Customer Reviews

Gambler's Heart (Harlequin Historical)

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

 

 

This is the second Gayle Wilson books I've read (the first, "Honor's Bride" is equally fabulous), and I found her amazing. Ms. Wilson writes with sensitivity, understanding, and passion, and all three come through in "The Gambler's Bride." The story centers a centers around a series of standard romance novel devices-- a forced marriage, a gambled bride, a scarred man with a past, a beautiful widow who's never know passion-- but Wilson trancends the stereotypes to make this story pulse with life and love. Her hero, Jean-Luc Gavereau is a gambler, a once handsome man horribly scarred by fire (this is not some sexy little mark across his cheekbone). He feels isolated by his deformity, his birth, and his class. He meets Madeline Fairchild in the private parlor of an inn one rainy night. Their meeting is brief and acrimonious, but both are haunted by the kiss they shared. They don't meet again until over a year later, when Madeline's half brother asks her to marry Gavereau in order to release him from the gambling debts he owes the man. Jean-Luc cannot fathom why Maddy wants to marry him, but agrees because he wants her and because she moved him terribly that night in the inn. Madeline has some secrets of her own, but the two lovers explore each other with tenderness, delicious passion, and a good deal of humor. Because their union makes little sense to polite society, they, and especially Jean-Luc, are the target of a great deal of anger and violence. It is overcoming this hatred, and learning to trust each other that proves the greatest challenge to Maddy and Jean-Luc. This is a beautiful, beautiful love story, full of love and redemption and fabulous sex scenes. I love the fact that Maddy knows exactly what she wants from Jean-Luc-- his heart and soul, and I love that he feels it too. He gives himself truly to Madeline in a way that few romance heroes do. I find that very very beautiful. If you like some of my other favorite Romance writers-- Connie Brockway, Mary Jo Putney's historicals, Mary Balogh, Patricia Coughlin-- you'll love this one too.

Lady Madelyn Fairchild has a title and great beauty, but there's something missing in her life...she's never known love, she's just known pain at the hands of the people who should have loved and cared for her. She finds that missing piece of herself in Jean-Luc Gavereau. He's a man whose scarred exterior masks an equally scarred interior. Together they find that two wounded hearts just might be able to take the biggest gamble of all...to trust in a love they've never known and never expected to find.

The third book in Wilson's "Heart" series is as wonderful as the first two. Her characters have depth and pull you into the stories, until you absolutely can't put down the book!

I fell in love with The Gambler's Heart from the very first page. I loved the characters, their story, their gut wrenching, beautiful, moving and tender romance. The hero, Jean-Luc Gavereau and the heroine Madelyn Fairchild are magnetic and powerful characters, both very tortured, both, it seems, destined for each other. They are brought together thanks to a big coincidence: they meet at an inn, there's a bit of love at first sight action, then two years later Madelyn's brother Harry loses in a high stakes card game to Jean-Luc, the owner of a gaming hell. Harry offers his sister to Jean-Luc in marriage when he can't repay his debts. Despite this contrived beginning I'm still engrossed by the characters, Jean-Luc especially. Half his face and body is horribly disfigured by burn marks, and he wears an eye patch. (I admit it, I'm a sucker for beauty and the beast stories.) Needless to say he's very touchy, to put it mildly, about his appearance, and there's a lot for these two to overcome in the development of their relationship. There's all the doom and gloom and angsty tortured melodrama that you would expect from a scarred hero like Jean-Luc. And even though he is a bit over the top, I love him anyway, or maybe because of it. He's so dark and dangerous, but really vulnerable at the same time, in the way that he falls so hard for Madelyn.

As for Madelyn... what to say about Madelyn. She was alright for a while. She seemed strong and capable. She knows she wants Jean-Luc, and goes after him. But there's something about her, once she's married to him, that doesn't quite add up. Her tortured act wasn't nearly as convincing as Jean-Luc's. I kept holding out for a big revelation that would help make sense of her character and actions, but none of it came together in any coherent resolution or consolidation of the disparate, underdeveloped parts of her character. I felt sorry for her at first, and it seemed for a while like both she and Jean-Luc could heal each other - but when it came to understanding what exactly Madelyn needed healing, I was like, really? That's it? It seemed she was making such a big deal over nothing. She has some traumatic family history, that's never fully explained. All of her evil family members have to date died out, except for her brother, who gets to be the villain of the story.

The plot of The Gambler's Heart is really where things start to fall apart and a perfectly wonderful romance is utterly sabotaged. The plot, when it injudiciously strays from the relationship between Madelyn and Jean-Luc, is all about Harry causing trouble. It's bad enough that their romance starts to have a bit of a claustrophobic feel to it after a while, because Madelyn, for some reason, decides that she doesn't want to leave the comfort and safety of their love nest. When the two do try and venture out into the real world, everything goes horribly wrong.

Part of the problem is, Harry is a weak and pathetic villain, hardly a threat at all. Jean-Luc could totally take care of him - if it weren't for Madelyn's interference and stupidity. The only reason Harry wrecks as much havoc as he does is because of Madelyn. She lets him manipulate and blackmail her, all the while hiding the difficulty from Jean-Luc out of some misguided notion that she's protecting him from Harry - when the guy really doesn't need protecting. And even if he did, her actions don't help at all - quite the reverse, actually. When Jean-Luc finds out her first deception, and they have a heart to heart talk about honesty and working to keep an already shaky marriage afloat, I breathe a sigh of relief. I think, it was a bit of a hairy moment there, with the awful misunderstandings, but they talked about it and cleared it up pretty quickly, and we're out of the woods, right? Disaster averted. Ha. Not bloody likely. Because Madelyn has to keep on trying to protect Jean-Luc from Harry, who keeps trying to mess things up, and so she keeps lying to Jean-Luc over and over again - oh about so many things. (Though Jean-Luc is also guilty of the lying to keep the other safe nonsense, unfortunately.) Thanks to Madelyn's idiocy, Jean-Luc gets stabbed, beat up, shot at, whipped, and blinded. The poor guy has enough trouble without this horrible excuse for a wife, I'm surprised he makes it through to the end of the book.

After he discovers her deceptions the whole thing goes up in flames. Everyone loses their mind. All sense of character and romance is demolished, and the story disintegrates into a manic spectacle of I hate you! Oh no I hurt you! I've lost you forever! I shall sacrifice my love and life for you! It's for your own good! I am unworthy! My fault! My fault! My fault! These sentiments are pretty equally divided between both hero and heroine. Jean-Luc goes berserk, absolutely nuts - and I don't really blame him, because of all the huge misunderstandings Madelyn orchestrates. There's a huge blow up, complete with a house fire, in the midst of which Jean-Luc flings insane, ridiculous accusations at Madelyn - all of which would be really funny if I wasn't so upset at the ruination of what started out as such a great book. I'm flabbergasted . I was enjoying The Gambler's Heart so much. The last quarter of the book completely blindsides me with this nosedive into insanity, and I can only ask why? Whyyyyyy?

Also, the gambler theme seemed tacked on, along with the random cameo appearances of unexplained characters from previous books in the series (which, since I haven't read those books, makes for some gaps in the narrative.)

I have absolutely no idea how I managed to finish reading this, but the fact that some elusive "thing" kept me trudging along until it ended is the only reason that I gave this book more than 1 star. Blah. Where to begin? Maddy..the "heroine" was my biggest problem. I hated her. She lied constantly to her husband for the stupidest reasons..yet continued to wonder why Jean Luc didnt believe in her love....gee, lets see, if I lied to my hubby over and over, Id EXPECT him to be wary of me. The "story" was terribly written with paragraphs that jumped around leaving the reader momentarily confused...the setting was soooo bland..they never left the bedroom ....oh yeah..and getting back to the wonderful Maddy..she was ASHAMED of J.L..she even admitted it to herself! I just dont understand the glowing reviews of this book...and this actually won an award...wow. This book had AMAZING potential..I LOVE beauty and the beast type books...sadly, this was just a waste of time. I wouldnt recommend it.

I'd give this book 2.5 stars. I agree that it did have a lot of potential, but I didn't find that it lived up to my expectations. The relationship between Maddy and Jean-Luc didn't develop enough during the book to make the ending very credible. Neither of them treated the other particularly well, and there seemed to be very little trust between them. I was looking forward to reading this book, but can't recommend it. It leaves you with an uneasy, rather than contented, romantic feeling. I didn't like the story very much. For a book with a similar basic plot - a physically disfigured man believing himself to be not worthy of love - I highly recommend "Texas Destiny" by Lorraine Heath, which is a beautiful, stunningly well-written and memorable story.

This is the best romance book I read in my life and I'm sorry because there are a lot of people in the world that never read it. Thank you Gayle Wilson for sharing this wonderful love story with us!

As always, Gayle Wilson's historical novels don't disappoint. The Gambler's Heart is no exception. Emotionally intense to an almost painful degree, Ms Wilson tells a complex, intriguing, gritty tale of two wounded people - one physically, the other emotionally - healing each other and finding a love that makes them whole again. A remarkable story by a remarkable writer who challenges the reader into feeling - living- being part of the hero & heroine's lives, emotions and, finally, their joy as they reach out into each other's souls to find a heart-warming, memorable love.

The writing in this book is kind of all over the place and generally I'm disappointed. Either nothing is happen or there is an absolute crisis with nothing in between. While I can't really fault either of the main characters the development is poor and the attempt at suspense by not filling the reader in on exactly what's going on makes our heroine seem overly emotional and out of control. A lot of the really good parts fall flat because not enough information is given early on and it's hard to stay involved with the story line. Some of the story is just unrealistic bordering on idiotic - just too over the top. Some subtlety would have been nice.

If every romance novel ever written was like this book, there would be no reason to hide a 'trashy romance' from dissaproving eyes. I love this book. While few people except Harlquin fans will ever read this novel, I would recommened it to anyone who has ever wanted to fall in love. This passionite story deals with history's shadows, and judging the future by the past. GET THIS BOOK! It will be a movie someday