georgian poor in London. Filthy streets, prostitution, and exploitation of minors. No, this is a historical-romance that did not have me thinking, "Ah, what a delightful escape." So those who prefer their regency romances to be wallpaper historicals set mostly in clean ballrooms and little parlors are going to be pissed off, reading this. Also, the names are SO EXTRA. Temperance. Winter. Lazarus. Mother Heart's-Ease. Silence.
Silence.
...I think... I like it?
*cue kombucha girl meme*
I also liked the darker elements. I also LOVED the hero, who gives off tortured, dangerous vibes-- in the beginning. About halfway through the book, though, he undergoes a weird character transformation, where suddenly he doesn't provoke Temperance anymore, he just kind of worships her. Mindlessly. Which is totally fun, but also didn't really feel like it suited his character. His emotional disconnect and touch-aversion initially made me think he was a victim of child abuse, but when that did not prove to be the case, I wondered if maybe he was autistic or perhaps alexithymic (like the character in Sohn Won-Pyung's ALMOND). But it's never really revealed what his deal is, and sex with the heroine (and love for the heroine) "cures" him. He even says as much. Talk about restorative powers.
Temperance was a decent heroine. We learn from the beginning of the book that she likes to punish herself out of guilt for something unspecified. It turns out that something unspecified is that she cheated on her husband. It turns out she had a high sex drive and he had a low one, so she cheated on him because he gaslit her about being morally weak for wanting to sleep with him. Which I'm torn about. On the one hand, emotional abuse is super gross and women should be able to ask for sex. On the other hand, I hate cheating, and twenty-first century sex positivity doesn't really fit in Georgian England.
My favorite part of the book was actually between Temperance's sister, Silence, and the pirate guy. The way he sexually humiliated her without even touching her was fucked-up hot, although I felt SO BAD for her and what the outcome of that event was. Actually, I own pirate guy's romance and I was initially not excited for it at all (his name is Mickey lol) but now I kind of am. Kinky pirates, am I right?
So in the end, I ended up torn. The gothic vibes and dreary atmosphere were excellent. It actually had just the right amount of sex scenes for a smutty historical romance, in my opinion, and most of them developed the characters and their relationships. I wish the characters' traumas had been better integrated, though, and I'm still not entirely sure what Lazarus's deal was. It made me think about how psychological trauma is often milked for drama in gothic (or gothic adjacent!) novels but never fully explored. Authors just wiggle their fingers and give their characters symptoms that are easy to cure.*
*But only with monogamous love-sex
Also the fairytale story at the beginning of each chapter was ridiculous. "I loved you from the moment you had your guards drag me up to you and you threatened me with death?" Lmao, what.
I know it sounds like I didn't like this but I actually did. I read it in a single day. Brilliant.
One of my friends was raving about Scarlett Peckham's other series, so I was really excited to receive an ARC of THE RAKESS... which I haven't read until now because I am a trash person. I'm so bad at reading ARCs on time and it took me forEVER to read this one because I actually wasn't... that in love with it. It wasn't a bad book, which is why I didn't DNF, but there were some things about it that I really didn't enjoy, which made finishing a bit of a slog.
I will say that the author did a good job role-reversing the usual trope of the Draco in Leather Pants duke of slut who sleeps around because of past traumas (usually daddy issues). Seraphenia is definitely a rakess of slut, and yes, she does it due to past trauma, although she also seems to have confused herself of her own white feminist doctrines: in leashing the male gaze, she has become the mistress of her own femininity, et al. I may have rolled my eyes the tiniest bit. And no, it's not because I was annoyed that the heroine wasn't a virgin (I actually hate the trope where the heroine is supposed to be a famed mistress, but she's actually a virgin widow and her "reputation" is a total lie), I'm not a fan of emo manbaby dukes and having a woman wear the slutty pants from the Duchy of Sublimated Issues didn't really make me embrace it any more.
That said, what really ended up being the saving grace was the fact that she was obviously inspired by Mary Wallstonecraft, and she had some genuinely prescient things to say about why being a woman in Regency England really, really sucked, even if you were a woman of means, but especially if you weren't. That's something a lot of the Julia Quinn and Lisa Kleypas novels of this era sometimes forget. It's all fun and games to tup in the carriage until your lover gets tired of you and tries to ruin your reputation, pay off your male guardian to shut your pretty, kiss-bruised mouth, or lock you in an insane asylum (or some variant of all three). The past belongs in the past, and as fun as it can be to read idealized versions of it, it's important to keep that unpleasant grain of truth top of mind. There were some events in this book that felt a little like wish fulfillment, but it was fun to envision a version of the past where a woman could publish a book publicly denouncing those who wronged her and steal her friend out of an insane asylum, especially since Peckham did acknowledge that things were shit.
I also liked Adam, who's the no-nonsense hero of this book (with a kinky side), although he's set up to be so likable that he almost feels like a Gary Stu. A widower with two precious children who works as an architect and falls for the first damaged woman he sees, despite knowing that she's no good? It sounds like a John Green book or a Judd Apatow movie. Naturally, the two of them find solace in one another, and find out that they share many of the same sorrows. And naturally, she teaches him to be a better man, and they find sexual healing in one another because theirs is a matching of souls, et al. I was not a fan of the sex scenes, though. Too much stickiness and gushing fluids. Ew, no.
Perhaps I'm being too hard on THE RAKESS. I'm just disappointed, because I wanted it to be so much more than it was. I think if you're looking for costume historical fiction with themes of female empowerment, and don't mind sex scenes of the gloppy, dripping variety (still ew), you'll probably really love this book. I'm still curious about her other series, because I've heard it's much darker than this one, and I might even continue with this series as long as Seraphina and Adam aren't the main characters, but this just felt a little too stock, and even though I loved the feminist themes, I just couldn't quite get on board with the story-- or the heroine.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
Nobody can say that I didn't give this the old college try. I bought this book because it had great reviews from people I trust, but I really didn't like the writing style. It was just too clunky and even though I get it's an erotica, the language and explicit language of the nature felt too anachronistic for me to really buy it.
I wish I'd liked this more, as I enjoy a smutty historical romp as much as the next lady, but this just wasn't it for me.
Zebra romances are so much fun. Unfortunately, a lot of their best imprints are now defunct, but I believe a lot of the rights reverted back to the authors and you can get them pretty cheap on Kindle. Like this one! MY WICKED PIRATE is everything I love in a non-dark romance. There's adventure and swashbuckling and banter and forbidden romance and a hero who understands What Women Want™ (answer: dinner, a lavender-scented bath, and a cold glass of Lambrusco).
Alanis is on her way to see her fiance when she is kidnapped by the terrifying pirate, Eros, who is known as The Viper. Don't worry, I think his name is silly too. BUT HE'S HOT, even if he is named after the naked love angel of the Greek gods. Anyway, it turns out that her fiance has been keeping Eros's sister as his mistress and he's in love with her, but he was going to marry Alanis anyway to keep up appearances. Gross. So after an exchange is done for the two women, they go to the bad fiance's Jamaica estate, and basically end up switching back when Eros tricks Alanis into joining him once more as he flees for his life.
It turns out the pirate is not all that he seems though. Even though he is every bit as terrifying as his reputation claims (in all ways), he has a dark and honestly rather tragic secret. He's also involved in some very high-level political machinations which involve the House of Sforza, King Louis of France, and the Dey of Algiers. And the book takes us to all of these places, dealing out angsty romance and court intrigue by the handful, and I ate up all of it on a silver spoon. The romance was prolonged but really well done. By the time they finally did it, I wanted to bang a gong in celebration. I also really liked the chemistry between the H and the h, and how you could really feel how high the stakes were.
I do feel like the book was a little too long, though. By, like, maybe about one hundred pages. It also employs a trope I really hate: Pretending I Don't Love You for Your Own Good. The hero is also a bit of a Sad Draco in Leather Pants, which can be a trope that I enjoy, but sometimes the way he levered his emotional issues against the heroine was so frustrating that I wanted to scream. Maybe it worked for me because you could tell that he really did care for the heroine, even if he didn't always know how to show it. Also, some of the sex scenes are not so great. Most of them are, but towards the end, when the book started to lose steam, it lost steam in other places too. MAJOR KUDOS, however, for casually finding excuses to make the hero shirtless, multiple sensual bathing scenes, and exquisite descriptions of food that had me craving Middle Eastern feasts at 2 in the morning.
Never read anything by this author before but I'll definitely be checking out her other stuff.
💙 I read this for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' New Years 2018 Reading Challenge, for the category of: Literary Romance. For more info on this challenge, click here. 💙
I was curious about this book before the TV show came out, but the TV show made me even more curious. Aidan Turner is gorgeous, and it seemed like PBS was running with Ross Poldark to compete with Starz's Outlander, albeit without all the torture and rape. A Georgian-era romance set in Cornwall that transcends class and features an impoverished nobleman who cares a little too much about his tenants for society's liking? Hell yes!
ROSS POLDARK is not a very long book but it took me forever to read. In fact, I think it took me longer to read than OUTLANDER did, which is hilarious because OUTLANDER is twice as long (at least) as this book. The problem is the pacing - it is slow and plodding. I think part of that might be chalked up to the book's age; it was published in the 1940s and I think people were more willing to wait for a good thing back then. Now, access to internet and other technologies has shortened people's attention spans and increased the desire for instant gratification.
Ross Poldark, the eponymous hero, is part of the noble Poldark family. He has just returned from fighting in America - I'm guessing in what was the Revolutionary War - and has returned from Cornwall to find that the woman he was in love with has gotten engaged to his cousin instead. Morose, he turns to alcohol and the minding of the mine on his property, as well as the wellbeing of the people and their families who work in it. His care for his people is what prompts him to take in a girl, Demelza, from her abusive household and hire her on as his servant. It also prompts him to intervene when a man is caught poaching for his starving family.
There's some action in this book, but it's interspersed between long periods of nothing. I also didn't realize that this was going to be a guardian and ward romance, which I am sometimes into, but not when the ward begins the story as an actual child. I've expanded on my feelings about that more in other reviews, but basically I feel like it's a violation of a child's trust in a parental figure to turn that sort of relationship into a sexual one. The way that Verity's (Poldark's other cousin) relationship to a wife-beater is also portrayed in here wasn't great, either. I get that it's a different time and women were still considered chattel and beatings were only in poor taste if they were public or debilitating, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant to read about in the here and now (even off the page).
Overall, my feelings with this book are pretty lukewarm. It wasn't awful and I liked Ross Poldark, the cranky but well-meaning old drunk, but the story was boring and the writing didn't blow me away. I have books two and three on my Kindle so let's see if I can bring myself to get around to those later.
Sometimes you read a book and the pages fly by. Other times, you read a book and each page drags on and on. You set the book aside for other, better books. But each night, when you go to bed, you see the book sitting there on your nightstand. Judging you. Mocking you. BECAUSE OF MISS BRIDGERTON is the latter.
In other words: BOOOOOOOrriiiiiiin. Boring. Yes.
I've noticed this problem with a lot of newer historical romances (like, written within the last five years or so). They play it way too safe. Rather than coming across as politically incorrect, they do their best to be as inoffensive as possible, with no mention at all of any sort of unsavory topics like plague or war or racism, sweeping those all under the fringed jacquard carpet to indulge in a bit of costume romance. The dresses make it seem historical and everyone speaks very prettily, but the focus of these books is solely romance and beyond that, not a whole lot of conflict.
I think I like Julia Quinn's earlier romances more, because they at least had a bit of fire to them. This book was dull. When we begin the novel, the heroine is up a tree trying to rescue a cat. Then getting down from the roof takes about two chapters. There's a couple more chapters at a dinner table where they all tease each other and the heroine, Billie's, sister feels left out. Then there's talk of a party. Then the hero, George, and the heroine, almost kiss and immediately go on the defensive to themselves that they don't really like each other, not really.
How dull. I had to DNF at that point, because the whole thing felt so tedious. I buddy-read this with Karishma and she liked it at least, so maybe if you enjoy light, fluffy reads, you will too.
Holy #StealthReads, Batman! It's been a while since I sneaked a book past GR's radar, but I've been so tired lately that I've mostly been napping on public transport instead of reading on it. I finally finished my most recent purse book, and that book was THE DEVIL ON HORSEBACK by Victoria Holt (because you know that with a title like that, I couldn't help but buy it).
Victoria Holt is one of those authors I keep coming back to again and again, even though I have a love-hate relationship with her books. When she's on her game, she is on her game; but she also churns out a fair number of misses. For me, THE DEVIL ON HORSEBACK was one of her misses.
Unlike most of her Gothic romances, which are set in Victorian England, THE DEVIL ON HORSEBACK is set in Georgian England with the French Revolution looming close-by.
The heroine, Minella, is the daughter of a school teacher who has lofty aspirations for her daughter. These aspirations come to a bitter end with her untimely death - especially when the nobleman who was angling after Minella is corralled back into his family's clutches, basically leaving her alone and penniless. Minella has a friend named Margot who is the daughter of a Comte, and she ends up pregnant (out of wedlock). Her angry father sends the two of them away (blackmailing Minella into going by saying that the scandal would threaten her school) until Margot gives birth.
Minella continues to live with Margot and her father, much to the perplexity of their rich friends. She starts hearing whispers that make her uneasy - whispers whose truths are confirmed when the Comte asks her to be his mistress! She is attracted to him despite herself, traitorous body, etc. etc., but cannot give in to such wicked urges because propriety! So she tells him no, because he is married and she is not that kind of woman, etc. etc. How convenient then that the Comte's wife dies shortly thereafter, overdosing on her own medicine! How coincidental! Surely the two are not related, right? RIGHT?
Meanwhile, the French Revolution is happening and stones are thrown at glass houses and people are being attacked and executed. It's really more of a backdrop thing than an actual addition to the setting until the very end, and only when it directly impacts one of the two main characters. This plot twist fails to capture the horror of the French Revolution, however, and is resolved bloodlessly and quickly.
I am disappointed by this book. My friend Naksed said that this book reminded her of a watered down DEMON LOVER, and even though I did not like DEMON LOVER, I think that is true. The plot and the writing were so much better in DEMON LOVER, and if it weren't for how spineless the heroine was and how unrealistic her reactions were to the brutish hero's actions, I would have given it a much higher rating. The wicked Comte had a few good lines:
"When we transgress," he went on, "we must pay for our sins. This is the payment I ask." He took my face in his hands and kissed me on the lips - not once but many times (22)
And,
"I assure you I am the tireless hunter. I never give up until I have my prey" (157)
But mostly, he just came across as a creepy older dude who was obsessed with the best friend of his daughter, at the expense of his still-very-much-alive-until-one-point wife. I spent most of this novel feeling very bored, and that is a very terrible way to feel while reading a book.
Books like this are why I read bodice rippers. Okay, some of them are bad, and reading them is a meta-experience tantamount to MST3K, where the bulk of the enjoyment is making fun of what a festering pile of fail they are. But on the other hand, some of these vintage delights are genuinely good, on their own merit, and while cheesy and oftentimes un-PC, they tell a damn good story.
THIS OTHER EDEN was recently rereleased for Kindle via Endeavour Press, and so was its sequel, THE PRINCE OF EDEN. THE EDEN PASSION is to be released shortly after - and I know this, because I was lucky enough to receive a FREE copy of the third book in this series for review. You know what that means - a reread of the first book, and a gleeful binge of the second, before dive-bombing into the third. Romance novels are like potato chips: you don't consume just one. YOU EAT THEM ALL. ...Or, failing that, you eat as many as you can before someone rips the bag from you.
THIS OTHER EDEN is set in Georgian England. It opens with the public whipping of a sixteen-year-old girl named Marianne Locke. She's being punished for disobedience to Lord Eden - there are many reasons behind this "disobedience": she witnessed the illegal operations he's holding in his cellar, was too proud for her station, and most bitterly, she dared to refuse his advances. Marianne waits for her fate in a charnel pit, which is where people throw the corpses of dead animals and dead human beings post-slaughter, before being hauled out of that stinking cesspit for public flagellation.
Obviously, this punishment traumatizes her on a mental and physical level, so she's sent to live with her half-sister, Jane. Jane resents her younger sister because she was always the favorite, and sees this as the perfect chance for revenge. She has her sister live in the pantry (and then later a servant's bedroom) and has her perform all the duties of a servant for her and her common law husband. Unfortunately the husband quickly falls for Marianne, and this creates tension. And yet - it's a weird tension, because even though things between Jane and Marianne are tense, they never really seem to overtly hate one another and resort to things like murder, the way characters do in Bertrice Small novels. That's a subtlety that really makes THIS OTHER EDEN stand out: all the characters are complex and none of them are purely good or purely bad.
For example, even though Jane softens towards her sister, she's still quick to sell her out to Lord Eden multiple times whenever she needs the money. And Eden is only too happy to take this blood money. He spends about 80% of the book, plotting and scheming to find ways to get Marianne into bed. (And not just any bed, at one point he attempts the use of a Celestial Bed, which is a very real and ridiculous thing.) At first it's a matter of domination and pride, but then he actually starts to love her - but unfortunately, he realizes he loves her only after he screws up, and at that point he is literally willing to give her anything, even the literal skin off his own back, to have her.
This is a gloomy Gothic behemoth that is the perfect example of the evolving romance genre, when the Gothics of the 60s and 70s began to yield to the infamous bodice rippers of the early 80s. It pulls off both roles with finesse: gloomy castles, smuggling operations, scammy sexologists, muddling and sinister relatives, rape, murder attempts, dens of iniquity, superstitious townsfolk, the French revolution, and so much more. But THIS OTHER EDEN goes one step further, with a hero who is truly selfish and childish, and a heroine who is opportunistic and self-absorbed. This is less a romance than an intricate (and intimate) character study of two truly terrible people who gradually overcome their flaws, as well as a realistic portrayal of class and the entitlement of divine right, and how a character might realistically go about overcoming that for the sake of love.
On my first reading of this book, I gave it 3 stars. I'm not sure what 2013 me was thinking, because this book is really, really good. The lush and vibrant writing alone is worth an extra star. Seriously, I could just swim in the prose of this novel as if it were a warm, dark sea. The atmosphere, story, and wide cast of characters are all unique and compelling. This is definitely one of the better bodice rippers I've read, and probably the best-written one to boot. If you're a fan of epic, atmospheric stories like OUTLANDER, where half the fun is the journey and the delay of gratification when it comes to unresolved sexual tension, you should pick up THIS OTHER EDEN. I don't think it will disappoint.
Elizabeth Hoyt is an author I keep coming back to again and again. She's like Lisa Kleypas's cooler, edgier older sister: her heroes are just as hot, but she's fonder of antiheroes and perilous situations - and I mean perilous beyond the last-minute murder attempts Lisa Kleypas casually throws into the last acts of her stories for tension.
Unfortunately, Hoyt, like Kleypas, can also be somewhat uneven with regards to the quality of the stories she puts out. I've read several Hoyt novels, and while two of them were five star reads (DUKE OF SIN, THE LEOPARD PRINCE), one of them was a one star read and one of them was a DNF that I'm still not sure I'm ever going to come back to (DUKE OF PLEASURE).
DUKE OF DESIRE starts promisingly enough with a ritualistic sacrifice being run by a depraved cult: The Lords of Chaos, creepy deviants who wear animal masks and have dolphin tattoos. Iris, the object of the sacrifice, was kidnapped for this purpose because everyone thought she was the Duke of Kyle's betrothed. She is shocked when instead of meeting her end then and there, is claimed by a man in a wolf mask who wants to use her for her own purposes.
When he absconds with her in his carriage, allegedly to take her and then kill her, she seizes his pistol and shoots him, nearly killing him. Iris is shocked - yet again - to find out that behind the wolf mask is the Duke of Dyemore, a beautiful but scarred man who appears to be made from ice itself.
As it turns out, the Duke, Raphael, is determined to infiltrate the Lords of Chaos and take down their leader, the Dionysus, because of his own tragic history in the cult. He wants revenge. But now with Iris on his hands, he determines that the best course of action to save her from falling into their clutches is to marry her (okay?) and afford her his protection while continuing out his revenge.
It's clear from the beginning that Raphael has suffered terrible abuse, which makes it even more annoying when the heroine immediately and incessantly begins pestering him for sex. That sucked a lot of enjoyment out of this book for me, because it played into the stereotype that men are sex machines who can't say "no." She constantly worked to seduce him, to get him so riled up that he couldn't say "no," badgering him all the while for sex, even when he told her he didn't want to.
Flip the genders on that. Still okay?
Raphael was a wonderful, flawed, and tragic character, and the Lords of Chaos plotline was properly creepy and would have fit into a bodice ripper from the 1970s, it was so dark. But I just couldn't stand Iris, with her sexual bullying and how it was portrayed as "healing." It just felt gross to me. I was originally going to give this book three stars, but I decided to take one off, because I disliked the heroine so much that I didn't really buy their HEA - and what kind of romance is that?
Exactly.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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