Customer Reviews

Never Call It Love

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I'm glad I was cautioned before I read this that it wasn't a straight-up bodice ripper - or even a typical romance - because I probably ended up enjoying it more than I would have. It's not a "nice" book - and I would daresay that it's difficult to like any of the characters. (Well, maybe one - but his story doesn't end too happily. Like, at all.)

The story: Patrick Stanhope, Irish baronet, is waiting for his ward Anne Reardon to show up and sign a marriage contract with the groom's family. She never arrives. Her naked, beaten, and barely-alive body is found outside the shattered window of a London town house belonging to the Montlow family. When she dies in his arms, he vows vengeance. The culprit is Christopher Montlow, our heroine Elizabeth's brother, who abducted the girl from the street with his Hellfire Club buddies and assaulted her. But through his sister's willful perjury and planning, he escapes the noose and, soon after, the country. Since Patrick is unable to mete out his own justice, he takes his revenge out on the one person he can: Elizabeth. He rapes her and, some months later, she discovers she's pregnant. With nowhere else to turn, she asks him to marry her to repay his debt to her honor. This he does, and their married life becomes a weird stew of love, lust, hatred, and distrust as a mistress, Irish rebellions, betrayal, and the degenerate Christopher wreak their own distinct havoc on our blighted couple.

This book has more of an adventure feel to it - the plot takes the reader from Ireland to the Caribbean to the western Allegheny wilderness - but it's not action-oriented. In fact, most times climatic events are told in the past tense so that it felt like the author rushed ahead and then kept backtracking. That was annoying.

The characters weren't all that likable. Patrick is a stolid chunk of wood who saves all of his passion for a free Ireland. In his favor, he has emotional ties to people who don't entirely deserve it, and he goes out of his way for them while knowing that he will no doubt get burned in the end. I guess he is a man who has a hard time connecting to people, and so when he does find a connection to someone, he holds to it.

I had a real hard time sympathizing with Elizabeth. She's always had the feeling that her brother was a bit off and frightening (like the strangled kitten when they were kids, and the S&M lithograph she found in his room), but he's always had an excuse for his failings and is so young and charming that both she and her mother have put aside any doubts and clung to the notion of family. This extends to giving him an alibi for his whereabouts when Anne Reardon was raped and killed. So, knowing what she knows/feels about him, to see her go down that path was very frustrating and I couldn't help but feel that the Stanhope payback was more than a little deserved.

Her reaction to Anne Reardon's death was jaw-dropping but, on reflection, perhaps not out-of-the-ordinary for the time period. In an age where servant girls' virtues were fair game, it's only when Elizabeth realizes that she came from a respectable background that she feels real outrage over the girl's fate. (It's not a "comfortable" book.) My frostiness towards her did thaw a bit during the interlude in the Alleghenies, when she finds herself abandoned and in danger of starvation and death, and she taps into a core of strength to get her through to the spring thaw. However, that comes nearly at the end!

The storyline of Patrick's mistress, Moira Ashley, wasn't resolved in the end, and she ended up feeling like a red herring anyway - since what she is imagined guilty of turns out not to be the case. And the final reveal and resolution felt rushed and pedestrian. Meh to that.

Is this worth $60 used on Amazon (the current going rate)? Hell no - no used pb is! But if you can get your hands on it for cheap, by library, or by chance, then it is a fine read that skirts the boundaries of historical romance. Rather, it's a story about two people who make disastrous decisions and ruin their own lives, only to realize almost too late what they mean to each other. It's an engaging story, but it's not really what is commonly thought of as "romance."

Book description: A blazing love that was born in smoldering hate.
When beautiful young Elizabeth Montlow lost her innocence it was not on a night of romantic dreams. It was in an act of savage violence by a man seeking vengeance.Yet from this brutal beginning came an all-consuming passion that would take Elizabeth from the sheltered eighteenth-century English countryside to a lonely manor in Ireland, where she was forced to share her man with his ravishing and ruthless mistress... to a nightmare exile on a lush and licentious Caribbean island, where lust and murder went hand in hand... to the depths of the lawless American wilderness, where two men played a monstrous game of heart-wrenching deception with her as the stake....

If you want to *FEEL* then read this book! This book has to be one of the most frustrating books I have ever read! It is not for the faint of heart. If you cannot abide cheating in your romance then this book is not for you. The hero is an unapologetic cheat who does some really unforgivable things to the heroine, and he is unrepentant until the very end. The angst in this book is sometimes intolerable and many times I wanted to throw it in the ocean, but could not let go since my eyes was glued to the pages wishing they could read faster. Beware, this book has it all, rape, cheating, jealous mistress, jealous fiance, murder, sucide, you name it, it's got it! I enjoyed it for what it was, a good non-fiction. Even though it's suppose to be a romance and has it's moments as one, I wouldn't say it was strong in the romance department. It was an engaging read nonetheless and will go on my keeper shelf.

I ended up reading this book in one day. I could not put it down and that hasn't happened in a while.
The story has the true essence of the great bodice-rippers. It reminded me of Stormfire with all the angst and trauma without me wanting to throw the book against the wall like I did more then a few times with Stormfire. A great read if you can get your hands on a copy.