Customer Reviews

The Heir

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The best part of this book was the secondary romance between the heroine's mother and the physician. There were some memorable characters - the mysterious French count, the spotty viscount (Lord Greybourne), the Talgarths, and of course, Elspeth who gradually moves from almost unbelievable naivete to a genuine love with a decent man.

What I hated were the hero and heroine. If you like Catherine Coulter in general, you will not like this review. I am not writing for the Coulter fans out there, but for readers who read other Regency historicals and who are trying out Coulter as a new-to-them author. I used to love Coulter back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her sensibilities are more in tune with that period, and she herself admits it in more than one review. What I don't understand is the profusion of re-releases of older works. [I do understand that they bring in a lot of money to publisher and author, but not why these re-releases are so popular].

I am not fond of ultra-alpha heroes who taunt and then rape their wives, or of conversation that consists largely of "damns". Re-reading THE HEIR again, Coulter sounds like Amanda Quick to me without the humor and wit, and with far more swearing from everyone.

I gave this one star not because the hero and heroine are so unlikeable, but because the story is more of a marriage that is basically a rape and founded solely on mercenary considerations plus mistrust and hostility on the part of the husband. We have a hero who jumps to conclusions, perhaps with some justification, but who does not change his mind about his fiancee's infidelity (Arabella was not even his wife when the supposed infidelity occurred). He continues to accuse her of adultery even after discovering that she is a virgin. When she charges him with rape, he does not answer that it is impossible for a husband to rape his wife (a legal reality back then) but that he did not rape her. He used cream. Yeah, right. And he continues in this train of thought for the whole book, more or less. Only the proof that someone else was with the French count is what changes his mind. Nothing that Arabella or her mother can say will do it.

Arabella herself is hard to like. She has a real attitude problem at the outset. She is blindly devoted to her father, a man who was abusive (physically and emotionally) to his young wife. She is completely unaware of the fact that her mother's marriage to him was a misery. Until the hero points out the examples of her father's infidelity, Arabella will not change her mind. In fact, she mentally calls her mother a trollop and an adulterous wife after learning that her widowed mother plans to marry within months of the late Earl's death. I can understand Arabella's love for a father who indulged her, I can understand her pain and shock that her mother would remarry so hastily, and I can even understand her suspicions that her mother has been unfaithful. What I cannot understand is her general attitude.

Yes, Arabella does stand up to the hero, her husband the new Earl. Yes, she is the only person for him, obnoxious that he is, the only person who can challenge him and keep him on his toes. If there had not been Justin's attitude through the novel and other clunkers, this book might have rated 3 stars.

Rated: 0.9
Recommendation: Avoid, unless you are turned on by a hero who almost puts Othello to shame, and by constant fighting between hero and heroine.

Sometimes Coulter wins and sometimes she misses. The H/H were not intersting to me. I was not rooting for them to be together. The heroine begins by being an a#% and then it becomes the hero's turn. The fact that the heroine idolized her jerk of a father made me hate her. And of course he comes out smelling like a rose in the end. I don't care what he did for his youngest daughter, but the way he treated his eldest daughter was unforgivable and made him a monster. That being said, I was more interested in Elspeth and Gervaise (It's really bad when you feel sorry for the villian) than the H/H. The fact that it got me to "rant" gave the book 2 stars.

I wanted to like this book. The flyleaf made it sound interesting - young lady's father dies and she has to marry his heir, the new earl, who is her second cousin; a strange French relative appears on the scene with unusual consequences. All sounded reasonably positive and I settled down to read a good yarn.

I didn't get it. What I got was a very disappointing, abrupt story supposedly about miscommunications being resolved and some lost emeralds and a possible murder. It started off well with our heroine, Arabella, meeting Justin who she thinks is one of her father's bastards, not realising he is actually her second cousin and the new Earl (her father had withheld from her that there was any surviving male in his family). Arabella is a feisty, tomboyish young girl of eighteen and she's great fun.

From this first major scene it all goes downhill. Arabella and the earl marry according to her father's wishes but he decides she has slept with the French comte staying with them and he virtually rapes her on their wedding night. No matter how much she protests her innocence he doesn't believe her. What seemed like it might be a light, delicate book ends up discussing sodomy and with incest taking place too. Decidedly uncharming.

Arabella is very hard to understand. Her new husband treats her appallingly yet she falls in love with him. He seems an incredibly un-rounded character - perfect in every way except that he believes his wife has previously been unfaithful, and is semi-violent and threatens to strangle her. Why is he so thickheaded about that? It doesn't fit at all.

The sub-plot of Arabella's half-sister Elsbeth and her fling with the comte (who turns out to be her half-brother, thus the incest) doesn't work too well. There's another romance, between Arabella's mother and the local doctor, which DOES work - although Ann (the mother) seems to recover remarkably quickly from an 18 year dreadful marriage.

The dialogue between the characters is very strange. It's all done in short sentences. Nobody says anything complex. They all want to strangle each other. Or kill the comte. Even Arabella. The earl threatens to strangle Arabella. She doesn't seem to mind. Do you get the picture?

Overall this book was a missed opportunity. The whodunnit aspect wasn't even very gripping and by the end of it I was just glad it was all over. The expectation that they would all live happily ever after seemed distinctly unlikely to me.

This book is read-able. However, Justin is probably the meanest "hero" ever! I don't mind men who are mean in the beginning of the book but later come to their senses. I like the Alpha-male type. But the character of Justin was just horrible. He BRUTALLY rapes Arabella, degrades her, and he's never even really sorry about it. I couldn't even finish the book because I hated him so much.

Please, pretty please, stay away from this one! Trust what I, and other faithful reviewers, have to say about it: it is just terrible, no lesser word can describe it. I'll admit I am not Coulter's greatest fan, but I have always enjoyed her books, until this one.

Justin, our so-called 'Hero' is a chauvinist and the most arrogant man to have walked the earth. Although Arabella has not much charm either, I felt compelled to take her side by the horrendous way she gets to be treated. Specially on their wedding night when Justin, who believes to be the owner of the truth at every conceivable level, decides to rape (even though he never actually sees it under that light) his virginal bride. Of course, poor man!, he thought he had been cuckolded! THAT IS STILL NO EXCUSE FOR HIS BEVAHIOR.

After that scene, I almost threw the book out the window. Anyhow, unless you are drawn to this type of monstrous stories, do not even try to grab this one with a ten foot pole. The characters did not come alive to me, and their passion, romance, call it what you may, left much to be desired. Very disappointing and frustrating. A 1 STAR RATING DOES NOT DO IT JUSTICE, A 0 WOULD BE BETTER!

Arabella, a teen barely 18, has a diffuclt choice to make, either marry the man her father had picked, or don't marry and is kicked out of the estate. She makes her decision very difficult but she decides to marry Justin. They start off very shaky at the beginning but then Arabella decides to marry. It was then Justin thought that she was cheating on him. He makes the wedding a living hell. Arabella had no idea what made Justin so mad.
Later on, Justin realized that she never had cheated on him and he was sorry for making that realization. At the end, they live happily. In this book there was a lot of deceit and mistrust. People also got hurt. Please read this book. It will bring thoughts into your head and lessons that are worth thousands of words.

Catherine Coulter was among one of the first romance authors that I ever read. I have liked many of her books, but I have noticed a trend in her historical romance that I can't like. The men always treat the women horribly. This book is probably one of the best or rather worst examples. The "hero" proceeds along his path with blind arrogance and belief in what he "knows" to be true. He brutally rapes his wife on their wedding night and then refuses to consider it rape. She acts like a spoiled brat practically from the first moment she appears, but you begin to feel a certain sympathy for her because of the unforgivable way her husband treats her.

I'll continue to read Catherine Coulter's modern mysteries, but I doubt I can bring myself to read another one of her historical romances again. This is the worst one of all. Utter trash!

Any potential this book had was destroyed the moment the hero of the story raped his wife. Justin Deverill was looking forward to marrying Arabella until he thought she betrayed him with another man. He then feels that she deserves to be raped on their wedding night. Of course, by the end of the book, the truth comes out and she forgives him and they find bliss in the bedroom. The rest of the plot was interesting and the secondary characters quite lovable. However, the author needs to be taken to task for her light treatment of rape.

While it is true historically that women were property and husbands could and did rape their wives, one must seriously question the author's happy endings. No woman who has been treated so brutally is going hop right into bed with her husband and find bliss the moment he says "sorry". Unfortunately, this seems to be a favorite plot line with Catherine Coulter and is played out in several of her books.

If I could give it 0 stars I would. Why anyone would give this book 5 stars is beyond me. Maybe some women get off reading about the heroine getting raped by the "hero". Not my bag - the book went in the garbage and I resolve to read the reviews of my future purchases more carefully. Not buying another Catherine Coulter again!

I usually like Coulter's romances, but her books are either great or terrible. I have to say that this is the worst one I have ever read. The story line was completely obvious, with no suspense or mystery. The book had very little action but mostly lifeless, stilted dialogue. Very little romance at all, the main characters are uncompelling and its hard to see where the attraction is; the main love scene is a brutal rape. If you are a fan of Coulter I advise you to avoid this novel.