My Enemy My Love [Mass Market Paperback]

Julia Byrne (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 297 pages
• Publisher: Harlequin; 1st Printing edition (2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0373303459
• ISBN-13: 978-0373303458
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,695,582 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Historical romance during the war between Stephen and Matilda, September 17, 2009

By 

Marshall Lord (Whitehaven, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Enemy, My Love (Legacy of Love) (Paperback)

The time when this romance is set was one of the darkest periods of British history, the war between Stephen and Matilda for the throne of England. It was a time when most of the nobility changed sides repeatedly with the ebb and flow of the war, when horrible atrocities were common, when the lack of a strong central authority allowed robber barons to steal everything from honest people, and men said openly that Christ and his saints slept.

Julia Byrne captures more than a little of the anarchy, cruelty and conflicting loyalties of the period in this book: as historical romances go the period detail is very well done, accurate and integrated into the story.

In 1136, when Lady Isabel de Tracy was a girl on the verge of womanhood, Sir Guy fitzAlan came to her father's castle as an envoy from King Stephen, seeking to persuade her father to pledge loyalty to King Stephen. During a brief pause in the negotiations, Guy and Isabel met in the castle garden, an encounter which because of his kindness, and her beauty, neither party was ever to forget.

Five years later Guy, now made a Baron for his services to Stephen, was again an envoy, this time to Empress Matilda at Gloucester to negotiate a prisoner exchange. Isabel, who has been forced to serve as a junior Lady in Waiting to an empress she despises, hears Matilda arranging to have fizAlan murdered. Risking everything, she tries to warn him, but her attempt goes calamitously wrong.

Guy and Isabel are forced to try to escape together, but the Empress has not finished with them, and she is not the only sinister enemy with a grudge against Isabel's famiily which they will have to face. And under the threat of blackmall, Isabel may face a terrible choice of who to betray ...

Better than average for a Mills & Boon historical romance.