AUTHOR: Dawn Halliday
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 20k)
GENRE: Historical erotic romance
COST: $4.45
After fleeing the man she’s convinced will break her heart because he only thinks of her as a mistress, Julia Beaumont attempts to rebuild her life, only to find herself thrust into her ex-lover’s path again one year later. For his part, Sir Devlin Vaughn wants to teach a lesson to the woman who captures his thoughts and turned him into
I never know what to expect with these EC novellas. It’s that feeling of having gotten two or three shocks after stepping into a newly carpeted room, and then being afraid to touch anything else for fear of getting shocked again. Will this hurt? Will this? I’m relieved to say that this time, I didn’t get the shock.
I couldn’t stop reading it. When I checked to see what the word count was for the purposes of this review, I was shocked to see it was over 20k. That was the fastest 20k I’ve read in a long time. Even the sections that made me scowl were fast. Credit for that absolutely has to go to the author. Her style is smooth and effortless, and even though use of modern terminology in some of the erotic scenes jarred me a little bit, it wasn’t nearly enough to pull me out of the flow.
Dev, even when he was pissed off and holding Julia at gunpoint, was sexy as hell. The whole intentness of his personality was mesmerizing for me, the way he honed in on the moment and everything else be damned. Of course, that’s also his major flaw and contributes to one of my issues with the book, but I think the fact that much of the story is told from his POV – or it felt like it was, anyway – is the biggest reason I was as sucked in as I was.
I wasn’t sucked in because of Julia. The biggest problem this story had was that much of the conflict that’s separating these two happens off the page. We hear about it second and thirdhand. It weakens the storytelling, and when the bulk of your heroine’s character is built by offscreen events, it’s hard to connect with her. I think the sex would have definitely been hotter, too, if I was more emotionally connected with her. It was still hot, but it was hardly the driving thrust of the story for me. How unusual for an Ellora’s Cave story! But honestly, my enjoyment of this came from Dev’s anger and then honest (if a little thick-headed) confusion. I believed him. I felt for him. Because of him, I wish the author had made this a full novel complete with all the details of Julia’s life in that missing year and more about Devlin instead of this tiny snippet I got. What a rich story that would have been…
| Readability | 8/10 – I’m not sure I’ll ever adjust to seeing modern terminology in historical erotica, but when it’s this easy to get sucked in, I can overlook it for now |
| Heroine | 6/10 – I would have known her better if I’d been able to read her story instead of being told about it |
| Hero | 8/10 – A little thick, but still magnetic |
| Entertainment value | 8/10 – In spite of how much more I think this could have been, it was the fastest 20k I’ve read in a long time |
| World building | 7/10 – The story’s brevity means detail is lacking |
| TOTAL: | 37/50 |
2 comments:
Yep read this one too. I hate being told and not shown in a book. It's great to show that they have some history but when almost everything is related after the fact... ugh.
So this would have been a half hearted review from me.
I suspect part of the reason I didn't give this a lower score was because it truly didn't want to make me want to gouge my eyes out at the end of it. It feels like too many stories have done that recently, lol.
Post a Comment