Don't get me wrong: Dangerous Stunt is a good title (the h is a busted-up stuntwoman, nicely unusual), but seriously I would have called this one "PunDon't get me wrong: Dangerous Stunt is a good title (the h is a busted-up stuntwoman, nicely unusual), but seriously I would have called this one "Punishing Kisses." Because there are so00000 many of them, along with a bunch of other deliciously ridiculous 1980s HP tropes (view spoiler)[(mistaken identity! captive heroine! unlikely virgin h! and so much more. (hide spoiler)] Our hero is a Mexican marquis (that's right) whose penchant for tossing the heroine around (see Boogenhausen's excellent, hilarious review for more on that) made me glad that she was a pro at taking falls. Sure, he's super handsy and an arrogant jerk most of the time, but hey--this was written in the 80s after all. And I do so appreciate an unapologetic vintage alphahole (oh sure, there's maybe a tiny smidge of a grovel at the end, but not so's you'd much notice it).
What made this book, for me, though, was the sheer amount of fun that Mary Lyons clearly had writing it. (view spoiler)[ (And also the multiple times the heroine called the hero a smartass which cracked me right up. And the time she slapped him for insulting her, forgetting she had a big-ass cast on her hand. Good stuff.) I mean, nothing was a step too far for this improbable story: not the Olde West shoot-em-up blockbuster beginning; not a Mexican marquis; not a circus-bareback-rider-turned-stuntwoman-virginal-English-heroine-who-lives-on-ranch-in Cali (that's some backstory!); not Molotov cocktails, a kidnapping by straight-outta-noir-Chicago-gangsters; not a daring Cossack style rescue of a plot-moppet from a bull (by the heroine); and so much more. Chock full of ridiculousness and good ole snarling-until-they're boffing MCs. A lot of fun. (hide spoiler)]...more
2 "nemotode" stars from Boogenhausen? "If you are an angst junkie and love a cruel hero, you will probably like this one" says St Margarets? Oooh, yes2 "nemotode" stars from Boogenhausen? "If you are an angst junkie and love a cruel hero, you will probably like this one" says St Margarets? Oooh, yes please! It's been so long since I ran across a new-to-me punishing-hero story! Scratched all my dark "screw the roses, send me the thorns" itches for sure, in that way that only older HPs can. As usual, we spend a lot of time in LA's heroine's head, privy to her deepest thoughts (and bad poetry)--if with far...fewer...ellipses than I usually associate with her (thanks editor!). The hero is far more inscrutable in that classic HP no-hero-POV way, which, for me, makes for even more angst since we don't understand his underlying drivers/traumas until the very end. Much of the hero's worst behavior is in the past as the story begins (and LA does not go into the detail that Diana Palmer would have so deliciously to make explicit his likely neglect, slut shaming, and contempt of our poor misunderstood ex-model), but even as he moves to understanding that he's misjudged our poor heroine, there's plenty of cruel hero to go around still. Not for everyone, but for fans of the darker, older HPs, this one might be worth seeking out....more
Well, that was different and pretty dark. Our heroine has full-on PTSD, complete with manic episodes, irrational thinking, and fixations on getting baWell, that was different and pretty dark. Our heroine has full-on PTSD, complete with manic episodes, irrational thinking, and fixations on getting back at people (including the hero) who are not responsible for her trauma. She comes off as very immature and volatile, and the hero makes all kinds of missteps in dealing with her, particularly when they are stuck together in a remote cabin for a couple of weeks after he crashes his plane (nice detail on the cover of the heroine tending to him after the crash). The heroine is pretty much a closed-down mess until the end, and I wasn't convinced in a HEA that comes about before she has dealt openly with her issues. I also didn't really understand why the hero comes to love her, given how immature she is in her dealings with him--she seemed very emotionally stunted in how she deals with her family and with him, and his love seemed more like pity to me. He's also not a great match for our very damaged heroine--he's often bullying and quick to anger, and I just didn't see him as having the patience or understanding to help her through what will be some intense times and intensive therapy to finally deal with her trauma. The author tries to sell major life changes as the cure-all (they will leave everything behind and move back to his family farm, which he'll co-manage in a career change that will also let her escape the ties that bind her to her old life), but it didn't work for me.
Boogenhausen has the deets in full. This one didn't work for me as a romance, but it was an interesting departure from your typical Harley outing, and it was a compelling read in its way. Would have been a LOT better with comeuppance for the villains of the piece, but alas, as we know, no bad deed goes punished in HPLandia....more
The Snow Bride, aka The Bluest Balls. The story is just okay, but dontcha love that Will Davies cover?
This hero suffers epic amounts of sexual frustraThe Snow Bride, aka The Bluest Balls. The story is just okay, but dontcha love that Will Davies cover?
This hero suffers epic amounts of sexual frustration in this one! Well, that’s what you get, 30-something hero, for coercing an 18-year-old girl into an MoC for nefarious reasons ((view spoiler)[to punish his double-dealing in-laws, particularly his brother-in-law who slept with his now-dead wife (hide spoiler)]). Our teenage (18-going-on-19 if I recall correctly) heroine agrees reluctantly when her mother pimps her out in marriage in exchange for a loan to tide over the family business while Daddy recovers from a stroke. Ah yes, a classic.
The ridiculous “contract” calls for our nubile heroine to be step-mother to a young girl in a platonic MoC for five years (5!), until Plot Moppet is old enough to be shunted off to boarding school. Ummm, okay. The hero isn’t rapey at least, but it’s clear on the travelogue honeymoon to Egypt that the hero would love to change the terms of the contract to include some boudoir bouncing with his nubile bride. The heroine is having none of it, though!
The heroine is a weepy little thing, and very attracted to/falling in love with our enigmatic hero, who starts off as such an late-70s/early 80s alpha but is actually pretty beta at heart, particularly for the last few chapters. He and the heroine start to draw closer after months of an unsatisfying MoC (with our youthful heroine deliberately freezing him out), and after a romantic date at which they both drink a little too much, they finally consummate their marriage (after almost a year of their MoC).
Bad sex! I love bad sex in romance novels, I don’t know why exactly except that it’s such a change from the raptures of heaven we usually get. The heroine is brought sharply down to earth when her first experience of sex HURTS and it doesn’t help that the hero gets overexcited and doesn’t last more than a minute (although given how little she was enjoying it at that point, maybe not such a bad thing). “These things happen sometimes,” he tells her, but she’s a total brat about it, hee, refuses his offer to remedy matters to her satisfaction, and sends him off shamed and angry.
Any closeness is gone after that, and it’s clear even to the plot moppet that things have gone sadly awry. The heroine is also troubled by the fact that she and the plot moppet have grown very close and the plan is for the heroine to skedaddle after the 5 years are up, and what will that do to little Emma? And she’s also troubled by the hero’s refusal to let his daughter have anything to do with his former in-laws (somewhat for good reason, but he’s implacable about it and the heroine thinks he could handle matters in a gentler way—although she doesn’t find out how nefarious the in-laws are until the end). And even MORE troubled when she begins to suspect that one of our wham-bam hero's little swimmers may have hit the mark.
Weird family dynamics, past traumas and drama, and an embittered hero who is abruptly shocked out of his schemes when the heroine finally lets him have it and gets him to see the wrongness of his ways (and it’s one of the few moments when she stopped being annoying, by the way—but she IS a teenager (19 at this point), so we’ll cut her some slack). Hero and heroine finally declare their mutual love, yadda yadda, the sex is great this time, and we have HEAs that wrap our MCs and plot moppet in squashy vintage love 4Evermore.
Well! This one was tropey and soapy and very vintage feeling in terms of May-December MCs, with an autocratic alpha and a very young heroine who is nonetheless supposed to come off as wise for her age (but doesn’t really). I can’t say I loved this—I skimmed a lot and both MCs annoyed me most of the time—but Hilton, whom I don’t think I’ve read before, has some nice descriptive but not too flowery scenes, and she had multiple points of conflict to keep the MCs apart until the end, so I can’t say I was bored. Very vintage in plot, tone, and characters and amusing in parts, but a lukewarm 3 stars at best. ...more
A little slow, but I found this bickerfest from Jeneth Murrey to be pretty good, mainly because the heroine never backs down from the hero, who is oneA little slow, but I found this bickerfest from Jeneth Murrey to be pretty good, mainly because the heroine never backs down from the hero, who is one of Murrey's tyrannical, no-b/s heroes. It's a step-siblings-to-lovers tale (a popular Harley trope but never one of my faves) with a lot of bitter backstory between the MCs. The hero is a manipulative SOB but he has reasons (which he reveals to the heroine in the end). As he says to the heroine in the end, they've always been meant to be together and nothing and no one was ever going to stop that--he would have made sure of it. As for the heroine, although she never stops giving him crap, she acknowledges pretty quickly that it's always been herself and her love for the hero that's kept her fighting, and she's pretty self-aware about her reasons for agreeing to marry him (at his insistence) and that if she didn't feel as she did, no amount of pressure from him would convince her otherwise.
I like Jeneth Murrey's books (Hell Is My Heaven is probably my fave) because I like D/s-y reads with really Dommy alpha heroes and heroines who don't back down (whether they're toe-to-toe or just quietly irrepressible). Murrey likes her autocrats and there are definitely some old-school tropes, behaviors (punishing kisses! forced seduction!), and attitudes in her books, so they're not for everyone. I like her writing style a lot--it's direct but descriptive, and the dialog is sharp and fast-paced--and boy do her MCs spar, particularly in this one! As other reviewers have noted, the heroine in this one, Lally, doesn't pull her punches. She gives the hero a hard time until the very end, and although he doesn't deserve all of her judgments about him (and vice versa, with his slut-shaming jealousy that, to be fair, she doesn't discourage because she told him the truth once about the scandal in her past and he didn't believe her), he definitely needs someone who can stand up to him--and she most definitely can.
This is the second book by Murrey that I've read that is set in her native Wales, and that's a plus for me. As a kid, I was obsessed with British legends--Arthurian, the Mabinogion ( Lloyd Alexander was my gateway drug for the latter), and when I graduated to my mom's Harleys, I really loved the stories set in rural Britain, which for me had (and still has) a wonderful mystique. The setting in this one--a Welsh sheep farm, with a veterinarian/sheep farming hero--was lovely, but Murrey managed to make it modern in sensibility and setting as well. It's a nice mix of traditional attitudes and atmosphere and the modern (circa 1983) world that she carries off nicely in this and her other books.
A little draggy in parts, but overall I liked this one a lot, for its intensity, its sparring and equally matched MCs, an interesting setting, and well-drawn secondary characters who provide impetus and some conflict but not to the point that it detracts from the real conflicts between the MCs....more
Total catnip for fans of implacable alphahole vintage heroes and lippy heroines. It took me a long time to get around to reading this one, mainly becaTotal catnip for fans of implacable alphahole vintage heroes and lippy heroines. It took me a long time to get around to reading this one, mainly because I didn't like the title. As they say, don't judge a book by its cover! Jeneth Murray liked "forced MoC" stories, and she was good at them--she managed to write very funny and yet intense stories with autocratic heroes and amusing, defiant heroines who may be a bit out of their depth with the much more ruthless and older heroes but who do their best to go toe to toe.
(view spoiler)[ Kate Forrester is a schoolteacher-turned-supermodel, who reluctantly began modeling when her young stepsister, whom she raised since the death of their parents, leaves her husband and shows up on her door with a baby boy. Kate's successful as a model but her model persona is nothing like virginal, down-to-earth Kate. When her stepsister and husband die in an accident while on vacation (having left the toddler with Kate for a couple of weeks), she takes the boy and hides out at a friends remote cottage in Cornwall, determined that her brother-in-law's wealthy and (she thinks) horrible family won't get him.
Her brother-in-law's ruthless older brother, Jerome Manfred, shows up, he holds all the cards--wealth, power, and some near-nudie girlie photos of Kate that her sister had talked her into doing when they needed more money for a larger apartment. The "girlie calendar" pics had never been published, and Jerome had bought the prints and negatives, hanging onto the negatives for a bit of extra blackmail to pressure Kate into marrying him. Her choice is to either go along with his demands for a "loving and obedient" wife or lose all access to her nephew and lose any chance of ever teaching again once he circulates the photos of her.
Kate furiously goes along with his demands (and her mother-in-law-to-be blithely tells her Jerome's just like his father and there's really no gainsaying him, when Kate complains to her). She has a terrible case of treacherous body syndrome from the start, and our hero makes it clear that it's going to be an "ordinary" marriage with all that that entails, and he's quite looking forward to it.
Murray seems to have great fun writing Jerome to be a total autocrat--he's forever issuing decrees and being used to having things all his own way (his mother tells her he'll probably be a difficult husband because of it but he has his good side). Kate is actually pretty funny--first, she's determined to bore him to death by playing up her very practical "schoolteacher" side, but since she's always flying into rages and delivering speeches about whatever it is that he's irked her about, their clashes are pretty amusing. JM did this to great effect in Bittersweet Marriage too--her heroines are overwhelmed (and usually fall in love pretty quickly with their tormenting and enigmatic husbands), but they are usually firecrackers who amuse the heroes as much as they try to infuriate them.
This is largely a "getting to know you" story, as our heroine comes to put aside the very skewed misconceptions about Jerome and his dog-loving, briskly kind mother and accept that her selfish and immature stepsister has misled her about them and about her own actions (painting herself a victim when she was anything but). A young stalkerish OW tries to derail the marriage, too, but she's a minor irritant really. Well-drawn secondary characters (a nanny who develops a maddening habit of phrasing everything as "we"; a sour-faced mouthy housekeeper with a soft heart) rounds this out nicely. (hide spoiler)]
In other hands, this would have been an angsty story, but JM leavens the intensity and the heroine's dismayed realization that she's fallen for her often remote and somewhat tyrannical husband with a lot of really funny lines and moments. Some points off for the hero not saying the ILYs back to the heroine at the end ("don't I say it every time I touch you?" isn't the same--I like an explicit admission of surrender, thank you--but it's in character with our cool and reserved alphahole so there's that).
Very vintage, with a ruthless and dommy hero who coolly goes after what he wants, forced seduction of a heroine with a bad case of treacherous body syndrome, cigarette smoking, a little handsiness (shaking and wrist grabbing--out heroine tries to smack him once or twice, too), and some anachronistic terms and views (as to be expected in a 40 year old book) that might offend more modern sensibilities. But like I said, for fans of vintage asshat heroes who happily stoop to blackmail to achieve their ruthless ends: pure catnip!...more
I haven't read Janet Dailey in years and years, so it was interesting to get into the way-back machine and see how her books have weathered over time.I haven't read Janet Dailey in years and years, so it was interesting to get into the way-back machine and see how her books have weathered over time. Overall for this one, I have to say NOT WELL, since wrist-gripping, bruising, bullying heroes like Rian in DM just seem like walking red flags for abusive relationships now. But I have always remembered JD's anti-heroine LaRaine, and it was a ballsy move to take the shallow, selfish OW from not one but two (that I recall at least) books and turn her into the heroine of her own book. So I wanted to revisit LaRaine's story, A Land Called Deseret, which also features OM Travis from one of my fave JD books, Fiesta San Antonio as the hero--but before I do that, I wanted to revisit LaRaine in her role as OW.
So I started with the first book in which she appears, DM. Heroine Laurie is LaRaine's Mary Sue cousin, an orphan raised by her uncle's family (but supported with money her father left, so her sense of obligation is a little OTT). Frankly, fiery LaRaine, even though she's only in a few scenes, is way more interesting than "quietly beautiful" Laurie, but the good girl always gets the guy, so LaRaine just gets about as many lines in the book as she does in her "big break" movie role that takes her offstage for most of the book, and we're stuck with the basic heroine.
LaRaine becomes engaged to dark and dangerous Rian (total girl name that should be dotted with a heart and not a good alpha hero name, so pfffttt), but when LaRaine is supposed to go visit Rian's aunt for a few weeks while he's off doing tycoony things in So. American, she gets offered a role in a movie and convinces her cousin Laurie to go visit the aunt instead and masquerade as LaRaine. Talk about a bad plan, but JD needed the plot device, so we'll start bailing this holey plot with our little buckets. Big-blue-eyed Laurie inexplicably agrees and she's off to charm auntie, the neighboring judge, and the cute, nice OM next door with her innocent beauty. Of course Rian comes back and decides that he's done with LaRaine, whom he was only marrying for a hostess and some heirs anyway, and Laurie can damn well take her place since she deserves to be punished, one assumes, and she's hot and convenient. We get lots of spats (in which Laurie sees herself as a kitten attacking a panther), punishing kisses, bruising grips, treacherous body syndrome, and true "love" forever more because what Mary Sue can resist a brute in vintage romance? None, I tell you.
Along the way, we learn a few things about the forts and attractions of Alabama from the tour-guide-level characters, heee. Did you know that Mobile, Alabama is the true original home of Mardi Gras and has a large but less touristy and tacky celebration? Me neither!
Our heroine wears blue eyeshadow, dresses in halter tops, and probably uses a curling iron on her raven locks. Our hero is soon smitten and is determined to force her into marriage (which she seems incapable of preventing for some unknown reason), and finally our pretty innocent runs away, where she is taken in by a kindly couple who do not sell her into sexual slavery or kill her in Los Angeles but instead rent her a room at a reasonable rate while she gets a secretarial job. Rian finds her, thinner and paler, a few months later, and we have a dubious HEA with a potential abuser.
The hero was really dated in a cringey way (at least he doesn't have a mustache though), the heroine was boring, and the secondary characters were trite, but it was pretty entertaining overall--definitely had a Dallas/Dynasty kind of vibe. Next stop on my visit with LaRaine: Sonora Sundown (which I remember pretty well, so it must have been a favorite back in the day), where she again provides some much needed hard edges in comparison to a marshmallowy innocent heroine. She wasn't all that bad in DM, actually--just a little self centered and materialistic--and she did kind of get screwed over by the hero, so maybe JD had plans for her from the start and didn't want to make her tooo unlikeable in this one....more
Sara Craven does Caribbean Gothic (it's a thing!), with pirate ghosts, stalkeriffic crazy ladies with slashing scissors, an innocent heroine coerced iSara Craven does Caribbean Gothic (it's a thing!), with pirate ghosts, stalkeriffic crazy ladies with slashing scissors, an innocent heroine coerced into an MoC with a piratical descendent of El Diable with a penchant for spanking (so, typical SC), the most unlikely custody battle ever, a rebellious and resentful stepdaughter, a beautiful housekeeper who may or may not be (1) Mrs. Danversing the heroine and (2) possibly the hero's mistress... shall I go on? Because there is more: punishing kisses, forced almost-seduction, unforced almost-seduction, instalove, a smitten hero behaving badly, drinks thrown in faces, skinny dipping, lots of advance-retreat seduction scenes, more stepchild antics (fake drowning! Ghost messages in mirrors!), hurt feelings, misunderstandings, some angry angst. And throughout all of this, our teenaged heroine somehow mostly keeps her cools and deals, for the most part, practically and sensibly with all the OTT drama!
Wow, this was a lot of fun, I have to say--ludicrous, old-skool, no holds barred. Somehow SC managed to make this funny, dramatic, suspenseful, and pretty hot all in one 187 page package. Quite a feat! Boogenhausen thoroughly and amusingly recaps the entire thing, so read her review for more deets--or just plunge on in, like our intrepid heroine does. ...more
Think "Romancing the Stone" with a Conquistador-descended sexy Colombian hero (with an eyepatch!) and a young nitwit heroine bungling in the jungle loThink "Romancing the Stone" with a Conquistador-descended sexy Colombian hero (with an eyepatch!) and a young nitwit heroine bungling in the jungle looking for her spoilt brat geologist brother who has disappeared looking for a legendary emerald (the titular "flame of Diablo"). Good sexual tension between our virginal English miss and the dashing and dangerous hero who saves her from all manner of danger (rape, snakes, bad guys) but wants payment "in kind" (wink wink). It's pretty clear from the beginning that our hero is smitten, and our heroine is in insta-love, but they argue and miscommunicate to the point where all seduction attempts end in mutual frustration. (view spoiler)[ On route through the jungle to find her brother, with the hero as her guide, the hapless heroine gets captured by the villain who half-blinded the hero when he was a child and killed his father, finds that he's also holding her brother, and the hero has to bargain the long-held family secret location of the emeralds in exchange for their lives. The evil desperado agrees (OK) to let the heroine spend a last night with the hero, since they'll be, I dunno, torturing and killing him after he shows them the mine? and our hero and heroine FINALLY knock boots. The hero effects their escape (with the help of the army, which was closing in on the bad guys) as the mine collapses; takes the heroine home to mama at his ancestral manor; and insists they get married because she might be pregnant. More misunderstandings almost tear them apart, but explanations and love will out, and we have our HEA. (hide spoiler)]
The heroine (and her brother, for his brief chapters) were annoying but this wildly romantic and improbable story was actually a lot of fun. Great heat between our hero and heroine, some very old skool happenings (bratty, immature heroine; dangerous but patrician alpha hero; a spanking!--SC seems to have liked to throw those into her earlier novels), and a satisfying resolution. I forgot how good SC was--silly escapist fun!...more
The GR reviews and accompanying pics were so much better than the book. A familiar plot from YW--ridiculously naive Mary Sue heroine marries bullying The GR reviews and accompanying pics were so much better than the book. A familiar plot from YW--ridiculously naive Mary Sue heroine marries bullying hero to save some idiot member of her family from ruin. The hero and heroine have known one another maybe half a day before he issues his marriage ultimatum. It's supposed to be an MoC for a year, but we know how that goes. 70s South African setting guarantees cringey racist moments. The hero is very into punishing kisses and hard bruising grips and a shaking now and again (so yeah, typical Whittal). The seduction is forced but the heroine definitely has blushing, trembling, breathless treacherous body syndrome throughout, so she only minds that he doesn't love her. No spoiler to reveal that it was Twue Wuv all along! Vintage in the extreme with some shaking-my-head moments but an amusing and silly way to pass a couple of hours. ...more
I'm on a Linda Howard kick, focusing mostly on her older books (not the romantic-suspense stuff so much). I enjoyed the epic feel of ALotW, set in NewI'm on a Linda Howard kick, focusing mostly on her older books (not the romantic-suspense stuff so much). I enjoyed the epic feel of ALotW, set in New Mexico in the years following the Civil War. Real frontier stuff.
The hero is a gunslinger whose revenge against the man who murdered his parents when he was a boy is about to come due (and very much best served cold). The bad guy has just married a down-at-the-heels Southern belle, who marries the gross older man to save her family. She brings her innocent cousin and younger sister along with her, although she soon doubts the wisdom of doing so, surrounded as she is by tough and unscrupulous men.
The uber-alpha hero despises her at first but is resolved to have her, in that very old school not-asking-permission LH way. He is one of LH's old-school dominant and dangerous types.
A ton of bloodshed, high drama, gunfights, treachery, and rape in this one, so not for the faint of heart. LH's writing is much more compelling than in some other books I've read by her recently (e.g., Loving Evangeline) from her early days. The main "romance" (hot, dark, and gritty) is supplemented by a couple of secondary romances (between the cousin and the hero's brother and the fey younger sister and one of their men). LH doesn't make the mistake of giving those much page-time, so while they expand the scope of the story, it's not at the expense of the main relationship between the hero and heroine.
The hero/antihero is cold and ruthless, and he takes possession of the heroine in all ways (she's not unwilling but it's no gentle wooing either), including marrying her after her first husband is killed when he and his men take back his family ranch. He marries her to cement his claim to his family homestead legally, but also because he wants her. The sex scenes are hot and very D/s-y, which I like and works well within the historic timeframe of the story, but it may turn some readers off. The hero hits the heroine at one point, too, which was hard to read; he regrets it and says it will never happen again, but it's a key point in the story and one that, again, may make this a do-not-read for many people (the heroine does NOT get over it for a very long time, so good for her for having a spine of steel despite having fallen for the hero prior to this event).
It's a gritty "lust in the dust" tale that avoids cheesiness and manages to convey the hardships and violence of frontier life. The HEA is believable in the context of the story and timeframe, weighted by the tragedies that occur along the way. Overall, a very good read from LH if you like grittier tales with "antihero" male protagonists and stoic (but not doormat) heroines....more
A re-read, and man I forgot how INTENSE RD's stuff can be. The hero still comes off as an utter asshole--one of RD's wrist-gripping, sadistic, uber-doA re-read, and man I forgot how INTENSE RD's stuff can be. The hero still comes off as an utter asshole--one of RD's wrist-gripping, sadistic, uber-dominant bastards--but I can't say that it didn't suck me in and leave me breathless at points. When it comes to OTT alpha heroes who verge on downright scary where the heroines are concerned, RD is up there with Charlotte Lamb. I love the overall sense of danger and dancing on a razor's edge in her intense tales populated with icy, dangerous heroes who could explode at any moment and the seemingly brittle but ultimately unbreakable heroines who face up to them. Whew! For the darker side of HPs, RD was unbeatable in her heyday.
Original review: OMG, an RD H I absolutely LOATHE. I mean, I defend Ryan Fraine from Smoke in the Wind, for chrissakes. It takes a lot for me to despise an RD alpha, since they usually push all my buttons in terms of dark dominating Hs who put the tough-but-vulnerable RD heroines through the wringer.
But this guy is just a slimy POS. (view spoiler)[He stalks and seduces the lovely somewhat MarySueish heroine, Faine, deliberately charming the inexperienced, classy 23-year-old (to his sophisticated 32) into falling in love with him. She's no dummy, her instincts tell her all along that something ain't right, but she's in love and completely overwhelmed by sexual attraction for the first time in her life, so when he asks her to marry him after courting her for weeks, she agree with reluctance (after he wears her down) even though she realizes he has never told her he loves her. But they are compatible in every way, especially sexually (although she is still a virgin) and she thinks that maybe he can come to love her.
They marry, and during the reception, she catches him in a desperate, agonized moment with his paraplegic brother's wife, both of them tortured by their unconsummated and impossible love. She realizes how brutally she's been used and wants to end the marriage then and there, but he bulldozes her into going on with it. She's shellshocked and horribly hurt but ends up going on the week-long honeymoon, where he doesn't push her to consummate their marriage (having at least that bare modicum of decency). Her only comfort is that her innate sense of caution during their engagement had prevented her from telling him that she loved him.
They continue to live together in separate bedrooms, and she tries hard to maintain a cool, calm front. Then she hears him pacing all night, and again the next night, and is driven to try to offer verbal comfort. She finds him sitting on the side of the bed, head in hands, and tries to sooth him because she is lovely and selfless in her love, and our typically scary vintage RD hero pretty much rapes her: rips off her clothes, pins her down on the bed, and overpowers her until she is overwhelmed by her insane and unmanageable passion for him. There's physical consent eventually, but only because she loses all control when he touches her, and he uses a Jedi mind trick (she finds that his dominance turns her on despite VERY MUCH not wanting to have sex with him, and he mocks her that she "enjoys rape" (which I understand to mean she's turned on by dominance) so that she stops fighting him, making it easier for him to overwhelm her senses and bring her to the point of no return. He effectively overwhelms her reluctance with deliberate and forceful seduction, which even he points out is little better than actual rape.
She's not sorry because she had discovered that beneath her lifelong reserve she is actually very sensual and in love with this man, but she knows that she'll feel humiliated by it the next day. But the passion between them and his insistence that he will be faithful to her and that they can make each other happy has her hoping just a little that they can build on what they have. In typical RD fashion, our very dominant hero tells her he's not letting her go, and our heroine isn't quite steel-spined enough to walk away.
But then she gets a call the next day: his brother had died in a car accident. So his sister-in-law, with whom he is in love, is now free, and Faine's fledgling hope that maybe they can come to have a mutually loving relationship some day is pretty much dead.
She is a pillar of strength during the funeral arrangements that follows, taking care of decisions and comforting not only Burke's grandmother, but his beloved and fragile sister-in-law, OW, Libby. That's how kind she is,. Jesus. He's icily remote to her through it all, although he thanks her somewhat bitterly for her support of them all. The night after the funeral, her self-composure finally cracks and she's crying in the privacy of her bed when he comes in and finds her. He comforts her, and she calms down and asks what they're going to do now. He says they'll go on as they are. And she tells him no way, she's not going to stand in his way, the woman he loves is free, and she needs him. He asks if she, Faine, needs him, and she coolly says no, and he is furious at her ability to remain so self-composed and self-contained. So he proceeds to rape her again; she tries to fight him off, clawing at him and biting him, but he subdues her until her she can't withstand her own passion for him and finally goes up in flames in response to his sexual domination of her. He does it because her coolness and composure strikes at his ego. That's all it really is: he can't stand the fact that this woman whom he doesn't love is unwilling to stay in a marriage that is convenient for him, for the moment at least, because he's not ready to end it yet.
Afterward, she tells him harshly that she is leaving the next day. He accepts it, in pain at his actions and the hopeless situation they're in, and asks where she'll go and she says she'll be fine, she'll move away and find a new job and he doesn't have to worry about her. He says it would be easier for him if he could just cut her out of his life like that, but he's not that ruthless,and she tells him it's alright, he should get some sleep, and is kind because it hurts her that he is hurting.
It actually takes her a week to leave while she makes plans and gets her affairs in order, and they don't see much of each other--he spends most of his time working, avoiding her. On the day of her departure, she goes to his room to say goodbye, finding him again with his head in his hands, tormented. Our too-selfless and still besotted heroine she could ease his pain somehow and tells him to please please be happy. Only at the end, as she turns to leave, does her fierce composure crack but she manages to hide her tears as she walks away.
She moves far north, agreeing to write to his grandmother if she promises not to tell Burke where she has gone. He makes her an allowance through his solicitor, but she sends it back. She spends the next year or so making a new life for herself, making friends and having a busy, productive life, despite her broken heart and her awareness that she is never going to love anyone with such intensity ever again. He was her one and only and it's done and there's no choice for an RD h but to go on and make the best of things.
And then the sonofabitch shows up at her door. His grandmother told him where to find her. He creeps her out when she returns home from a fun day with friends by lurking in her dark garden--she feels someone watching her and hurries to get into her apartment and he comes up saying her name, scaring the hell out of her. She asks why he didn't tell her he was coming and he says that he wasn't sure she'd stick around if he did. Then the slimeball starts turning on his "charm" and tells her he wants her back. His true love, Libby, has gone back to England. They discovered that what they had wasn't love. They discovered that because our zero hero couldn't get it up when they tried to make love--he kept trying to pretend Libby was Faine and it apparently didn't work. He says he was initially excited about getting together with Libby after Faine left but things weren't working out with her like he'd planned (so much for true love), and he and Libby had it out, and she accused him of loving the heroine. It took him a while to accept/admit it, and then he and Libby talked it out and she moved back to England and the H set out to find Faine.
It takes a LOT to squick me (I find most of RD's worst icehole heroes pretty hot, even when they behave terribly), but this sequence of actions and emotions totally repulses me. I wouldn't trust this guy not to "fall in love" with someone else at any point and reject me again, and then come back when the magic with the OW wears off and he wants some home cooking again. RD 's Hs are pretty vile sometimes, but they usually have honor and suffer for their brutal and chauvinistic treatment of the heroines--they are tortured by their inability to control themselves with the heroines. RD tries to sell his suffering in this one too--he's lost weight, he has the "white line around his mouth" even, LOL--but it's a hard sell. Every move Burke makes is calculated and controlled and designed only to satiate whatever selfish needs he's feeling at that moment.
It is hugely disappointing that the heroine tells him it doesn't matter and is willing to forgive him just like that. Despite her love for him and the fact that he can make her melt down pretty quickly once he overcomes (usually through force) her resistance to him, she has shown a pretty steely resolve about not accepting a role as second best. But she tells him it doesn't matter. WTF?
She says the day she saw him comforting Libby in the hospital, she wanted to die because she knew he would never love her the way he loved Libby, and he claims he would "cut off his arm" to save the heroine pain but Libby needed him at that moment. I would like to cut off his arm and club him to death with it, myself, and really wish the heroine felt the same way.
She forgives him and tells him she loves him and for the first time in the book, I don't like Faine. She's a sucker. He's let off the hook with zero consequences for his actions and his infidelity--it doesn't matter if he didn't end up sleeping with LIbby because he had every intention of doing it and didn't give a crap about Faine until he realized that he wanted her instead. This isn't love--it's lust and possession and a need to make sure she doesn't "win" by getting away from him without falling apart. And no "happy" epilogue is going to make me feel differently. (hide spoiler)]
I give this book four stars because it's well written and angsty, but it left me deflated and angry. What Burke does to Faine is way worse, in my book, than what Ryan does to Venetia in Smoke in the Wind and comes close to what the H of The Guarded Heart does to that book's h (and that's completely vile(view spoiler)[--he basically grooms/forces a teenage to become his sex slave/broodmare for revenge but at least he doesn't pump her while hopelessly in love with someone else) (hide spoiler)]. This wasn't a romance, it was a horror story with the heroine getting devoured by the monster in the end. There's a certain sadistic fascination to it, but not sure I buy it as a love story....more
Reread and went a full five stars--loved it! Very un-PC revenge porn from LW with the H's vengeance taking the form of sexual payback and "own you bodReread and went a full five stars--loved it! Very un-PC revenge porn from LW with the H's vengeance taking the form of sexual payback and "own you body and soul" antics. For fans of super D/s-y dub-con Harleys (I'm unapologetically one such), this is a keeper. (view spoiler)[This one has quite the bag of tropes:
- Blindness -Abduction (kind of ) -Forced seduction -A martyred, guilt-stricken h -A very Dommy hero out for revenge -Long-planned life-altering vengeance -Vengeful but hot sex -More vengeful, hot sex -Forced engagement -The Yorkshire moors (but alas, no amnesia causing pony encounters)
The H and h had grown up next door to one another, and she'd been in love with him throughout her teens although he treats her as a nice little sister. He is 9 years older than she is. On her 18th birthday, she tries to seduce him, and he is furious, particularly when his gf (to whom he was planning to propose) walks in and finds the h naked (she deliberately took her clothes off when the gf arrived and made it seem like she was waiting for the H--she was convinced he loved her because *fate* and just needed to be shown she was an adult now). The fiancee leaves, and the H loses his cool completely and forcibly seduces the h (she doesn't much enjoy it but isn't unwilling) and then kicks her out and goes after his gf. He is in a car crash and loses his sight. The h tries to see him in the hospital but is told he doesn't want to see her. Soon after, ashamed and guilty, she moves to New York with her parents.
Four years later, LW has killed off her parents with ruthless efficiency and the h, having just lost her apt and her fiance, decides to move back to England. On the plane, someone points out an article about the H, who is a bestselling author (the only kind that exists in Harleyland), and who is advertising for an assistant. The h decides she must see him one last time so applies for the job under an assumed name. She gets the job.
Knowing she is being crazy, she tries to back out, but he deftly manipulates events so that next thing she knows, she is in a remote house on the Yorkshire moors, playing Cathy to his Heathcliffe. She tries to leave while he's out for a walk with his seeing-eye dog, but sprains her ankle.
He has been subtly tormenting her all this time, so that she is not sure if he is really blind, if he knows who she really is, and whether it's all a setup. It is: he had her under surveillance for the 4 years she was away and decided to put his obsessive plan for revenge in motion when he found out her parents had died (down to purchasing her apt and having her evicted, forcing her move back, and hiring the guy on the plane who showed her the job description--this is one thoroughly vengeful H!). He has had an operation that restored his sight and is out for revenge through sex-on-demand, that bulwark of pre-PC Harleys.
The tension and build up of suspense to this point are executed beautifully--definitely kept me turning the pages!
The H has spent the four years since his last disastrous encounter with the h writing a worldwide bestseller, replaying the events of the night he crashed endlessly in the dark, and planning his vengeance against the h. He remembers every detail of the night she tried to seduce him, down to her short haircut. When he leaves the room momentarily, our crazy h hacks off her hair in penance for her actions that they both agree (why?) led to his blindness. He's angry when he comes back and still determined on his vengeance, and forces her to recreate the night of her birthday, plying her with champagne, making her put on the pendant he'd given her (which she had left behind), and making her strip naked for him. She does her best to freeze him off, telling him she won't respond, but LW writes a blazing seduction scene and both the heroine and I succumb with just a whimper or two.
Over the next few days, he continues to have sex with her, seducing her objections away. She goes along with it thinking that she owes it to him to help free him of his bitterness and obsession, and to assuage her guilt, and also because she's a melting puddle of lust and feelings, in lo-hove and not not very good at saying no. They both enjoy the sex but she's pretty unhappy afterward that she succumbs so easily and that it is all just his means of revenge, with no love on his side. She is still in love with him and always has been (and has never been able to have relations with other men) but when he asks her if she is still in love with him, she denies it, knowing he'll use the information to torture her.
A storm is heading their way, so he tells her they are going to return to London and that he has changed some of his plans. Part of his revenge strategy was to marry her once his novel was finished, forcing her to take the place of the fiancee he lost as a result of her actions (the OW decided she didn't want to marry a blind man). He is moving up the wedding. Our weak-willed h is horrified but then decides she owes it to him and her secret love might help make up for what she had done (although I'm not sure why she takes such responsibility for his blindness--he's the one who tore off in a rage after borderline raping her--she did consent so technically it wasn't but it came close).
He does make it clear that he thinks they can have a good life together; they were good friends with lots of shared interests growing up and the sexual chemistry between them is as good as it gets. So she initially goes along with it...
After buying her an engagement ring, he takes her out to lunch, and the OW, who is a model, shows up (in a hilariously tacky outfit--she's in a gold tunic with a gold turban and a miniskirt, like something Patsy or Edina would wear in Ab Fab, hahahah). The H is snarky with the OW but not very nice to the h either, throwing money in her lap and telling her to go shopping while he goes to a meeting and takes off, sharing a cab with the OW. The h is upset and walks around for a long time, then goes back to his apartment to shower. The OW shows up and basically tells her that the H is going to dump her now that the OW is free and wants him and he is having dinner with her that night at her flat. The h stupidly accepts all of that at face value (conveniently forgetting his obsession with her?) and decides to leave once the OW takes off. She packs and leaves, but runs into the H into the lobby, and he's furious she was walking out on him again and takes her back up to his apartment.
Once there, he hustles her into the bedroom and tells her to take off her clothes, he is taking out another installment on the debt she owes him. (This is like the 3rd scene where she is told to strip for him; I find it pretty hot so I don't mind, but she should really invest in a pole and some sexy, easily discarded clothing for their future together, because this H really has a thing for making her strip for him). She refuses and he strips her himself and gets her onto the bed. She starts crying because even though her resistance to similar scenes was pretty short lived, she finally has had enough of the revenge-sex (even if it always ends up being great for both of them). He 180s and comforts her, and they finally get around to talking and avowals of love, clearing up misunderstandings (she did come to see him in the hospital; he did want to see her but an overzealous ward nurse told her differently b/c the OW told her to, etc.), and finally reach their HEA. (hide spoiler)]
LW does good suspenseful buildup in this one, and the descriptions of the Yorkshire moors location has a nice Wuthering Heights feel to it. I always like an alpha out for revenge (and this is one hot vengeful alpha, whew!) but if sex-for-revenge old-skool tropes squick you, this one is pretty intense in that regard. Dub-con sex all over the place, mental terrorizing, and some wrist-gripping (one scene, when she realizes he is "making it clear that he was the master and it would pay to obey him." Your response to that sentence is a good indication of whether you want to read this one or not.) Wonderfully intense and trainwrecky with some great sturm and drang and a gothic feel. LW delivers a fantastic old-skool-crazy revenge trope. For me, a hot, crazy read!...more
Well, that was a fun return to 1983 Harleys, with a very cruel and demeaning hero, an innocent and misunderstood waifish heroine who vacillates betweeWell, that was a fun return to 1983 Harleys, with a very cruel and demeaning hero, an innocent and misunderstood waifish heroine who vacillates between doormat and spitfire, (view spoiler)[ amnesia, mistaken identity (hide spoiler)] modeling, misunderstandings, and a HEA that even the hero and heroine have to wonder about.
(view spoiler)[Our lost-lamb heroine, Jane, wakes up in the hospital with no memory of who she is but plenty of nightmares about a plane crash. She is told that her husband died in the crash, but she survived with a handbag and rings proving that she was his wife. The hero, Paul, who we believe is her brother-in-law, whom she has never met, is there to comfort her (but is not super nice about it most of the time), and she imprints on him like a little baby bird. That's the only explanation that I can come up with for her insta-love for him in the face of his continual slut-shaming, accusations that she is a liar and a cheat, rough treatment, and refusal to believe anything she says.
Released from the hospital, his parents take her into their manor house and she soon has won their hearts. She is already head-over-heels in love with Paul, despite his hot-and-cold treatment of her. There are many smoldering gazes and burning gazes and punishing kisses, one "hysteria"-ending slap (that he does apologize for), and some surprisingly explicit almost-sex scenes, with the typical-of-the-time euphemisms (such as "hardening thighs," hee). She spends a lot of time bruised from kisses and confused and upset at his hot and cold behavior.
Before long, she recovers her memory and immediately realizes that she is not who they all thought she was. She was on the plane with the now-dead brother and his wife, and the couple were quarreling the entire trip, and at some point, the wife took her rings off and hysterically demanded the heroine put them on instead and the exasperated husband begged her to go along until he could calm his wife down). Whatever: Jane IMMEDIATELY tells Paul that she has recovered her memory and she is not his sister-in-law and she feels terrible about the misconception and the fact that his parents have been so kind to her. She is actually an orphan/typist (70s and 80s Harleys being littered them) and sometimes model. The hero, who had previously discovered she wasn't his brother's wife (he saw photos of them), refuses to believe she wasn't pulling some kind of scam and is generally an ass to her, punishing her with hard kisses and handsy groping. She gives him the rings back and turns to leave (although she's down to her last 5 pounds), and he calls her harsh names and demands to know her address so he can send her some money so that her defrauding mythical "accomplices" don't ring her neck (or so he claims). She tells him she doesn't want his money and flees into the London night, returning to the flat she shared with some girls before her amnesia, only to find that her orphanage friend, Beth, has gotten married and her other flatmate has let her scuzzy boyfriend move in. So our heroine has nowhere to stay.
But Jane is used to hard knocks--she lost her parents at 10 and was in a group home until she was 18 and has spent the past three years (she is 21) working office jobs when she could get them and modeling here and there. So she pulls up her big-girl britches, spends the night at a youth hostel, and goes to see the modeling agency owner she sometimes works for the next day, who is able to find her some work and a place to stay.
Before long, our heroine is hired for a makeup advertising campaign--she has the waifish look they want. The ad agency is owned by none other than our hero. He is pretty awful to her repeatedly, either treating her coldly with disdain and scorn or getting super handsy (at work and outside of work). He warns her not to see other men but makes it clear he considers her soiled goods and not worthy of anything but the occasional groping session.
The heroine is a victim of her own desires and baby-bird imprinting on him and, despite her virginal fears, is pretty much unable to resist his manly attractions any time he touches her. There are a few near-consummations but he always pulls back at the last minute (this guy has amazing self control for a Harley hero, rejecting her not once but twice at the most, er, penetrating moments). I will say that for all her tears and submission to him, she does at least try to fight back verbally and otherwise occasionally, and generally just gets on with surviving.
She's invited to stay with his parents for the weekend, and decides to go because he says he isn't going with her (and she is very fond of them and does love feeling part of a family, something she never had). But he does show up--with OW Leonora, whom he passes off as his fiance. Leona is actually engaged to his brother, but Paul deliberately deceives the heroine, because he is a cruel and jealous jerk and wants to punish her because he saw her out with some guys she is friendly with from work. (This guy, no red flags at all, uh-uh.) During the course of the weekend, she asks his mother if she has any advice about morning sickness (she really is asking for a friend, hee). The mother assumes she is pregnant, but the heroine doesn't pick up on that and goes off to visit her preggers friend up in Scotland. She is pretty heartbroken at the prospect of the hero getting married but knows she needs to get away from him now that he's committed to someone else.
He tracks her down in Scotland and tells her that he will marry her and raise the nonexistent baby-by-another-man as his own. She explains that she isn't pregnant and has never "belonged" to any man, but is moved that he would do that for her (I think he probably would have made her life a living hell, but whatever). There are explanations and avowals of love and some pretty good groveling from the hero, but I still think that she will be walking on eggshells with this guy as her husband the rest of her life, given that he distrusted her on the flimsiest of evidence throughout the entire book and really just looked for reasons to abuse her mentally and physically (mainly through punishing kisses in classic old-skool Harley fashion). So...HEA? In the old-school way. (hide spoiler)]
Some surprisingly explicit heat and classic tropes and hero/heroine types in this. I was curious about the title and think it's from a line by Keats: And as she spake, into her face there came Light, as reflected from a silver flame. (How I love the fancy old titles.) Enjoyable crazy-train outing with lots of unlikely, dramatic, fun old tropes....more
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