Customer Reviews

Lady of Desire (Random House Large Print)

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After meeting Billy Blade in "Lord of Ice", I was so looking forward to this book that I was a bit worried that it would not live up to my expectations. I worried for nothing. I loved this book. As others have pointed out, contrary to the title, this is really Billy's story and if Billy doesn't touch your heart either you don't have one or it's made of stone!

After fleeing his abusive father at 13, Billy eventually winds up a gang leader in London's slums. He may be a criminal, but he's got principles, taking responsibility for his people and also covertly assisting the government on occasion - that's how he knows Jacinda's spy brother Lucien. And Lucien is the only person who knows his true identity - second son of the Marquess of Truro and St Austell! That Lucien sure can keep secrets!

Lady Jacinda is the spoiled baby sister of the Knight clan. Her protective older brothers are practically smothering her and when they arrange a marriage to Ian, Lord Griffith, it's more than she can bear. Though she adores Ian, he's more like another brother to her and so she decides to flee to Paris. At a coaching inn she's pickpocketed and pursues the thief into an alley - and into the middle of a turf battle between two of London's toughest gangs. She is discovered by Billy and taken back to his headquarters refusing to tell him who she is or why she's out alone in the streets.

Over the next few hours they talk, with Jacinda sharing more than she intends about her hopes, plans and her infamous mother, while both notice a budding attraction. Jacinda is amazed to find that he actually listens to her - something no one else does. I fell in love with Billy when he says to himself in astonishment "she likes me"! How cute. But when Billy discovers who she is, he returns her to her family much to her displeasure.

Events force Billy to reunite with his father and reclaim his title, Earl of Rackford, and so Billy and Jacinda meet again. He pursues her, she tries to elude him for she has her own plans. But a relationship develops and it's very sweet and fun to watch. He evolves from street tough to gentleman while she matures after seeing Lizzie's heartbreak at the hands of her rogue brother Alec as well as learning more about Billy and his difficult past. Their mutual affection and respect make you root for this great couple!

As always, I look forward to the next installment. It's Lizzie's so we'll see if Alec can redeem himself! And once again we are teased with mention of black sheep Jack whose story I am just dying for! I love this family - reading these books is like spending time with old friends. Keep 'em coming Gaelen!

Jacinda Knight, sister to the infamous Knight brothers featured in books such as "The Duke", "Lord of Fire," and "Lord of Ice" is a headstrong, spirited girl who attempts to flee London instead of facing an arranged marriage to a very nice, but brotherly-type man.

By pure accident, she meets Billy Blade, a gang leader, on the London streets at night. Billy is captivated by Jacinda's charm, wit, and beauty, and after a course of events, decides to pursue her.. as the Earl of Rackford, his birthright.

This, I'd have to say, was one of Gaelen Foley's best works.. if not the VERY best. From page 66, I was in love with Billy.. sensitive, gorgeous, charming.. with a slight shy streak that is so arresting. This is more Billy's story than Jacinda's, in fact.. because even though you will love Jacinda as the heroine, you will see Billy mature from a street thief to an Earl. You will feel his embarassment, his longings..

An extremely touching read, and one that I'd highly recommend. Even if you haven't read the previous books in the series (I mentioned them above), you will not feel lost to the storyline. Another book that I highly recommend in this series is "Lord of Fire", which is also extraordinarily written, about the sensual Lucien Knight, and prudish Alice.

Enjoy!

The year is 1816. Lady Jacinda Knight runs away from the Knight estate to escape an arranged marriage with Ian, who is a good friend of her family. While she waits for the coach that will take her away from London and closer to Paris, she is robbed by a young trickster. Chasing the boy takes her straight to the London slums, where she witnesses a gang brawl. And that's where she meets the infamous "Billy Blade" for the second time (the first time was in Lord of Ice). She had felt instant attraction and curiosity for the man when she first met him at her house, but now she fears the street-smart, handsome blonde with a Cockney accent. However, Billy Blade isn't what he appears to be at first. To many, he is a Robin Hood type of criminal who likes to help the poor and the working class, but in reality, Billy Blade is the Earl of Rackford, and hides a terrible childhood that keeps him from returning to the nobility for many years. There are various twists throughout the novel.

This novel entertained me like the other offerings in the Knight series. It is filled with romance, eroticism and suspense. I loved Billy Blade. He is an interesting, gorgeous and sexy character from beginning to end, but he is especially appealing during the second half of the book. He shows just the right amount of complexity and flaws to make him real and palatable for the reader. And even though I am not partial to blond-haired heroes, and despite the fact that the Knight twins are my favorite heroes in the series thus far, I found him very attractive and very compelling. I pictured the very scrumptious Christian Bale as Billy Blade. Lady Jacinda, on the other hand, is a major disappointment. Throughout the entire series, she is portrayed as spirited, independent, rebellious and uninhibited (well, as uninhibited as a virgin could possibly be), and other than defying her brothers and running away in the beginning, she is docile, ladylike and downright underwhelming. Miranda from Lord of Ice showed more strength of character in the aforementioned book than Jacinda did in this one. The only "spirited" personality trait she seems to possess is arrogance. The subplot centering on her best friend Lizzie and her feelings for Alec was good though unsurprising to me because I read Devil Takes a Bride (book five) before reading this one. As for the setting, I like that Foley concentrates on developing London's underbelly. That to me was far more entertaining than the overdone storylines centered on the ton and its parties and balls. I liked that bit of the novel very much. This offering had its villains as usual, and for once I wish Foley would concentrate on the relationship between the protagonists as she had done with The Duke, as opposed to spending so much time with suspenseful sequences that are over the top at times. All in all, Lady of Desire is middling compared to the other offerings in the Knights Miscellany series. Billy Blade and the dark, slumming streets of London are the real highlights here. One Night of Sin (book six) is next for me. I look forward to reading wild Alec's story.

This is a book I have mixed feelings about. There were moments I really enjoyed it and others that had me going elsewhere for entertainment.

Billy is definitely the star of the book, but he's not as streetwise or as physically powerful as one would expect of a man in his position. His transformation into a gentleman is too easy for one who moved into a life of crime on the streets at 13.

Jacinda is described as spirited, rebellious, vivacious, and so on, but for me she came across as rather staid and placid as a general rule. In the following book (Devil Takes a Bride), I hardly recognize her; they seem to be different charactaers. That Jacinda is the one described but rarely making an appearance here.

The plot was only so-so. The book's a solid 3 stars: a decent read but nothing to make it stand out from the crowd.

Each book in this series has been increasingly bad. This one was barely palatable. The characters were, through 90% of the book, so shallowly drawn as to be almost completely cliched and unsympathetic. Although, with only 20 pages left, Jacinda and Billy finally show some depth of character, it was too late. By then, I had resorted to skimming to get through this boring book. Jacinda, a pampered princess who finally sees the light in the last 50 pages of the book, was childish and annoying. I think I'm going to stop reading historical novels whose heroines are under 21 years of age. I just can't stand the immaturity. Billy Blade, although slightly more interesting, was so sketchily drawn thoughout most of the book that he just seemed like a self-pitying, vain peacock. After he resumes his life in high society, the new Lord William spends more time chasing down his former hoodlum enemies in a petty fit of vengeance, instead of helping the poor that he supposedly came to care so much about. And throwing in the Lizzie and Alec subplots (in a thinly veiled effort to set up future books) was distracting. I'm very sorry I paid money for this book. I will definitely make sure that, in the future, I borrow this author's books from the library, for free.

I read romance novels for their simplicity of plot and complexity of characters. In this case, I felt the plot was way overdone and the characters way underdone.

Jacinda is described as rebellious, headstrong, spirited, and independent. But she displays none of those traits throughout the book. Other than her initial running away in the beginning, she is rather boring and sedate. She has no adventures and simply exists. Instead of the hero saving her from her mischievious misadventures, she saves his life twice.

Billy...what can I say about Billy? He is supposed to be a rough guy, but come on! His fighting skills are so bad that he has to be saved by Jacinda twice. He lets the leader of the rival gang get away and gets caught in a burglarly that sends him to Newgate. He grovels to his abusive father. When he gets jealous, he growls, but never does anything about it. I mean, where's the passion in this guy?! Okay, so he trades a few barbs with the old guy that Jacinda is trying to hoodwink into marriage, but does that really qualify as being a stand up guy? I could go on and on...

Call me old-fashioned or call me a traditionalist. But I want the woman to be saved physically and the man to be saved emotionally. Billy is so emotional that even the sex scenes were boring and painful to read. Jacinda is so sure she will end up like her mother (a known harlot) that she is half slut/half ninny. There is just no passion between these two. The characters seemed wooden and the storyline just ridiculously complex.

I can't wholeheartedly recommend this book.

I have been waiting for this book ever since that teasing glimpse of Billy in Lord of Ice so maybe my expectations were unreasonably high. However, I still consider this book a great read and its author a brilliant storyteller.

Despite the book's title, Billy Blade is the shining star in this book. As a young man Billy runs away from his abusive tyrannical father and leaves behind a life of privilege for the tough, dirty streets of London's slums.There, with his intelligence and charm he becomes a kind of Robin Hood figure by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Moreover, he becomes the leader of the most powerful gang in London's underworld thereby gaining many enemies.
Lady Jacinda Knight, the daughter of a powerful duke is a beautiful, stubborn young woman who is determined to live her life on her own terms. She meets the mysterious Billy Blade while running away from an arranged marriage and is completely enthralled by his "bad-boy" image and his wild, untamed ways. Immediately Billy is taken with Jacinda's beauty and spirit and when he finds out her identity he is loath to return her to her family but his innate sense of responsibility demands that he do so. Afterwards, Billy is haunted by the memory of Jacinda but knows that a thug like him could never possess a woman like her...unless he puts his pride and his terrible memories of his childhood aside and returns to take his rightful place as the Earl of Rackford. Smitten, besotted and head over heels in love Billy leaves behind everything he has built to attain the one and only thing he wants in life, the love of the fair Jacinda.

There were many things I love about this book including the chemistry between the main characters and the vivid descriptions of the unglamorous London slums. However, what I really loved about this book was Billy. He is a charming and cocky but he is also insecure,lonely and deeply scarred by his abusive childhood.
On the other hand, Jacinda is spoiled (without being unlikeable) and tender towards Billy but I thought that she took much too long to realize her feelings for Billy. There were a few things that kept this book from being a five star read for me. First, Billy's transformation from gang leader to peer of the realm provided many lighthearted and tender moments but for me the story truly shined only when Billy took on his "Blade" persona and went out to hunt some Jackals (the rival gang). The book lags a little in the middle because of Billy's arrival into the haute ton (not as entertaining as his life as gang leader) and Jacinda's refusal accept her feelings for him. Also, although there were many sweet and tender moments in the story, I felt that there were not enough of those heart-clutching moments that Foley's other books are so full of. All in all I really enjoyed this book and I do consider it a keeper but when I need an angsty hero and my heart turned to mush I will re-read Foley's The Pirate Prince, one of my all-time favorite books so full of those heart-clutching moments I love. Highly recommended :)

I have been a fan of Gaelen Foley's since her very first book. So, it was with great anticipation I purchased Lady of Desire. Although Ms. Foley's ability to craft witty dialogue and an entralling world of characters is unchanged, Lady of Desire was not one of her finer offerings. I had a HUGE problem with Jacinda, the heroine. She was spoiled, stupid, and, well, frankly, ....

I found it difficult to believe that a proper, well-raised Regency Miss would allow her ... to be digitally probed by a man after having only known him for ten minutes (and while covered in the most horrid stench). I felt this was a cheap and lazy ploy to make the hero appear more exciting and to intensify the relationship between two opposites.

Normally Ms. Foley's novels are filled with interesting historical details. What happened here? She uses a few phrases that are so modern, or have such a modern ring, that it had my teeth aching. "I've got your back." Come on.

I gave this three stars because the writing is still very good and Billy Blade was exciting and sympathetic, if not totally believable.

Trust me, it pains me to write this as I really respect Ms. Foley's writing. Still, despite everything I have said, the lite reader would find this novel thoroughly satisfying.

I was absolutely hooked on this book for the first three chapters...then, sadly, this book bored me and never really lived up to it's potential. The reasons for this lay with Jacinda Knight and the romance between her and Billy Blade.

Billy Blade as a hero showed amazing promise. Entirely a tortured hero, which I usually love, he turned from street savvy gang leader to "gentleman", and I must say I liked the former way more. I liked him far more in the beginning of the book than I did in the majority of the book where he spent his time trying to win the headstrong Jacinda.

Jacinda was a horrible heroine. I just didn't like her at all. She was either pretending not to know Billy, babying him like a child, or trying to get another man to notice her in front of him! All of these extremes left a bad taste in my mouth.

I didn't understand the love connection here, and though I am a huge Gaelen Foley fan, I just don't think this was a good love story at all. I don't know what kind of woman would've been fit for Billy Blade, but it certainly wasn't Jacinda Knight.

I also detested Billy Blade's father and I wish that Foley wouldn't have felt the need to neatly tie up everything in the final chapter. The man was despicable and I had no interest in the idea of somehow coming to understand and have empathy on him. It also seemed unlikely that Billy Blade would've been able to come to the peace that he did so quickly after years of such brutal neglect and abuse.

I did have interest in Blade's friend Nate. What happened to him, is he OK...I wish there could've been a reunion.

So far the Knight Miscellany books have gone in order not only in how I read them, but how I liked them. I loved the Duke the best, Lord of Fire second, Lord of Ice not even close to as much, and now Lady of Desire hardly at all. I'm wondering if I should stop now or continue with the series hoping it improves. Only a talented author could keep me hooked even after back-to back disappoiontments. I think that I'll probably give her another chance, and probably another and another and....another!

After totally enjoying the first three books in this series, I found Lady of Desire greatly lacking. The only reason I gave it two stars was because of the character of Billy Blade. Ms. Foley seems to deal better with her leading men. Lady Jacinda was perfectly awful. She's spoiled and willful, but where that could play for humor, I just found her annoying. Billy deserved far better. Hopefully Ms. Foley can make her next female subject more interesting.