Customer Reviews

Fanning the Flame

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Adam Hawthorne, Earl of Blackwood, was a man haunted by nightmares that drove him to seek solace in the early morning hours galloping horseback in the park. It was here that he first spied Jillian Whitney, a young lady whose quiet countenance intrigued him. Some mornings later he rode with a friend who introduced him and gave him the latest gossip that Jillian was living with the elderly and much older nobleman. Given the period, she was labled a fallen woman and snubbed by the ton.

The night Jillian's beloved guardian is murdered - she ran from the house - right into the arms of Adam who decided then that he would have her. Under the guise of hiding her from the authorities, he brought her to his home and became her protector and defender. Primarily, this was to eventually bed her, but he finally came to believe in her innocence and set out to help her prove it. Women had been his downfall, he would never love again, but his body ached for her - he had to know the truth before he would take her.

The story is really quite good and the sex is hot! It is suspenseful and keeps you guessing right up to the end! (I thought it was the butler!) There is also a secondary love story that evolves here in this book which is also quite good.

This book was boring. I like some of Kat's books. For me, they are hit or miss. Frankly, the tortured hero and the virgin but passionate miss are getting boring. The "issue" at the end of the story should have been settled early on. Extreme sub-par story.

Ms. Martin has another bestseller under her belt. Fanning the Flame is the heart-warming, romantic tale of Adam Hawthorne, Clayton's friend in The Fire Inside, and Jillian Whitney.

Adam finds himself attracted to the mysterious Ms. Whitney when he sees her every day during his morning rides in the park. As he is drawn to her, he wonders how the innocent angel feeding the ducks could be the same woman rumored to be the mistress of the ancient Earl of Fenwick.

When the Earl of Fenwick is murdered, Jillian becomes the primary suspect. She finds herself in the custody of Adam, and she must prove to him and everyone else that she did not murder the Earl of Fenwick. Adam is the one man who could be her saving grace or her fall from grace.

This story offers sensuality, romance, and intrigue from page One. You will be pleased by Ms. Martin's writing talents. I actually give this book 4 1/2 stars. I guarantee that you won't be disappointed.

I have read nearly all of Ms Martin's books. I find this one along with Devil's Prize and the book about Adrian Kingsland (don't remember the title) one of her best. Both hero and heroine are very attractive. Gillian is not overly temperamental like some of her other heroines. She's stoic when confronted with the prospect of being hanged for a murder she did not commit while being ostracised by the ton for her supposed liaison with the victim. Adam Harcourt is the kind of man you dream about but never meet, literally very tall, dark and handsome. He is damaged by his previous experiences with women and is distrustful of them. This makes him come accross as hard but as the novel progresses his developing love/lust for Gillian softens him. He is at once protective of Gillian and forceful in his erotic intentions towards her. A very sexy read.

If you are a fan of this genre (romance) I highly recommend. A really good author I must say! A+++

What I like about Kat Martin is that she can write a good, seemingly straight genre book, and take it that little bit further into something more. Here in the sequel to `The Fire Inside', a Regency romance is thoroughly intertwined with murder, mystery and the very likely incarceration of the central female character.

Jillian Whitney, well born but now broke, had found an unlikely heroic figure in her kindly guardian. Unfortunately, most of the ton interpreted their relationship as being that of a physical nature, and Jillian's reputation was in tatters. Adam Hawthorne, the wealthy Earl of Blackwood, also thinks this of the relationship, and is in the process of trying to have her switch protectors when her guardian is killed.

Surprising them both with an altruistic streak, Adam takes Jillian in and offers her his protection while the murder is investigated. During this time the two get to know each other and grow closer. The situation is muddied by Jillian's now ruined reputation, the proving of her innocence, and the effect any relationship between them might have on his family.

The secondary characters are as interesting as the main two, with Adam's sister Maggie's own romance and the relationship between brother and sister being an engaging secondary line to the main story.

Although this book is a sequel, it stands alone as a fully fleshed out story in it's own right. If you enjoy a good murder mystery story, I'm sure you'll enjoy this tale as much as readers of Regency romance will.

This was the first Kat Martin book I had ever read. My mother in law bought this book and a Lisa Kleypa's book, Lady Sophia's Lover at the same time. She read the Kleypas book while I read Kat Martin's book, and then we switched. This books was great. Prior to this, I was never into romance books, and especially not historical romance. Heaving bosoms were not my thing. Give me a good mystery or some true crime.

But after I read this book, I was hooked. I devour every Kat Martin book I can get my hands on. My mother in law and I like to go to thrift stores all the time, and I usually manage to get a ton of books for very little money, and I have found tons of Kat Martin books for about 50 cents a piece. Can't beat that.

This one is totally worth the regular price though. Grab it and enjoy.

This was a very good read and would have been near-perfect if not for a few little things which always drive me crazy in historical romances (details below, because some of them are slight spoilers). The murder mystery that is weaved throughout was not painfully obvious, as you sometimes find, and I liked how it was solved and what the explanation ended up being. There was a secondary romance between Maggie, Adam's sister, and Garth Dutton, Jillian's lawyer and standing alone, the romance was good, well-developed, etc., but personally I don't usually like romance sub-plots with other characters and in this case, it really drove me crazy because _____ (spoiler, so see specifics below to know more).

Setting: England, 1806
Sensuality Rating: 8.5 (a lot of chemistry between hero and heroine, very hot kissing scenes and well-written erotica)

SUMMARY (from the back cover):
"The London ton is abuzz with the latest scandal. Jillian Whitney, well-born but penniless, has been living under the roof of a wealthy nobleman old enough to be her father. When Adam Hawthorne, the mysterious Earl of Blackwood, meets the lovely rebel, he's intrigued enough to want to lure her into changing protectors.
Suddenly, Jillian's beloved guardian is murdered, and she is the only suspect. Forced to flee, she falls into the arms of the earl, who offers refuge from the law but no escape from an intoxicating passion. Although Jillian swiftly loses her heart, she knows that the eligible earl would never marry a woman tainted by scandal. But is Jillian underestimating the strength and depth of a man's passion?"

SPECIFICS:
(* = kind-of-spoiler; ** = spoiler)
(1) I liked that Jillian was an independent woman and able to stand her ground and hold her head high despite the rumors surrounding her regarding Lord Fenwick. Adam was one of those wonderfully-handsome tortured and untrusting heroes just trying to hide his vulnerability, ::sigh::. Jillian seemed to succumb quite easily to him - over and over again!, though I don't blame her - but the erotic scenes were very well written and in the end she proves her strength.
*(2) Adam's unwillingness to bend regarding Christopher's possible parentage and his initial treatment of the boy was not at all in keeping with his otherwise honorable character.
*(3) I CANNOT stand when authors find it amusing to fill their books with constant misunderstandings and things left unsaid or misinterpreted. I thought I was in the clear with this book: I was on page 337, the murder mystery has been solved and now all that was left were the love realizations, marriage declarations, and the usual wonderful happy ending that we all read these books for, right? Wrong! One last obstacle must be thrown in our lovers' paths - of course!
**(4) Regarding the secondary romance between Maggie and Garth, the reason it really soured for me was because in this case it ended up negatively impacting the primary romance and causing the entire misunderstanding. (Garth is from a very prestigious family that puts a lot of weight on being scandal-free; Adam's family is scandal-ridden and his recent harboring of a murder suspect - Jillian - just adds to it all. The fact that he now intends to marry her makes it even worse). Maggie wasn't completely to blame, because she doesn't ask Aunt Sophie to speak with Jillian - doesn't even know their meeting occurs - but still, she should have openly spoken about it with Garth and shown much more sadness and regret over Jillian's rejection of Adam.
**(5) The thing I do have to commend Martin about regarding the words-unspoken/mistunderstanding debacle is that when Jillian goes to Adam because she knows he's planning on proposing and she lies to him, telling him she's in love with someone else and is going to marry that man, Adam responds so amazingly that it was all I could do not to say "awww" out loud. He's so heartbroken, but he's willing to give her up because he thinks that is what Jillian wants: "For the first time in his life he understood the true meaning of love. He understood that when you really loved someone, you cared about their happiness more than you did your own."

BOTTOM LINE:
Read it! A wonderful Kat Martin book that I will definitely reread ... though maybe I'll skip pages 343-380 from now on.

After watching beautiful heroine at the park for some time, Hero finally gets himself introduced to her regardless of her scandalous reputation as an elderly earl's much-younger mistress. Soon after they meet, Hero hides heroine in his house from authorities who suspect her to have murdered her lover. Hero has doubts about her culpability & helps investigate the murder. Their proximity & time together brings on an affair. But the lack of other suspects & Hero's jaded view about women become major obstacles to their r/s.

This was not as exciting as other Martin books. The pace was slow & story predictable. Romance was only ok. The main characters lacked zest &, therefore, the romance did too. Heroine was dependent, too amenable, & weak-willed. She wasn't over the top but the elements were there. Hero didn't trust himself with his love choices & this theme gets repeated A LOT during the book. What made it worse was his frequent regrets for succumbing to sexual intimacy with heroine. It made him look weak & insecure about himself. Sexual chemistry & sex scenes were fine. Emotional pull was on the flat side.

A mediocre recommendation.

I've read almost all of Kat Martin books. They are all wonderful and transport you into another time and place. The history Romances are my favorite. Couldn't put them down.