I read the most radioactive trope in romance... and wasn't as outraged as I thought I would be
You know those stories where either the hero or the heroI read the most radioactive trope in romance... and wasn't as outraged as I thought I would be
You know those stories where either the hero or the heroine have a parent that was in love outside the marriage? And they see the parent not committing adultery hurting and it shapes then into either not believing in love or not trusting people? Not those unfaithful, sleep with anyone around parents, but the ones that are passionately in love and forsake duty and honor for love? You know, the ones that eventually decide to run away only to die in a shipwreck crossing the channer? Or of a fever in India?
Well, call me morbid, but I've always wondered what went through the head of the cheating parent.
Browsing around one day, I found this book and knew I would want to read it eventually, just to assuage that curiosity.
I waited for the right mood and finally read it.
I have some thoughts.
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➻❥ Let's start simple: The Writing
To call this book's prose purple would be an understatement. I'm not going to claim to be a scholarly sort with vast knowledge and proficient use of the English language, but I would like to believe I'm adept enough to use a dictionary when not knowing the meaning or googling possible new to me expressions.
Sometimes the sentences were just a bit much.
I'll add some examples, but honestly, I started highlighting so much that around 40% I kind of gave up so this is just a very partial sample.
╰⪼┆He did not tell her of his fascination with her, but he wanted, with an odd desire, to speak of his curiosity about the world, with the heavens which lay like an enormous black, diamond encrusted bowl under which the earth quivered.
╰⪼┆Were the words as bitter as they sounded, or was darkness adding spice to them, a rice pudding sprinkled with raisins of emotion
╰⪼┆Just once, he would like to fetch them from her, as if she were a sweet well of pure water, and his curiosity the bucket which drew upon her thoughts and her feelings.
╰⪼┆Then he would warm her, like a hot poker thrust into wine. He would make her boil and steam. This sounds... painful.
╰⪼┆Here, there was only the two of them, clothed in fate.
This isn't to say that I hated the writing, but it made at times the story feel heavy, not because of the themes, but because it was so time consuming to get to the end of a paragraph.
Instead of adding to the angst, it took it away. It made the story too poetic and less real which I think might have worked in its favor. Even the adultery felt more the stuff of an epic story than of possibly real people.
➻❥ The Wife: pitiful? irrelevant? deserving?
Spoiler galore from here on out people, be advised.
Before we get to the MCs, I want to talk about The Wife.
One would imagine that if you're writing a HEA between adulterers, you'd take the easy road. Make the wife a harpy, a mean-spirited woman that didn't deserved her husband's vow of fidelity in the first place. Or make her an adulterer herself, what goes around comes around anyway, right? Or maybe just make her so irrelevant as to have the reader forget she even exists.
Ranney does the first and third... kind of.
Sarah might be the only realistic character in the whole story.
Being the sole heir to her impoverished (Scottish) earl father, she is literally the princess in the ivory tower. She has been cosseted to the point to ignorance and impotence.
The girl is beautiful beyond belief.
╰⪼┆His bride was as beautiful as he'd been told. Glowing blonde hair, a fair beacon, they had said. A face like a Botticelli work of art, a body to tempt a saint. He'd heard that and conceded that it looked as though the rumors and her fond father's prattling were true.
But besides that, she has nothing going on for her. She's dyslexic,
╰⪼┆Sarah herself admitted to her deplorable scholarship, saying in that breathless little voice which did not fail to charm its male listeners, "the words just keep wiggling on the page right in front of me," A phrase which, Kathryn had long since realized, engendered only a curious sort of male protectiveness.
so she's mostly uneducated. Which is the worst sort of person for the hero, since he's a scholar by curiosity. He's full of questions about life and has a laboratory-like room for his experiments and his research.
╰⪼┆She was a sweet soul, his wife. She was amiable and demure. She had no thoughts but his, no aim in life other than to please him, no wishes contrary to his. She was the most boring woman, in or out of bed, he'd ever known.
╰⪼┆His sweet bride was as delicate as a thread of light. Her conversations consisted of relating the ingredients of her creams and unguents to him, of marveling at the color of his eyes, or giggling in that way of hers which was fit to drive him daft. She did not understand the majority of what he spoke to her about, in those times when sheer boredom forced him to converse with her. The plight of Scotland interested her not at all; she thought Descartes a French desert. He would not have been surprised if his gently reared wife believed the earth was flat.
However, by far, her worst quality is her lady's maid: Agnes.
╰⪼┆Agnes Hamilton hated the Scots, not merely because the breed were half naked savages who thought that culture meant using one hand to shovel food into their mouths while the other scratched their genitals.
She's a bitter old woman whose father had been an English Jacobite. By donating too much to the cause she had gone hungry all her life. She was lured to the Lowlands by the promise of high wages but ended in a poor household.
The more she hates the Scots, the more her obsessive 'love' for Sarah grows. When Sarah marries the highland hero, and they move North, Agnes spends the whole four-weeks long trip making life impossible for everyone in order to keep Sarah happy and comfortable.
By the time they arrive, everyone hates Agnes and by extension, Sarah. They assume she takes her orders form her mistress after all.
Once there, she literally screeches at everyone around her, ordering them to practically re-build the whole freaking castle to accommodate her precious Lady. Which only isolate Sarah even more, including her own husband.
Sadly, Sarah is just too simple to see the ramifications.
╰⪼┆"I do not think your maid likes me," he said to his wife, tossing aside his outer coat and beginning to unlace the ties of his shirt.
Sarah only smiled, and made room for him on the bed. Agnes had always been possessive, and was finding it difficult to share her with someone else. The problem would rectify itself in time. For now, Sarah had thoughts only for her husband.
I'm not exactly victim-blaming, but by the third or fourth month of marriage, there was no chance of recovery
╰⪼┆Nor had he reckoned on this irritation in his new bride's presence, as though every thing she said or did was calculated to grate upon his nerves. It was not that he disliked Sarah, he felt nothing at all for her. No animosity, no charity. Nothing.
╰⪼┆He hoped that some well meaning but lust stricken fool would not attempt to cuckold him. He would then be put in the unenviable position of having to defend someone he cared less than nothing about.
Which was a hellish admission, wasn't it?
And these are his thoughts before the affair even begins.
So, how does the author get rid of poor, dim-witted Sarah? She has her go mad.
Sarah has a miscarriage. In the middle of night. Practically alone. By the time it's over, it's too late for anything. Fucking Agnes never calls for help.
╰⪼┆She should have been called, the castle should have been alerted, the midwife summoned from her small cottage. Even now, the mourning would have begun for the little lost heir of the MacDonald's. Prayers would have been uttered, tears would have been shed.
Agnes had called no one.
The grief at the loss is so profound, Sarah first asks where he baby is.
Agnes (pox take her) lies to her and tells her he's fine and then gives her laudanum. Yep, that's what a woman on the verge of postpartum psychosis needs: a lady's maid eyeballed opium and lies.
It's not even a surprise she goes mad. It was practically a forgone conclusion.
╰⪼┆He had visited her nearly every day since the miscarriage, but he had been repudiated at the door by Agnes, who had informed him curtly that his wife was resting.
You could argue the hero, as the husband, should have been more insistent, but months of Agnes behaving like a monster and Sarah not doing anything about it was Sarah's doom. No one wanted to deal with Agnes, therefore there was no one there to help Sarah.
She dies by falling off a cliff, trying to take the heroine's son with her, believing, in her madness, that it was her own infant and that the cheating (yes, Agnes told her) MCs were proposedly keeping him away from her.
It was such a tragic way to go and yet I wasn't all that sympathetic.
The author did a go job with this character. She didn't make it easy for the hero to break his vows, since Sarah is not a bad person, but she also gave Sarah the instrument of her own destruction. She didn't have to let herself be pampered to the point of uselessness.
╰⪼┆She was helpless in her own aristocracy. She could not lace her own slippers, nor comb her own hair. Agnes was too necessary; even these small tasks were beyond her.
She could, as a Scot, be more aware of the political climate and try to inform herself.
She could have made an effort to be mistress of her own home, as she was probably trained to be from a young age. She could have talk to the servants directly, plan menus and decorations and the Harvest and Christmas feasts.
But she didn't. She was content being a step above a pretty vase.
➻❥ The Adulterers: true love? lust? nothing better around?
Well, the answer is pretty simple: it's true love. It's in fact, love at first sight. But duty and station keeps them apart for a very long time.
The first conversation they have is three weeks into the month-long trip. And this is how he's already thinking
╰⪼┆Where she rested, or stood, or walked, it was as if she stilled the air to peace. She was not tranquil, it was more dominance she wielded than repose. She was aloof, but it was not in the way of one who is proud, it was more aloneness she carried with her, an apartness which enticed at the same time it rejected. He was drawn to her in the same way he was beguiled by "why" and "how". Twin enchantments he'd never been able to ignore.
As to "this hero needs an intelligent woman" part that I talked about, Kathryn is the bastard daughter of the deceased earl. Meaning, she's Sarah's aunt. Though they are only a few years apart (damn those randy septuagenarians, huh?) Because everyone at the village knows, as a point of pride, she's told to walk to the manor house everyday to be educated alongside Sarah.
She's not as smart as the hero, but she's also naturally curious and that makes conversation with her interesting.
We know it's not lust, because they kiss for the first time about four months after arriving at the hero's home (about 42% in), but finally 'succumb' at the 53% mark. Also, he says so.
╰⪼┆This was no journey of lust they began, nor would they be satisfied with one quick tumble. He did not know of destiny, or fate, but he knew himself. His pride had fought and lost, his honor hung in tatters. He would not have surrendered for anything less than an earth shaking force and this woman with her eyes filled with tears and a bright, brave smile on her face was just such a force.
We also know it's not because there's nothing better around since she's officially courted once and catches the eye of more than one man. The other servants encourage her to pursue someone but she refuses.
As for the character themselves, I find the choice the make Kathryn sort of unlikable a bold, but good one.
➜ Kathryn has been jealous of Sarah all of her life. Who wouldn't? Sarah had all while she got an abusive first husband and hunger pains. She stays away not because of morality, but because she's afraid to risk her heart. When she finally lets go, she doesn't feel guilty.
I felt as if the author was giving us permission to hate the heroine. Which I didn't. But it's true I didn't like her either. What made her readable was how perfect she was for the hero and how truly loving and protective she is of her son. After she almost loses him, she leaves for months, believing she is doing the best for her own son.
➜ Hugh, on the other hand, is full of guilt. He wants to resists but his role as laird, as a high ranking Scot in such troubled times, have made him so very lonely. He craved the companionship of a true partner. It's too bad that the book's best angsty moment (when she leaves) is all from her side. We only get a few moments with him despairing and slowly losing the will to live. What a missed opportunity.
➻❥ Final Thoughts
I don't regret reading this, but I must admit to feeling a bit... dirty. There's no 'I didn't know' about this. They know what they are doing and they know it's wrong.
Despite the adultery, I was morbidly fascinated by Sarah (as her long ass section can attest). I imagine a big part of it is because of internalized misogyny and how somehow the woman is to blame. But I think there's also a sort begrudging respect towards the author for creating the most 'acceptable' environment for the adultery to occur. She's pitiful, but not too much. She's helpless, but by her own choice. She's sweet, but empty-headed.
The heroine is also not that lovable. She's flawed and jealous. But she's not greedy and she very much loves the hero, not because of whose husband he is, but because of who he is.
╰⪼┆Dear God, she missed him so.
Would she ever learn to live with this hole in her heart?
She doesn't rejoice at Sarah's death and only comes back to deliver someone home and for the sake of her child. She asks the hero not to join the losing fight, yet doesn't stop him because she knows he needs to go look for his clansmen. She proves her love is selfless, even if she herself isn't.
I wouldn't read this again, but I don't regret picking it up.
This book has one of the best heroine I've read from KB (and I've read a few). Sadly, it also has one of my least Why do you do this to me, Ms. Byrne?
This book has one of the best heroine I've read from KB (and I've read a few). Sadly, it also has one of my least favorite heroes.
Cecelia, sweet and 'helpless' yet stronger than everyone
༊·˚ Cecelia's background isn't the most tragic one KB has come up with, but it is the most devastating one for a woman like her. She's a social creature, born with a bottomless well of love. You have only to be civil with her and she'll be your loyal friend. Yet, for so long she is isolated, bullied and repudiated. The three friends she makes at school, two other redhead students and the father figure/gardener/man of all trades Jean-Yves are her salvation.
༊·˚ One of the reasons she is mistreated is her figure. Without ever putting too much emphasis on it, but not leaving any doubt, we are told Cecelia is a big woman. She is exceedingly tall and not only voluptuous but very possibly on the obese side. By the time the hero meets the heroine, she has learned to be as comfortable with her body as she can be when everyone around her looks down on her. I didn't mind that she is able to take that last step into being completely in harmony with herself thanks to the love (and lust) from the hero. (It's a shame the cover model doesn't reflect the correct body type)
༊·˚ Despite the cruelty in her childhood and the condescension in her adulthood, Cecelia has led a very sheltered life. When she is trust into the world of secrets and intrigue her benefactors leaves her, she is unprepared and very scared. She admits to herself and to the hero that. She also openly says she wished for the protection he can provide. This cemented her as one of my favorite heroines. Why wouldn't she wish for safety? Or for the strength she doesn't possess? What is even more impressive is that she stays despite being so terrified. She prepares mentally for the task to care for everyone left in her charge and doesn't run even if a small part of her wants to. My favorite kind of strong heroine....more
So you think the stalker romance book next door is satisfying your dark cravings?
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So you think So you think you've read obsessive heroes?
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So you think the stalker romance book next door is satisfying your dark cravings?
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So you think you know what's like to hate a hero while your twisted soul knows its found its bookmate?
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Well, Kylemore is laughing at you from his throne.
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Twisted pasts, make for twisted souls
Kylemore and Verity have both been handed a hard hand and both create facades to survive in the world: Exquisite courtesan and cool duke. Their souls have been screaming at them to unite their mangled parts to make a whole. For five years Kylemore chased her. And for a full year, he thought he had her. He thought he had never been happier. Until she disappears and destroys the illusion.
He wants it back. He wants her back. He will stop at nothing, not even her denial.
I don't know how else to convey the piercing hate I felt for Kylemore, yet how addicted I was for his brand of obsessively blind ruthlessness.
He's selfish beyond reason.
The promise he’d made her didn’t matter a damn. But his own ability to master his animal passions did.
He's immature and cruel.
He’d taken her quickly, carelessly, irrevocably. She was once again the Duke of Kylemore’s lover and she wished she were dead.
Redemption, expiation and absolution were utterly beyond his reach.
But at the end I was convinced it was all the heroine's fault for not relenting.
Her enemy’s agony was her only vengeance.
For holding out so long I wanted to cry and scream at her to sooth the lonely man's tortured heart.
How did she imagine he could ever let her go? She was the only being in creation who gave him this peace. Verity was all that stood between him and madness.
For six year he's had eyes only for her and for all those years she's kept him at bay. But it didn't matter.
[...] but nothing tempered his fascination. He was coming to accept nothing ever would.
Soraya was the only thing that had ever come close to destroying him. She was his torment and his peril.
For all the hurt he causes, his unrelenting pursuit and bone-deep need of her will make you hate yourself, because you want him to find happiness, to find peace.
With a mighty groan, he unleashed his passion into the welcoming darkness of her womb.
His greed to be the eternal center of her world faded as bone-deep pity overwhelmed him.
Honor had never been a particularly hardy plant in the fetid garden of his soul, but somewhere in the last weeks, it had set roots he couldn’t eradicate.
I will cradle every second of Kylemore and Verity's painful love for the rest of my life.
P.S.: Miss Campbell, if you ever read this, know I would pay what I did for the book if only you could write an epilogue. [image]...more
This isn't my first Maxwell book. I enjoyed A Scandalous Marriage even though it was hard to get iIntriguing beginning, chaotic middle, insipid ending
This isn't my first Maxwell book. I enjoyed A Scandalous Marriage even though it was hard to get into.
I love guardian/ward pairings, so just the mention of it on the blurb was enough to lure me in.
The beginning: establishing the hero, the goal, and the curse
When the paranormal element in this book presented itself, I debated whether to continue. I don't like pnr/fantasy in my HRs.
But the hero was intriguing. A rebel by circumstance, but a responsible man at his core, the author does a decent job of showing us a flawed man.
Besides that, the goal of this bookー finding his signet ringー is neatly established. At the same time, so is his principal hurdle: the curse of good luck/bad luck. He always wins at cards, yet all responsible investments become a loss.
With those elements, we move into the book.
The middle: chaos and unresolved threads
Unlike the well-established hero, the author throws at us a half-formed heroine. Her circumstances and background are given to us while the most convoluted storyline is unfolding.
There's a scorned courtesan, a runaway roommate, poison, second meeting, forced seduction, Irish (we are told over and over again this fact) goons trying to kill the hero, dead people, runaway carriage and all of that is the first night they meet.
The author makes such a big deal of the hero waking up sober for the first time in his life and him having such a clear head but needing alcohol to sooth his craving. That eventually went nowhere. He stays an alcoholic, I guess.
There also the heroine repeatedly mentioning her horrible trauma (in her head), but it never felt as if she was profoundly changed by it. It also never quite fit the story. It felt more like gratuitous violence than a tool or hurdle to the characters.
Then there were all the 'smart' questions the heroine kept asking. Things like:
➤ Why now? ➤ Who benefits? ➤ How could have known X, Y or Z?
Yep, those are the super smart questions she asks that make the hero take her with him (attempted kidnapping forgotten). He needs her 'refreshing perspective'.
The ending: red herrings don't count if they are the culprits
The hero suspects two different entities. Who then go and act suspiciously. We, the readers, think "obviously these have to be red herrings since there are the most on the nose shady people around" .
Until the end reveals that nope, it was those entities from the beginning...
Final thoughts
This is one of the weakest heroes I've read in a long time. He's dense, pretty useless and not particularly romantic. The fact he's whipped by everyone around him makes it even worse.
The heroine is around only to ask obvious questions.
The original paranormal element becomes the noose the book hang itself on: The author chose "Beware innocence" as the warning and the darn thing would fit, even it cost the book its life. Which it did.
Finally, Christmas was a tiny insignificant detail at the end of the book... Why use it in such an important place as the title?
I read the first four books years ago and I remember being titillated by the darker themes and descriptions in the stories. They were my first foray iI read the first four books years ago and I remember being titillated by the darker themes and descriptions in the stories. They were my first foray into less than flowery romance.
When it came time to read book 5, though, I was apprehensive. The darker themes from the other books had all been outside the romance. This book would brush them inside the romance. I judged myself not ready for it and forgot about this series until a few days ago.
The book is most definitely not a stand-alone. The stories are overlapped and previous characters make more than cameo appearances.
The FMC, Lena, was rescued one or two books ago (can't remember exactly) and is suffering from the abuse her dead husband inflicted upon her. She is paradoxically shrewish and terrified.
The MMC, Alex, has had to force down his own trauma for years and empathizes with Lena's sufferings. (view spoiler)[He's coped with his trauma by becoming a Dom and engaging in pain play. (hide spoiler)] He is very attracted to her but believes himself to be the opposite of what she needs.
Story happens and they are forced to wed. She very easily opens up to him and she slowly regains her confidence and strength. It was beautifully written.
The hero's healing journey on the other hand was a travesty. Hints are given here and there about his past but it took so long for us to be told what it was that by that point I really didn't care. Turns out, his wasn't as bad as the hints were implying. While it's abhorrent to compare traumas in real life, this is fiction, so compared to what the FMC endured for years his was not that terrible. But what made it so much worse was the fact that his confession was made in the form of a paragraph, at the 89% mark, with a ticking clock 'cause they have like two minutes before they need to go rescue people. Next thing we know, he can sleep through the night holding his wife because speaking the words once was enough for his nightmares and his extremely violent sleep-fighting to completely disappear.
I guess the power of wuv' [image]
is stronger than watching a character get better through care, trust and a safe environment (also, it heals sexual preferences that have been prominent in one's life since they were sixteen years old) [image]
What's really annoying is that we see that for the FMC and not the MMC, which is a subtle way of saying men need to 'suck it up' and I hate that message.
Also, with time, I've come to realize I prefer real historical figures to be casually mentioned and barring that, to make brief cameo appearances only. I don't like it when they are key instruments in the plot. It takes away from the fiction/escapism for me. I'm not certain if the King David in this stories is David I of Scotland because he was also warring with a nephew, but the nephew (according to Wikipedia) was not named 'The Stewart'. However, I still didn't like how important he is to the plot.
I'll be stopping this series. I think I either outgrew it or (more likely) I've read better authors that deal with darker elements. ...more
I love starchy heroes. They are so repressed that when they explode they are the most fun. This one... did and didn't.
He fell in love with the heroine I love starchy heroes. They are so repressed that when they explode they are the most fun. This one... did and didn't.
He fell in love with the heroine slowly and boringly. Why? Because his 'explosion' had already happened. We didn't get to see it. Only the aftermath. He never really does anything impulsive or reckless for the heroine.
The heroine was interesting and mostly resilient but she also wasn't particularly passionate.
Their love story was boring.
The plot was even more boring. Most of the book is small hints that lead nowhere. Why would the previous duke want to hide the lands might not be his? What happened with the radical guy that first hired her?
It was such an unexpected story. Most of the book is their courtship. One would think that sounds boring, but it's the opposite. It was sweet reading It was such an unexpected story. Most of the book is their courtship. One would think that sounds boring, but it's the opposite. It was sweet reading how the MCs fall in love and overcome the small obstacles before the main event (view spoiler)[though the kidnapping trope is overused, the fact that one of the villains drowned while trying to run away with the girl was hilarious. (hide spoiler)]
I have a minor complaint. I understand that we want all the heroes to be braw, but you just can't have them all being equally strong. Someone has to be weaker and that's okay. Maybe he knows healing or cooks food even though at the time men didn't do that. Maybe he carves or maybe he's deadly with an arrow. Maybe the one that's statistically has to be the smallest is also the one that gets the smallest heroine so it still feels as if she's getting a huge guy. But in this book, they're all giants and mega strong. When we get the description from the FM's POV, the hero is bigger than her brothers and when we get the MC's POV, one is bigger and the rest are pretty much the same......more
Character heavy story. How tragedy and time change people and how it affects a married couple's dynamic. Just wonderful!
(view spoiler)[ I just didn't fCharacter heavy story. How tragedy and time change people and how it affects a married couple's dynamic. Just wonderful!
(view spoiler)[ I just didn't find the stalker story that interesting, though. How did he keep himself financed for so long? Also, he had hidden himself for so long, how did he make such a crucial mistake as to sell one of 'Mac's' paintings? If he wanted to be 'discovered', why go about such a subtle way? (hide spoiler)]...more
HR Letter vs Sci-Fi Letter Fun Read For my own entertainment (because I never know what to choose from my TBR) I'll choose a book starting with the samHR Letter vs Sci-Fi Letter Fun Read For my own entertainment (because I never know what to choose from my TBR) I'll choose a book starting with the same letter from two genres: Historical Romance and Sci-Fi Romance, my two favorites.
This the HR for the letter M 3 stars ★★★☆☆
I know I read the first book in this series, but it was a while ago and couldn't remember the specifics. Which was fine. This book stood well alone.
This was a second chance romance... but sort of reversed.
The heroine has a crush on her childhood friend, but when she experiences more of the world, those childhood goggles are dropped and the infatuation dissipates.
The hero has always felt pressured into a future he didn't have a say in, and when the chance comes to not have to marry the heroine, he takes it.
Now, both of them free to look for partners, a new, more adult relationship develops between them. Rowena sees Lachlan as the men he is and not the idealize fairy-tale prince of her mind. Lachlan can finally see Rowena for the woman (though I use this word only because 18 is considered an adult the time) she has become and not the little girl she was.
Everything is going great. Rowena has to chance to compare the hero to two different suitors to be certain for her feelings. Which was great.
Then we get the obligatory kidnapping. And the story stopped making sense. Between the brogue, the cousins and brothers with the same last name, I had no idea what was happening.
Hundred of men looking for her and yet, without the help from the former enemy, they wouldn't have found her. Which was a bit disturbing. Also, for a guy that gets stabbed through and through, he can do a lot of moving... My point is, I disliked the whole thing enough that the story went from 4 to 3 stars.
Farah and Dougan meeting as children is everything I want it childhood friend romances.
Everything from their meeting to her teaching him to read to their handfasting ‧₊˚✧warmed my heart✧˚₊‧
Dougan learned much about himself in those two blissful years with his fairy. Namely that when he loved, he did it nothing short of absolutely. Obsessively, even.
I was felled.Undone.Ruined.
˚₊ · »-:(→ How not to do a reunion
After that emotional beginning, what else should I expect but the most ground-shaking reaction when Dorian, "the man that grows up listening to all the stories about Dougan's Fairy", finds said elusive Fairy after 17 years.
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(okay, the grammar on that sentence is iffy, but stay with me)
KB is trying very hard to do a plot twist that was just not twisting.
➵ For a first time romance reader, maybe. But for a hardcore romance reader such as yours truly? It didn't work.
Because she's going for the (view spoiler)["secret identity" (hide spoiler)] twist, she sacrifices emotional depth.
Dorian should be losing his mind, not
Blackwell’s demeanor remained unperturbed, but Farah noted that his wide shoulders were tense beneath his fine tailored jacket, and little rivulets of sweat beaded at his temple and behind his jaw.
And, let's be honest. Is he tense because he found her or because he's in an enclosed space being touched against his will?
➵ Don't even get me started on his attitude at the castle, he's way too composed. Especially after she confesses she took food to Dougan until the day he died.
“No.” He retreated a step, staggered was more like it, giving her the moment she needed to gather her courage.
Farah stood, her head barely reaching his cravat so she had to crane her neck to look up at him. “You see, Mr. Blackwell, your kind are not the only ones who keep their promises. I, too, made a promise years ago, that I’d never let Dougan Mackenzie go hungry, and I kept that promise up until the day he … the day … he…” Her composure finally broke and she retreated to stand in front of the desk, swallowing frantic gulps of emotion.
He allowed it, gathering his own armor to him in front of her eyes in the form of cavalier tranquility.
That's it?! noooo. give me moreeee.
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˚₊ · »-♡→ How to do a reveal scene
That scene at the wall?
“Follow the devastation,”
NOBODY SAID THE PATH WOULD LEAD TO MY OWN DEVASTATION
He stood higher, too, these days, impossibly so. But this sable-haired man was once a sable-haired boy she’d known better than any other, and he still retreated to cold stone walls in times of crisis.
The posture of defeat didn’t diminish the potency of his masculinity.
Here they were again. A cold storm. A stone wall. A wounded boy. A lonely girl.
“Tell me why you’re crying?” She whispered the first words she’d ever spoken to him.
And he gave her the same reply, without looking up. “Go. Away.”
I AM felled.Undone.Ruined.
I'm crying just writing this!
Bryne just took my heart and shredded it to pieces, because after all these years, after this
“My soul recognized your soul—and was reborn. I knew there was something behind those eyes, beneath those gloves, that would give back to me what I’ve been missing all these years.”
Dougan isn't strong enough.
“Why capture me and bind my life to yours if you planned to cast me away? What’s the bloody point?”
After two months of separation, of them not even exchanging a single letter, Dorian is suddenly ready to give her everything? His very real and crippling trauma and phobia are overcome?
➵ It's still emotional, I still sniffed when he says
“Touch me, Fairy.” The words struggled out of him, like they forced their way through a tight throat. “You can—reach for me.”
➵ But their wedding night and their coupling after the trial is so visceral. The change from zero to healed takes some of the emotion out of them. Did she just want them to have a few BDSM scenes? Because that's not how I read them.
Farah might like being seen by him, but her need to reach for him is stated over and over. It's not a natural kink for them.
➵ That he overcomes his extreme phobia for her is the first step of them becoming a real adult couple.
➵ That he's so overwhelmed with his need for her he takes her with such brutal intensity is a major romantic development in their relationship. He needs to touch her but he still can't stand to be touched.
➵ That after their encounter at the wall, he lets her touch him but still pushes her away reinforces how real and crippling his trauma is.
My point is, Dorian healing so easily somehow cheapens major plot points in the book. By changing his touch phobia from detesting all touch to feeling like he taints her
“Don’t you see? Everywhere my fingertips touch your sacred flesh, blood and filth is left behind like so much hot tar. Impossible to remove. I can’t do that to you, Farah.”
the author is negating his progress as well as all those time we're shown he can't even shake a hand or grab something that is being passed to him.
I'm not saying the scene isn't poignant and emotional and even hot af.
He should have known better. This was his Fairy. His soul remembered. He was a killer, a violent man, but he’d slit his own throat before harming a hair on her head.
I just wished we had a seen more natural progression with his healing.
˚₊ · »-♡→ Final thoughts
I still adore Dorian and Farah. They are meant for each other, no question.
But having read her other works, I just know she has done better. That she has couples I like better.
So, think of my rating as 3.5 ★ but rounded down
Thank you Paige and Gloria for going through this Dark HR journey with me ‧✩°.⋆☾
See you soon for our next book ♡૮꒰ ྀི >⸝⸝⸝< ྀི꒱ა...more
In my eyes, it's perfect. It has everything a romance needs while maintaining the historical feel.
I'm not blind to what other peoI. Adore. This. Book.
In my eyes, it's perfect. It has everything a romance needs while maintaining the historical feel.
I'm not blind to what other people -hard, cold, cynical people*- might consider flaws. (*says the black-hearted woman that rants in half her reviews)
I will enlist them here (but I don't care about them, because I. Adore. This. Book.)
※ Insta-lust (hero to heroine) ※ Some suspension of disbelief is needed to accept the circumstances the heroine comes from and where she ends up ※ Autism being equated to heightened mathematical abilities and perfect recall ※ How easily she is befriended by Isabella (hero's sister in law)
Maybe there are others, but I can't think of them.
Lynsay Sands is one of those authors people either really like or can't read more than once.
I will admit right here I love her.
Yes, I'm aware she's fLynsay Sands is one of those authors people either really like or can't read more than once.
I will admit right here I love her.
Yes, I'm aware she's formulaic. If you boil down her stories (at least the historical ones, I haven't read her vampire ones) they all follow the same pattern. Yet, being a mood reader, I'm comforted by this fact. She's like my highland Amanda Quick. I know what I'm getting and I know I'll have a high chance of enjoying her.
I read the Devil of the Highlands a long time ago. The MCs' first encounter stuck to me years later.
A few days ago, I felt like re-reading it and have been putting it off to build my own anticipation and finally pick it up yesterday. I finished it in one sitting, laughing at some of the ridiculous scenarios all over again.
[...] but needn't have bothered. The horse had no interest in being gored.
Man and beast are of a single mind:
[image]
Eveline and Cullen's progress was so natural in this story. She was a bit too eager to have a safe place to belong and he too used to keeping his own counsel. They were bound to have some hiccups along the way. How they go about solving them was so adorable to watch, though.
The mystery was sprinkled around just enough it was more of a push to aid their romance than a hindrance. It either brought them closer or forced them to communicate more. Great balance.
It doesn't end on a cliffhanger per se since the MCs' story is concluded, but the next story begins just as this one is ending. ...more
Izzah ꒰Ｒｏｍａｎｃｅ愛好家 ಇ Duchess of Cabria꒱
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