Helpful Score: 2
Only 2 stars in my opinion! Very steamy with language I don't expect in a romance and a "hero" with no redeeming qualities that I could see. He married when he was 19 and she was 15 and left the country for 12 years to make a fortune "ruining lives" with the opium trade. He returns to produce an heir and doesn't know how to deal with the wife who has loved him from afar. Why did she love him? That question was never answered beyond he was good looking, so this book did not work for me at all!
Helpful Score: 2
This was one of those gentle reads that easily moves from scene to scene without much excitement. I kept waiting for the story to pick up the pace, but it never really did. On the flip side, the sex was well done, rather on the spicy side, and a somewhat weird transition in writing styles.
Richard was not your typical hero with a womanizing past; instead, he dealt in the seedier side of the opium trade (a unique background for a hero). He didn't have a clue how to handle his wife, Emma, and all the time he was away from her, he didn't even think of her. Emma longed for Richard's return, and eventually made an independent life for herself. I was disappointed and frustrated that she succumbed to him too quickly after his return. What happened to her fighting spirit? She should have made him pay a little longer and a little harder before any reconciliation took place.
So definitely, this was a story of seduction, a very slow one, as Richard gets to know Emma. Too bad it was rather lackluster. 3.2 stars.
Richard was not your typical hero with a womanizing past; instead, he dealt in the seedier side of the opium trade (a unique background for a hero). He didn't have a clue how to handle his wife, Emma, and all the time he was away from her, he didn't even think of her. Emma longed for Richard's return, and eventually made an independent life for herself. I was disappointed and frustrated that she succumbed to him too quickly after his return. What happened to her fighting spirit? She should have made him pay a little longer and a little harder before any reconciliation took place.
So definitely, this was a story of seduction, a very slow one, as Richard gets to know Emma. Too bad it was rather lackluster. 3.2 stars.
Helpful Score: 1
Clare didn't endear the hero to readers at all. Nothing in the book adequately explains his lightening-fast transformation from an indifferent, unfaithful drug dealer to a devoted, besotted husband. In most scenes he is sullen and overbearing. The sacrifices required to make the marriage work are all Emma's, and although Mansfield expresses regret for the lives he destroyed as an opium dealer, he pays no real penance. In fact, he and his wife live in high style using profits from his trade.
His best attributes are his looks, his extra-large, uh, "manhood," and his friendship with a charming business associate--the hero in the story's secondary plot (whose heroine is more interesting than Emma).
If you like steamy, frequent love scenes you'll still enjoy this book, as long as you overlook its weak plot and characters.
His best attributes are his looks, his extra-large, uh, "manhood," and his friendship with a charming business associate--the hero in the story's secondary plot (whose heroine is more interesting than Emma).
If you like steamy, frequent love scenes you'll still enjoy this book, as long as you overlook its weak plot and characters.
