AUTHOR: Sarah Winn
PUBLISHER: Whiskey Creek Press Torrid
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 31k)
GENRE: Historical erotic romance
COST: $5.49
Crippled Lord Kendrick wants an heir. In an attempt to keep the bloodline pure, he arranges for his young, beautiful wife to seduce his healthy nephew. They try to drug Daniel, but when that eventually fails, Isabel is forced to come up with a lie hiding her identity in order to keep from being punished. Neither she nor Daniel expects the sex or relationship they find to be as rewarding as it is, but when Daniel learns of her duplicity, his fury knows no bounds. Can he forgive her before it’s too late? Is it even possible for them to have a future with her married to his uncle?
My good luck with a historical last week has me looking through other historicals I’ve got to read, but unfortunately the quality just isn’t quite as high. I’d heard good things about this author, but I’m afraid I must have picked the wrong title of hers to read. The only thing this one really had going for it was the period detail. That was nice. Unfortunately, I don’t read historical romances in order to get steeped in atmosphere.
My problems arose primarily with the hero. Daniel is young, handsome, and seems fairly with it in spite of Kendrick’s private assertions that he’s an idiot. He cottons on to the drugging fairly quick and then when he falls for her, it’s really quite sweet. All of that vanishes when he discovers the truth. Now, I can’t blame him for being pissed off. After all, he just found out that basically he’s been used as a stud service for the past week, and it was done primarily to bilk him out of his inheritance. I’m actually okay with his reaction.
Fast-forward a year later. Daniel ends up inheriting anyway. He’s angrier than ever at Isabel, and decides to force her to be his public mistress, to shame her for what she did to him because he’s convinced she’s a whore anyway. Daniel becomes very unlikable at this point, even though I understand why he feels like he does. I can even go along with his plans, because what I’m hoping is that eventually he’s actually going to listen to each and every single person who tells him what an innocent Isabel is and how awful Kendrick was. As I’m waiting, however, he gets meaner and more unreasonable until Isabel feels she has no choice but to play the seductress in order to make the best of her new awful situation. I actually start feeling sorry for her even though she’s been an absolute wimp for the whole story. But when Daniel finally makes the change, it’s out of the blue. There is no gradual understanding, no really telling event, no way for me to believe it at all.
It’s frustrating when characters do such a turnaround. It doesn’t help that the prose is fairly amateurish, with inelegant headhopping and silly mistakes – such as slipping verb tense within a single sentence. I can’t recommend this one, not even for historical lovers. I think you’ll be far too frustrated by the hero to enjoy it.
| Readability | 6/10 – Mild headhopping and scattered technical errors, as well as scattered characterizations ends up making this more muddlesome than it should be. |
| Hero | 4/10 – Showed real potential until he turned into a complete ass in the second half of the story. |
| Heroine | 6/10 – Wimpy and ultimately inconsistent |
| Entertainment value | 5/10 – This had real potential until the HEA out of nowhere and a hero who turned into a jerk. |
| World building | 8/10 – Very nice period detail draws a reader in. |
| TOTAL: | 29/50 |
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