No Sweeter Ecstacy [Paperback]

I bought several of Phoebe Conn's books at once and am now regretting it. This is the second book of her's in a row that is just terrible.

I have to say that this female character lead, Genevieve, is the most annoying, spoiled, stupid, vain, totally unappealing "heroine?" ever. Marc is not much better. He is led around by a part of his anatomy that cares only about Genevieve's looks. I don't care about how they try to make it look like there is depth to their relationship because over and over and over again, the fact that Genevieve is so beautiful and that every man that sees her wants her so much they are tempted to almost rape her gets ridiculous. Now that I've said that let me give an overview of the story.

Marc is a ship captain in port who decides to go to the local brothel for a little entertainment. He catches this woman as she crawls out of a window. She immediately begs him to help her because she has lost her memory, but is convinced she is not a whore but a lady. Yeah right, she may not be charging for it but they immediately go to Mark's ship and have sex within minutes of meeting but she's convinced she's not a whore. Next, we find out that the brothel owner bought the unconcious woman from a very ugly Mexican man who claims he rescued her from being raped while her male companion was murdered. Marc decides to take her to his home to protect her by being his mistress until he can find out who she is. Upon their arrival, his neighbor Miguel immediately recognizes her as an actress named Genevieve who was married to a man named Ray. Miguel is in love with Genevieve and convinces her he will take her to find out what happened to her and Ray, but he secretly hopes to have her fall in love with him and divorce Ray if Ray isn't already dead. Marc decides he wants Genevieve and warns her that Miguel is abusive and evil, but she doesn't believe him. He ends up going along on the search for Ray as well.

We soon learn how stupid and selfish Genevieve is by repeating stupid mistakes throughout the book. Ignoring Marc's warning about Miguel, Genevieve is felt up, kidnapped and nearly raped by him and still follows him to find out about Ray. We learn that Genevieve's answer to problems is to run away from them, use her looks and wiles to get what she wants from men and then accuse them of not supporting women's rights. Even Esteban, Marc's brother, figures that one out and accuses her of being a flighty bitch. She denies it only to leave Marc at a friend's house to go on a search with Miguel the next morning.

Marc is not much better, he is so shallow he falls in love for the wrong reasons. The only reason I gave this book 2 stars is the lesser sub story of Marc's brother Esteban and his wife Camila which seems to have more depth but just isn't enough to help the rest of the story.

Wealthy sea captain Marc Aragon rescued Genevieve Le Sage as she was climbing out the window of a brothel. She had lost her memory and didn't even know who she was, but she was sure she wasn't a whore. While Marc was sympathetic to her plight, he felt it was his due to be repaid for his help in finding out about her past by becoming his mistress.

I disliked the attitudes and actions of Ms. Conn's characters. I really didn't like it when both Marc and Genevieve always kept adding 2 and 2 and getting 6! They kept on jumping to the worst conclusions and then suffered through 'tormenting agonies' because they didn't immediately discuss their problems. They don't communicate very well either: Marc EXPECTS Genevieve TO KNOW that certain actions of hers hurt his pride/feelings and made him angry; on the other hand, Genevieve can't see that Marc's actions are petty and childish. Also, I find it TOTALLY DISGUSTING that the hero actually SULKS(and not in a cute way, at that) whenever things don't go his way. He acts more like a spoiled brat! Another point of contention is that we are talking about Californio families here which means that they're Catholic. Therefore, divorce, even in the gold rush era, is a definite no-no for Catholics!

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see both reviews  2.0 out of 5 stars