Especially after having recerntly re-read Children of the Storm, the characters in this book all seem so flat compared with their usual panache. Also, Ramses having meaningless sex with a new stranger while everyone else in peril, including his beloved Nefret, is the height of bad taste and not true to the character at all. Daria has no redeeming features and the psychobabble to explain Nefret's supposed frigidity is just too terrible for words.
Really, I want to see them solve mysteries, have adventures, not their romantic troubles. And making Sethos the master criminal toothless is just to silly for words, and also foreshadows the friendships between the characters which chronologically comes way later in the series.
If she is going to go back in time, why not to the good old early days with Ramses as a baby/child!! Instead of making them all seem so puerile when they are in their 20s.

I have read and enjoyed the Carpathian novels in the past, about 5 or 6 of them, but this one truly disgusted me.

Gregori the Dark one has engineered Savannah in the womb by making his blood part of hers when he helps his mother Raven. He has also tricked her into intimacy for years as a child by posing as her beloved pet wolf. Really pervy.

We are told that Carpathian cannot live without their lifemate and will go over to evil if they do not have her. He is so close to the edge he might as well be over it. He has waited twenty three years for her after all-though after a thousand of not turning bad we find this hard to believe.

Despite Savannah's continuous protests, he takes her as his lover and partner. But there is no tender lovemaking-he nearly rips her to pieces in every sense of the word in an appalling scene which goes on for over 50 pages!

I do get the blood, really, but the gratuitous violence and rape in this book is simply not what I expect from a romance.

Nor does his terrible behavior get mitigated in anyway when he uses his saliva with all of its Carpathian healing properties to 'heal' her and of course make the moves on her at the same time. Really graphic, take my word for it.

There is just too much nonconsensual sexual activity in this book for any sensible modern woman reader to be comfortable with. I gave up after 100 pages, the book was so crude, violent and graphic in its portrayal of his betrayals and rape of the heroine. I will not even go into the terrible repetitive writing, with the use of hunger, need and erotic used about 4 times on every page. The shocking violence should be enough to deter any ture seeker of a romance read.

This couple had nothing in common except being members of the human race, though with the way they behaved toward each other that was often debatable.
The author struggled hard to get Rafe to have depth, but he just seemed a shallow playboy, and the potential rape, torture murder was just too heavy handed, especially juxtaposed as it was with all of her absurd angst over the slimy worm who let her down. I hated the heroine, the near love making scenes just got to be too much after a while. By the time thy did the deed I cold not have cared less about either of them. With the way the heroine behaved, it was a wonder no one put her in the madhouse before that, she was such a shrew. A badly written failure.

I adored Zarek and Astrid, two people who have had a tough time for different reasons. Zarek in particular is the tortured hero, a slave, who becomes a toy to Artemis for reasons which are unclear until the end of the book.
No spoilers!
Her reasons for treating him like this are terrible. And the people he thinks are friends have betrayed him.

Astrid is supposed to judge him but she can see with the heart if not with his eyes. Zarek is a brilliant hero, an angry child acting out wanting love and affirmation and not getting it because he does not think he is worth it until he meets Astrid.

The emotional intensity between the couple is first rate and well worth reading the book for.

The rest of the stuff about Gods, goddesses, heroes with various types of powers, well, I have to admit it was a-confusing, and b- I could not have cared less.

It took SO long for Astrid and Zarek to get together that the author really could have started with the attempt to kill him and Astrid saving him, and lost the first 80 pages in the process. we could have been told the background story in only a few pages of internal recollection, or her walking through his dreams.

The dysfunctional and amatory relationship between Acheron and Artemis also fell flat. As did the fact that every single male hero in the book was supposed to be more goregous than the next.

Hey, Zarek is the hero-he needs no competition. The silly Simi the child demon also put a real damper on things, though I can see why she is in the book as the final way that Zarek is able to redeem himself.

Really, if the book were a lot less cluttered, it would be a heck of a lot shorter but more powerful. I really didn't care for a single one of the other characters, and they looked like window dressing only for the author to set up the rest of the Dark hunter series and milk it for all it was worth.

If you want an sexy read with a larger than life hero with a sarky attitude (think a black haired Spike in Buffy and Angel) then read this book.

But don't expect the rest of it to make sense or care if it does. Just cheer when the Happily and sensually ever after comes for Zarek at last. He sure deserves it.

The dialogue creaks and churns, the 'spark' between the couple flickers and dies, and the two people are really not very likeable. James is wooden, a duke who does what all day? They are supposed to be betrothed for two months, yet the supposed sizzle is contained for that long? And they hardly know each other, we never get to see his family?
The whole blackmail thing is predictable and trite.
James' cruelty is inexusable, as is his lack of explanaion to his wife.
The whole latter half of the book is a tragedy of errors and i ca't honestly say I know enough about these characters at the end to be interested in them enough to figure out why they fell in love. Or care.
Her second book is a lot better, sexy and witty. This one was passable, a tried and tested formula that in this case has the emotional intensity of a log.

I loved the chemistry between the couple and the way they meet, but once they are married all of the issues they should have thrashed out before they tied the knot come to the fore and threaten to pull them apart. As do the villains. Then the emphasis swings to them and we lose the sizzle and spark we had hoped for. It could have been a much better and more sexy book. The ending was also quite predicatable, and I am not impressed with Seger's sudden change of heart after all his brooding. Still a fast and fun read if you don't mind the obvious, creaking plot and a hero who has nothing to recommend him except being a rake.

I am not normally a fan of romantic comedy but this had the perfect touch. You meet the man of your dreams on a plane, and he turns out to be your new boss when you are back at work on Monday morning.

Only instead of telling a pack of lies to impress, she blurts out the whole truth about everything and every one in her life.

There are the white lies we tell, and things we don't say at all, to avoid hurting the people we care about, and then there are huge whoppers. Emma falls into the first category. Jack is so secretive she can't get him to talk at all.

When he finally does, he tells all about her, because he loves her. But with the most shcoing results.

The dramatic tension and romantic tension in the book is far better than any of her Shopaholic books. And I find Emma much more charming. the cast of characters who all get their comeuppance in one way or the other are priceless. One thing is for sure, you will never look at lawyers or little white lies the same way again, let alone thong underwear!

I loved Jack-he actually had personality compare with Luke in her other books. Fast paced and extremely funny! Enjoy!

The book was very uneven in a lot of respects, and as I can tell from the reviews, a lot of readers did not think they were getting Romantica. Romantica is romantic erotica, and it is one couple with lots of heated erotic situations.

I totally agree that the characters are inconsistent. I also think the villains were too. The whole romantic suspense genre seems to be predicated on the most unlikely people with nothing in common falling into bed together. Or in this case the wall, shower and so on.

It also includes several detailed scenes of the villain having sex which were very offputting, as was his voyeurism with the various camersa dotted around his house, and the explicit nature of said activities in various multiples and gender combinations.

Kensington should make it clear that the Brava line is going to contain material like this. A reader who forked out good money expect Nora Roberts would well be peeved, not to mention goggled-eyed or even offended.

Having said that, the one thing the book does having going for it is an interesting if totally Neanderthal hero, though I can' tbelieve he had not had a girl for five years since his brother was killed, he is so rampant. The drought becomes a flood, and Raine is swept away, but I would have liked to see her exercise a bit ore common sense and spine. The games they play are not always healthy or safe, and Seth not trusting her toward the end is pretty unforgiveable even if their sex life is stupendous.

The book is way too long, with lashings of detail on every movement of his body (where are HER feelings in all of this) and even the hero says himself they are like a pair of minks. Subtlty, nuance, romance, even foreplay, vanish in a haze of power pwoer games on Seth's part. This novel could have been cut to half its length and toned down and not suffered, and still got commitment and the happily ever after.

Readers who like Susan Johnson, Robin Schone and Thea Devine will enjoy these books, but anyone else should exercise caution.

The girl in peril and humky bodyguard has pretty much been done to death by this stage.

Also, the problem here is that the couple are already in love with each other from the start of the book, so there is no tension there.

The evil people introduced in the first book are predictable and elaborately villanous. Why go to all the trouble to destroy people's lives when you plan to kill them anyway?

Connor is not quite as Cro-Magnon as Seth, but nor does he have the same angst. It is like he runs out of steam and forgets he is meant to be revenging his poor dead tortured partner and his own injuries.

The sex is violent and predictable, a far cry from the erotic heat of Behind Closed Doors.

Beyond the sex,the book was just plain boring. There was not enough sex, in fact, compared with the first book (which went on TOO long, but at least had a point in them getting to know one another).

Here the book was cluttered by mother, sister needing to also be rescued, his brothers and so on. Connor got lost in the shuffle and I knew so little about Erin other than that she was supposed to be a good girl and conditioned her hair that the book left me cold.

I can see the author setting herself up for a sequel with Davy or Sean a mile off, but unfortunately in this book she totally failed to deliver either romance or suspense. Let's hope the next one is better.

This one really cranked it out, but with about as much romantic/erotic tension as a wooden Indian.

The heroine is a bluestocking interested in social welfare and so virtuous it is hard to believe she would just say, "Ok, come to my bedroom and I'll be ready for you in half an hour." Which she does. We get more detail of her birth control practices than we do of her passionate interest for the hero. Ugh.

Our hero may be known as the Archangel and fabulously handsome and eligible, but he is thoroughly unlikable in my opinion. He is rude, patronizing, and above all, in love with another woman (another man's wife) in the book throughout nearly the whole of it, whilst still deciding to put himself on the Marriage Mart with the help of his female secretary, who he is trying to make into his mistress. Ugh again. He also has a ex-mistress he spends more time with than the heroine, and is so patronizing towards her it is a wonder she doesn't kill him with her bare hands!

I don't see anything passionate or sensual in this book at all. The ONLY love scene in the whole book happens on page 71. Any of the usual conventional ways of getting them romantically linked again are totally forfeited. The unchaperoned trip into the countryside, old deserted inn, all of them in peril...Sound familiar? But it is all to try to discover who has tried to murder him. They never even so much as kiss!! Or hold hands or touch!

The book drags on way too long. The title is based on the costume she wears in the last 10 pages of the book, when he finally sees how she really is through her startling family resemblance to all the males in her family. Silly, really.

The fact that the heroine is supposed to have been in so much danger all these years that she walks around in dark glasses to hide her eyes, which only call attention to her appearance, and a terrible wig which also calls attention to her, is all the more absurd. Anyone else would have just sent her to America or India if it were that risky for her to be found.

All of this absurdity might have been overlooked if there had been some heat between the couple, but anything there was in the wooden, totally in the dark love scene which lasts a page or two without any sensuality, dies totally after page 72.

The so-called mystery is preditable, and not worth the time or effort to plow through the book.