Anne Stuart's "Reckless"

Grade: A

passion rating: hot

“Move your bleedin’arse,” Miss Charlotte Spenser’s maid, Meggie, said to her.”

With these opening words, Ms. Stuart, in the second book in her historical Rohan trilogy, pulls the reader in and doesn’t let her go until the very lovely last line. The series tells the story of three generations of Rohan men. The sexy anti-hero of this tale is Adrian, the son of the lovers in Ruthless, the first book in this series.

And when I say sexy, I mean sexy. Adrian, like his father, is a member of orgy-oriented, debauched Heavenly Host, a clutch of aristocrats who gather for all sorts of scandalous pleasures. Adrian lives life as recklessly as possible. He lives for pleasure and doesn’t care about its cost. He is “gorgeous, delightfully wicked and… the very devil in bed.” Women flock to him and, frankly, so would I.

Much to her dismay, our heroine Charlotte Spenser has been smitten with Adrian for years. She’s sure he’d never look twice at her — she sees herself as a too tall, too old spinster with no beauty, wealth, or charm. Adrian only dallies with dazzling beauties and yet, every time Charlotte sees Adrian, she can’t stop watching him — something Adrian has noticed.

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Anne Stuart's "Shameless"

Grade: B+

passion rating: hot

Shameless is the fourth in Ms. Stuart’s The House of Rohan series and, while it’s not as stellar as the first two in the series, Ruthless and Reckless, it’s every bit as good as the third, Breathless. And, because it’s by Anne Stuart, it’s inherently a damn good read.

The hero of Shameless, Benedick Rohan, is the brother of the heroine (Miranda) of the last Rohan tale. In Breathless, Benedick was last seen married to a woman he loved with one son and another child on the way. In Shameless, somewhat confusingly, Benedick has now lost two wives to childbirth and has no children. (No explanation is given for what happened to his first son.) In Shameless, Benedick is a rake who no longer believes in love although he, like all in the men in the Rohan series, is a big fan of sexual congress in all its varied forms.

As the story begins, Benedick has come to London to do two things: find a biddable, boring bride and get laid. The first task is a necessary chore—he’s an eldest son and must have an heir. The second task he plans to accomplish with the help of one of London’s most talented fellatrices, Violet Highstreet. Benedick sends Vi a note asking her to come and attend to him. Violet dashes to his side, sinks to her knees and… suddenly, the door to Viscount Rohan’s salon flies open, admitting a strident woman he’s never seen before. The “virago” sternly tells Violet to “get up” and stop degrading herself! Violet protests she likes degrading herself in this particular fashion. The woman at the door, Lady Charity Carstairs, in a long-suffering voice, reminds Violet she has chosen to leave behind  her livelihood of salacious acts and instead reside in Carstairs House, a home for fallen women. Violet rather ungraciously opts for housing over whoring and, much to Benedick’s sorrow, leaves his house with the all no-play and all no-fun Lady Charity.

The widowed Lady Charity Carstairs, at age 29,  is a genuine prude. Her marriage to a much older man did nothing to convince her of the pull of passion and, as a widow, she’s had one brief, pitiable affair that left her sure men have nothing to offer. She’s confident, or so she tells herself, she’s content improving the lives of the gaggle of fallen women she saves from the streets.  So, despite thinking Benedick Rohan might be the best looking man she’s ever seen, she wants nothing to do with him until one of her “girls” is brutally beaten.

Charity is sure the girl was so abused by the nefarious group of upper-class debauchees who form the Heavenly Host. The Host has figured in each of the Rohan books and, though the group has always been unsettling and seriously off-putting, they’ve never been truly criminal and violent until now. Under their new mysterious leader, not only has the Host begun viciously beating unwilling young women, rumor has it they plan to sacrifice a virgin on the next full moon.

Charity asks Benedick for his help destroying the Heavenly Host, a group his family founded years ago. Initially, Benedick, who has nothing to do with the group, doesn’t care the Host have become so dissolute. Then Charity informs him his younger brother Brandon, a post-war wreck of a man, is involved with the group’s horrific plans. Worried for his opium addicted brother—and drawn to Charity--, Benedick agrees to work with her to destroy the Host.

I wasn’t crazy about the suspense plot in Shameless. It was clear to me who the mysterious head of the Host was and I had a hard time buying Benedick’s brother Brandon doing anything truly evil.  I was also bored with the Heavenly Host. They have been in every Rohan novel and, at this point, they’re rather like garish wallpaper—you see them but other than making you cringe, they don’t have much impact on things that matter. Additionally, I was saddened there wasn’t Ms. Stuart’s trademark Rohan secondary romance in this novel. While it’s clear there’s something between Brandon and Emma, Charity’s best friend and former madam extraordinaire, nothing of real interest passes between them in this book. I hoped for more for Brandon and Emma in this tale.

But the primary love story, I loved. Charity has only had unsatisfactory sex and has never experienced romantic love. Benedick has had a superb sex life and has truly loved—he adored his first wife. Charity holds her heart apart because she doesn’t know what she’s missing; Benedick, his because he’s terrified of the pain that comes with loving and losing. As the two move into each other’s arms and emotions, they both slowly learn the value of risking one’s heart. Ms. Stuart always writes well about the way passion can bind. In Shameless, she writes not only about the power of sex but of the joy of companionship, and of the pleasure in finding that special someone you most enjoy sharing your day—and life—with. In this book, she writes convincingly of falling sweetly as well as passionately in love.  It’s a treat to see Ms. Stuart, who does dark romance so well, write with great verve and skill about a lighter kind of love.

Lori Foster's "Trace of Fever"

Grade: D

passion rating: hot

Trace of Fever is the second in the Men Who Walk the Edge of Honor series by prolific author Lori Foster. In the preface, Ms. Foster writes the series is of “uber-alpha hunks featuring private mercenaries who are big, capable, a little dangerous and [she hopes] oh-so-sexy.” I didn’t read the first book, When You Dare and, after cringing my way through Trace of Fever, I doubt I ever will.

The hunky mercenary hero of this book is Trace Rivers, and while he certainly is big, capable, and dangerous, I didn’t find him a whit sexy. That said, he’s vastly more alluring than this tale’s heroine Priscilla Patterson. I can’t remember the last time I disliked a heroine as much as I disliked Priss. To be fair, she’s such a poorly written character — she has about four different personalities in this one book — perhaps it’s not her fault I found her whiny, stupid, self-absorbed, and often ridiculous. Halfway through the book, I found myself hoping she’d have an UEA (Unhappily Ever After) ending!


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Elizabeth Essex's "A Sense of Sin"

Grade: B+

sensuality rating: hot

As I read Ms. Essex’s new historical romance, A Sense of Sin, I thought of words by Angel (he of the iconic show Buffy the Vampire Slayer) as he contemplates his intricate feelings for Buffy. He muses, “Passion, it lies in all of us, sleeping...waiting...and though unwanted...unbidden...it will stir...open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us...guides us...passion rules us all, and we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love...the clarity of hatred...and the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear.” Rupert Delacorte, the Vincent Darling, hero of Ms. Essex's lovely new novel, could have easily uttered those lines.

The story begins at a ball in Dartmouth where Del has come hunting Celia Burke, a girl whom the ton adoringly calls "the Ravishing Miss Burke." Del plans to seduce, without a touch, then devastate this young woman he’s never met. He blames Celia for the suicide of his younger sister Emily who had been Celia’s closest friend. His passionate hatred for Celia wars with the instant pull he feels toward her and the deep affection he had for her — via anecdotes told in his sister’s letters — before Emily’s death. Del is a seething, simmering sensualist who, from the moment he sees Celia descending the ballroom stairs, is overwhelmed by the way Celia makes him feel.


Celia is equally drawn to Del. She too had fallen more than a little in love with him via the letters he wrote to Emily. When she finally meets him in all his tall, golden gorgeousness, she feels, for the first time in her life, profound physical desire. For all her external beauty, Celia is essentially a scholar. Her great passion in life, prior to listening to Del tell her all the ways he’d like to strip her naked and pleasure her, has been botany and scientifically cataloging the freshwater plants of Devon. She’s not just inexperienced; she’s unaware of the lure of the sexual world. Men, the boring aristocrats who court her for her face and family name, barely register with her… until she encounters Del. As he, using just his shockingly erotic words, whispers to Celia about desire, Celia discovers the power of passion.


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Sarah MacLeans' "Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart"

Grade: D

passion rating: hot

Like Ms. MacLean's series, this review is by the numbers. Here are eleven reasons for my disinterest in Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart.

1) The title is overwrought. Ms. Maclean’s trio of linked books is the Love by Numbers trilogy, and the titles all contain a little rhyme. I found this one to be particularly odd. I rarely think of scandals as something one starts. Every time, I picked up the book, I lapsed into thoughts of other titular options. Eleven Secrets to Tell to Marry Very Well. Eleven Scenes to Throw to Catch a Duke as a Beau. Eleven Kisses to Bestow to Become a Noble’s Ho. I suspect had the book been more engaging, I wouldn’t have been so distracted by its silly name.

2) The writing is breathless to the point of annoyance. Ms. MacLean relies on italics and/or sentence fragments to show her characters’ drama-laden inner thoughts. Paragraphs like this one made me wince.

“No. They were in a public place. He had to stop. She deserved better. They had to stop.Before he ruined her."

3) The book is written with the assumption the reader has read the two novels that proceed it. I hadn’t and thus had a hard time following the plot and the lives of many of the characters.

4) The heroine, Juliana Fiori, the daughter of a dead Italian merchant and a disgraced bitchy English aristocrat, is so stereotypically Italian she’s almost a caricature. She’s tempestuous, wild, impulsive, and voluble. She, twice, knees a man in his inguine. She is, just by being, a scandal. Juliana didn’t seem real to me — I felt as though she were symbolic, a representation of passion, rather than a genuine woman.
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