Customer Reviews

Burning Wild (Leopard Series)

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Well, I ran out to Walmart yesterday and bought this book, dropping the other one I was in the middle of to read this. I was honestly prepared for somewhat of a let down, given the description, but I couldn't not read it. I was prepared for lots of emotionalism and not much else.

This book is one of Christine Feehan's best efforts, I thought. There was A LOT of action, which she achieved by skimming over the first 2 years of the hero & heroine's acquaintance, after giving brief glimpses into the hero's childhood. This gave them time to become friends, even good friends. It was very well done, and for the most part I didn't miss the skipped material. The book was long enough as it is, and I don't mean too long-but with such a complex hero the book needed that length. This book (surprise!)didn't have the first sex scene around page 100 and take up half each successive chapter with them either. All I can say about that is "Well Done!" It seems like Ms. Feehan's writing is growing up.

Without all that filler material, there was action and lots of it, but I don't think emotions were neglected. In my opinion, Ms. Feehan excels at describing the emotionalism in her books, and while this book certainly didn't disappoint, it seems the the author has learned to conceal and prolong some things in the plot-that is, not to spell it all out upfront. A very refreshing change.

Speaking of Plot, this book has a pretty good one-that is, believable-, admittedly with some plot holes. For example, I had a hard time accepting that a pregnant woman would move in with a stranger, but I had to admit that some people are more trusting than others. However,to allow a man she had known for 8 months or so to be named on her baby's birth certificate as the father??? That's just hard to swallow. From there it got better, and by the middle to end was excellent, so that overall my impression was good.

The heroine was very passive in the beginning, although I believe that was adequately explained by the extreme trauma she had just experienced. She was essentially in shock. And she did eventually come out of it, although you have to understand she is the kind of woman who loves to cook and clean, etc. Definitely not a career woman by choice, which I liked, although if that were me (living in a mansion with two kids and somebody else paying the bills) I most certainly would NOT say I didn't need a maid and nanny as she did. That seemed a bit far fetched. How did she clean that huge mansion all by herself with 2 kids? Plus cook half the day-there were always homemade bread and cookies, etc. in the kitchen. Even without the kids it would be impossible.

The hero was the kind of abused person that usually grows up to be abusive himself. He was extremely manipulative at first-which I thought was adequately explained and realistic. The change in him was slow and very gradual-and I wouldn't have accepted anything faster. At the beginning I supposed I both felt sorry for him and hated him, but by the middle it was wonderful to see him growing as a person. I thought his character development was perfect.

Also I wish this theme of lovers remembering each other from their past life had been explored a bit more. It was briefly mentioned in the beginning but then dropped and apparently forgotten.

But it seems I am mentioning only negatives here, which I feel is grossly unfair. I enjoyed this book immensely. I stayed up until the wee hours reading it last night. The heroine was sweet and comfortable, the hero was tormented beyond anything, and it was all resolved to my satisfaction. The reasons I liked this book so well were
1. good plot
2. lots of action
3. enjoyed the secondary characters

Oh, and I loved the leopard people theme. I was eager for her first transformation, and I was glad that there was no ultimate certainty she was capable.

I even think that I will enjoy it more the second time I read it. :)

I've been reading Christine Feehan's Dark series for years and there was only one book which I did not enjoy and it's probably for the same reason as this book.

In this book Christine Feehan seems to have tried being more risqué with sexual scenes which skims dangerously close to the lines of rape than of love.

The main character Jake has a hard time feeling trust and the sexual scenes in the book are not loving but rather acts of dominance and humiliation. These scenes are justified by the author as Jake's need to prove the heroine, Emma's loyalty to him.

These scenes are ultimately what have turned me away from the book. I'm use to Christine Feehan's over the top dominate male characters however I'm not comfortable with justifying acts of emotional abuse as love.

The main character Jake was extremely abused as a child and after managing to get away from his abusive parents Jake doesn't trust anyone and is determined to never allow himself to be in a position to be hurt again.

I understand that the main character has a lot of unresolved issues due to childhood abuse and is unable to trust other but the acts of humiliation he placed Emma in order to achieve this trust was not enjoyable to me.

I know a good romance book when I can completely submerge myself into the story and imagine myself as the heroine. This is my escape from reality but the entire time I read about the degrading acts Jake did to Emma I was hoping the next page would be where Emma left him. This to me is not a romance!

WOW, one of Christine's best. She previously told us this was going to be a hard read and the main characters were going to be tormented souls. But you find peace, love and growth through this novel. Kept me at the edge of my seat at the end. Could not put it down. Murder game is still my favorite, but this one pushes close to the top. The love that Jake has for Emma, it surmounts all, she doesn't see it, he doesn't know it. But together they can stand everything.

A very excellent paranormal romance with thrills, chills, and romance. This story didn't start out as I expected. It was very different, but in a very good way. The beginning was background on the hero, which was necessary to understanding his character. My only issue with this story was the "misunderstanding" part of the plot. This couple continued to misunderstand the feelings of one another through most of the book and that tends to annoy me. I must say it was set up to be very plausible that they would believe that there couldn't be love between them, but I still found myself a bit aggravated by it at times. Another pet peeve was a control issue, and though the heroine did put up with being controlled a bit too much for my taste I thought it was understandable under the circumstances. I thought it was a very good book and enjoyed it very much. I highly recommend it to all paranormal romance fans, and I look forward to the next book in this series..

I am not surprised at the strong reaction to this book. Nor am I surprised that it has nearly an equal number of five and one star reviews. This book is not for everyone. Jake, the hero, can easily be misunderstood. Feehan spends a lot of time filling out his character, probably trying to avoid this very reaction. I had a soft spot for this man, but I did understand him, and found him easy to love and admire. Yes, he was very controlling of the heroine, but always with her best interest at heart. It was his desperate vulnerability and equally desperate need for Emma's love that kept me from judging him harshly. For those who thought she was a wimp, I think they just didn't look deeply enough at her. A woman with her capacity to love and empathize has an unbreakable strength that should not be overlooked. She was more than a match for Jake's domineering ways. He is never going to be able to make Emma do something against her own principles. She is the type of woman who truly enjoys caring for a home and those she loves. Being the heart of the home is where she draws her strength. This is her career and where she gives her all. Through her devotion and from her example Jake learns to trust his own emotions and eventually to love.

I found so much of the book very touching. Yes, there are weaknesses in the story. Many thought it hard to believe Emma would so quickly move in with a stranger, trusting not only herself but her unborn child to his care. To me this was explained by their belief that they had known each other in a previous life. Instinctively they had a level of trust in each other that was not explained in their heads, but in their hearts. Feehan should have expanded on this theme, it would have explained much of their behavior. Some of the sex at the end I found a bit distasteful. Not my cup of tea but I'm not going to judge. It was very aggressive and very raw, but these two are leopards--not house cats. The end was very rushed with a lot happening at once, action that might have been better spread more evenly through the story. But there are so many other parts that make up for the flaws. I found Drake and Joshua's reaction to Emma's first date hilarious. And when Jake draws a chair up to their table the following scenes had me laughing out loud. This is some of the best writing I have ever seen from Christine Feehan. I can certainly understand the negative reactions to the book. These two characters aren't for everyone. But I found much to love about both and will never forget either one of them. And I thank Ms. Feehan for reminding me that real love does indeed heal all wounds.

Unlike Wild Rain, this book is not light-hearted fun. This is the dark side of love--edgy, explosive, obsessive. And not for everyone. I, however, loved it.

Burning Wild will disturb some readers for two reasons. One, the hero Jake suffers intense abuse as a child. As a result, he is manipulative, emotionally detached, and cruel--in other words, more than on his way to becoming an abusive person himself. Two, the heroine Emma moves in with Jake, a complete stranger, and entrusts him with her life and the life of her unborn child. Uh huh. Right.

I was warned about Emma's crazy decision before I started the book. Forewarning mitigated my disbelief. But when I thought about it, her choice isn't as unbelievable as it sounds. Emma is pregnant, penniless, and alone. Most significantly, she's emotionally Vulnerable--yes, with a capital V. She's perfect prey for Jake. I can accept that a woman might be manipulated in this situation. AND after all, we're supposed to believe that she and Jake are Leopard people with a past history, so they DO know each other on some level. Suspend your disbelief when it comes to Emma.

And then be realistic when it comes to Jake.

Let's face it. Given what Jake is and what he endures, he cannot be normal. Normalcy is impossible for him. Feehan preserves the integrity of her characterization by making Jake what he is supposed to be--the very flawed product of sick and deviant parents.

Jake was a victim for years. Control is everything to him because he never wants to be victimized again. Yet he's learning to love, and he makes mistakes. Big ones. Why? Because his past affects his relationship with his children, his employees, and Emma. And I mean it affects ALL the facets of his relationship with Emma, including the physical one. Some of the intimacy between Jake and Emma is VERY shocking. Emma's feelings are hurt, she's pissed, and she tells Jake. (Jake, completely out of tune with emotions in general, is surprised and tries to explain himself. My only quibble with the entire book is when Jake tells Emma, "I'm primal." I giggle every time I read that line. Can't take it seriously.)

For all his many, many faults, Jake is never deliberately cruel to Emma. He misreads her, he misreads himself, but Jake never sets out to injure Emma, even when her power over his life scares the living daylights out of him.
Jake's redemption isn't easy for him or Emma. Is he difficult to love? Absolutely. Is he deserving of love? Absolutely. More power to Emma for being woman enough to handle this guy.
I can't wait for the next installment in the series.

Burning Wild was a mixed read for me, intense, interesting and disturbing all at the same time. More than any of her other books, in her less than heroic hero Jake, Feehan really delved into the making of the man. Jake's abusive childhood is hard to read as Feehan hones the determination, self-control, and survival instincts of Jake and his hidden predator through a childhood punctuated by the extreme cruelties of his evil parents. The resulting man is smart, ruthless and unable to care about others until fate steps in and brings him Emma. There is something familiar about Emma that stirs the interest of both man and his inner cat and Jake decides he must possess Emma and sets out to use her vulnerability in order to manipulate her dependency of him.

There are parts of Jake's maneuvering of Emma that are quite stalker creepy. His calculated use his son and Emma's daughter to tie Emma to him, while making it so that a break from him would cost Emma her home and possibly her children are classic warning signs of a potential abuser. But Emma's tremendous capacity for love wrapped in an indomitable spirit - which gives Emma a power of her own - and the example of her love and acceptance ultimately capture Jake in his own trap. Instead of Emma desperately needing Jake, he ends up desperately needing her. Emma is really the light to his darkness, and she helps him to eventually find his soul and discover his capacity to love. Feehan does a good job of portraying this gradual transition in Jake.

However as interesting as I thought this transition was, Jake's calculated manipulation, and possessive pursuit of Emma skirts- and occasionally crosses - the edge of abuse. I didn't find Jake and Emma's relationship to be very romantic, even as she ultimately tames him. Personally didn't care for the violence and domination in the sex scenes between the pair, I would have liked to have seen Emma gain more power here. Elsewhere in their relationship she stubbornly pursues her own goals, and I felt her submissiveness here left her as less than an equal partner in the relationship.

Even though ultimately I thought this was some of Feehan's best writing, since she takes Jake to the next level of uber-alphaness this may not be the book for all of Feehan's fans - even if you've loved her dominating males in the past.

Might have been tempted to 1.5 stars, but...not available.

Wish I knew what happened to Feehan prior to writing this book (then again, maybe I don't wish that). I'm a long-time Feehan Fan, but this the least enjoyable book by anyone - much less Feehan, that I've read in years.

I found it distasteful, violent, full of abuse toward Emma in particular, with characters I could not relate to and who seemed less than credible in nearly every sense. Sure, Jake was beyond severely abused as a child. Sure, his parents are insane. Sure, Emma has a secret past and -- and what? She's not even too GOOD to be true - most of the time she's spineless, much of the time she seems to think her role in life is to be totally focused on the children, Jake and that house (hey, I adore kids and have my own - but I'm also for balance as a full person!). She bounces erratically between lacking self-worth and having it, which does little for consistent characterization, especially as Jake degrades her more and more -- with not even believable (really) rationales and justifications for doing so.

The slow, slow start full of Jake's self-abuse (never explained to Emma) and abuse by others intended, I suspect, to set up empathy (or sympathy) for Jake, does not work well, in my opinion. I disliked the man beginning, end and middle. Unfortuantely, although I wanted to, I could barely feel sorry for him as child - and he does not become sympathetic (or someone I'd ever be attracted to) through highly contrived "lightbulb moments" of badly written, stilted "self-awareness". Why not quit the forced telling, start the showing, and do something to help us BELIEVE this could really be a good man with buried but decent motivations? Didn't work at all, not for me.

I could not "buy into" either of the main characters, and even less into minor ones other than Susan (just a bit there), who remain underdeveloped while Feehan writes intimacy scenes bordering on rape (that Emma "takes"? Oh PLEASE NO!)-reminding me too much of violence-based soft porn or so-called erotica (which isn't too erotic to me); indeed, I often felt I was reading Lora Leigh rather than Feehan.

The plot (what there is of it - again, barely credible, and annoyingly, characters pop in and out without much explanation) is disconnected and badly developed. It's broken into far too often, once the sexual relationship begins, by mostly rough, semi-cruel sex scenes. So the plot's quite lost most of the time - seeming to connect only these sex scenes supposedly driven by both Jake and Emma, but even that's pretty questionable. The "symptoms" of Emma's growing sexual heat seemed so contrived and not a natural part of the plot - serving only to attempt to explain why she permits Jake to debase her repeatedly and control her in every possible way. When she does stand up to him, that's hardly believable either - one gets neither a sense of her conviction, nor reasons why she does so then but not other times - it's as if Feehan throws those in as a sop to those critics who would object to all those other ugly moments Jake heaps on Emma and that she almost completely accepts (her resistance is always relatively minimal and most times, understated - with some kind of "Emma understood why Jake had to do this, be this way" rationale tossed in somewhere as if to make it 'work'. It doesn't.) All the stuff about "Jake's cat" is -- well, it doesn't work. Simple as that.

And the ending? Wimpy and weak - oddly enough: neither Jake nor Emma is ever a full person - they are almost caricatures instead, in this highly contrived plot (yes, I read fantasy and enjoy it - this isn't that).

Let me note too, that throughout the book, Jake's got solutions and answers to everything - can do everything, control just about everyone (except his sworn enemies - but you never do understand why not them, since he seems to have the rest of the world in the palm of his hand!) and avoid consequences, and that's objectionable and offers no tension to the plot, either. Alpha males are one thing (and can be yummy); Jake is quite another.

Overall, deeply disappointing and not at all up to Feehan's usual calibre - especially not of her leopard people novels -- and before you wonder, yes, I love hot sex scenes as much as the next romance reader. But I hope Feehan does not continue in this writing vein or I will avoid her works in the future because there's nothing romantic about this. Neither men nor women need this kind of treatment, not even in fiction - and surely not in romance fiction.

As another reviewer said - she likes to and wants to put herself in the place of the heroine in a good romance. I did not want to be Emma at all - and would have probably wreaked violence on Jake in his sleep if not when he was awake, had I been in her shoes!

My overall reaction to this book? Shudder, closely followed by "Ick."

Christine Feehan is, in many ways, one hell of a good writer. Her pacing is, in most cases, extremely good; my only exception is that her characters sometimes spend too much time over-thinking things instead of acting (particularly early on). Her plotting is tight and action-packed, and keeps me glued to the pages wanting to know what happens next. Her characters are largely fascinating (with the exception that the bad guys in this book are such over-the-top one-sided villains that they're rather cartoonish). The frequent sex scenes are lavish, imaginative, and hot as hell, with some minor personal quibbles (spasming or clenching wombs will always make me think of PMS and cramps, not hot sexiness).

However, it's extremely difficult to sit back and enjoy the above when I'm steaming mad about the rest. Main man Jake is a cold-hearted bastard. Okay, it's a common fantasy that women want to find themselves to be the only one who can warm the heart of the big baddie. Sure. Normally I can accept that. I can accept dominant alpha males (although they get a little boring when over-used). I can accept depictions of dom/sub relationships (try Jory Strong's "Ghostland"). There are, however, several reasons why this book's depiction of an emotionally abusive, controlling, manipulative male lead went way beyond any of the above for me.

1. A big deal was made out of the fact that a line was drawn between physical and emotional abuse, as though as long as Jake never actually hit Emma or the children he was somehow in the clear.To draw this line leaves many emotionally abused people feeling as though if they haven't been hit, they have no right to call for help or leave their abusers.

2. Jake's behavior was excused through his traumatic childhood. While it's true that a traumatic childhood leaves a lot of emotional scars and often is a good reason for giving a person some slack, it is NOT an excuse for abuse.

3. Both of the above points ultimately were made to seem as if they didn't matter because as long as Emma loved him, she could change him. By "surrendering" to him and doing whatever he wants, of course.

4. Any manipulation of her on his part, no matter how nasty, is magically made okay because--get this--she recognized that he was manipulating her all along and allowed it. It's the worst kind of justification, not to mention it's a deus ex machina because none of her thoughts revealed this until the last minute.

But ultimately, what makes this book so horrific to me is that it spends a very, very large number of its pages stridently defending Jake and justifying his actions. It's one thing to simply portray a fantasy that some women might have. It's another to go to such great lengths to justify abuse as a part of a romantic relationship. (This is exactly the kind of thing that gives the larger world such a dim view of romance and erotica novels.)

The story:
Christine Feehan has the paranormal romance corner covered! Shifters, psychics, vampires, witches... this is the 3rd in the leopard series. Jake was born for one purpose, to be special, when his parents thought they failed the beat Jake senseless every chance they got. They are ruthless and cruel, not having one ounce of love in them. Jake grows up with a fierce determination to beat his parents, the enemies. Jake ends up being a father, but he doesn't know how to raise him or want to. He decides to hire the best to take care of his son. The first time he meets Emma he knows she is the one to raise his son. He is determined to make Emma once of his many acquisitions. Emma has other plans in mind. They end up needing each other desperately. The enemies are on the prowl and Jake has more to protect now than ever.....

Thoughts:
I've never read a book with such a time span. Time jumps 2 or 3 times over 2.5 years. I liked that though, showed a true developed relationship between Jake and Emma & Jake and everyone else. This book is tender and special. I really enjoyed reading this. I felt sucked into their lives. Jake must evolve exponentially to survive and keep those he cares about safe. This is a tender, sexy and unique relationship between Jake and Emma. It is a long book, but it went by so fast I was sad when It was over. I look forward to reading the next installment in this series. This book almost reminded me of a Joey Hill book, where the main character must get over past trauma to embrace the present and future. For anyone who enjoys a paranormal romantic suspense I recommend this book.