No Gentle Love [Mass Market Paperback]

Rebecca Brandewyne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1987

When her British grandfather offers the family fortune to the first man who can bring Morgana McShane to the altar, she is unknowingly thrust into a plot against her life--and into the arms of Rian, the one man whose primal passions burn hot enough to warm her cool demeanor.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 589 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (April 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446346896
• ISBN-13: 978-0446346894
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,184,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What a awful book, June 5, 2000

By 

Hilary Smith (Santa Rosa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Gentle Love (Mass Market Paperback)

I have read many books by Rebecca Brandewyne and I could not believe that she wrote this. Her heroes are often volatile, and passionate but they are never cruel or abusive. The hero in this book, Rian, is an abusive vicious man with a cruel streak a mile wide. He raped the heroine repeatedly and slapped her around when he was angry with her. He slapped her hard enough one time that she had a bruise on the side of her face. He never felt any remorse for how he treated her. There was one time when he slapped her three times, raped her, and told her that if that she fought him he would break her arm. The heroine, Morgana, needed to be in a battered wife's shelter, not in this marriage.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Read This Book A Few Years Ago., June 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: No Gentle Love (Mass Market Paperback)

This was the first book that I have read by R. Brandewyne and of all the 15 books of her's that I went on to read, it remains my favorite. It was a keeper for me. This book was written 20 years ago and many of today's sensitive readers would not like this book because of the strong and sometimes harsh storyline. The hero was a man to read about and to dream of but one would not want to be married to him in reality. He's not a man you can wrap around your little finger. If this were a contemporary novel, I would agree with the reviewer just below. However, in those days, there were no women's shelters. You had to rely on yourself, your family and whatever resources that were available to you; which was few if you lived in the isolated estates that were common to these types of historical romances.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is a book about rape., June 2, 2005

By 

Bookish Wench (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Gentle Love (Mass Market Paperback)

The heroine, Morgana McShane, is raped repeatededly in this novel, by at least five different men. The worst of them is her husband, Rian, who thinks it is his right and privilege to violate Morgana when and where he sees fit and to hell with her objections.

Brandewyne's bread and butter are tall, dark, sardonic heroes and wild, willful, beautiful heroines who "drive" their heroes to dominate them. I have oftened wondered whether Brandewyne has abuse fantasies herself from the amount of it going on in this book.

Morgana alternately finds herself insulted, slapped, beaten, hit and battered during the course of her relationship with Rian, and that's happening whether or not he's forcing her to have sex. Her male relations treat her nastily and her grandfather sets her up to be a prize by settling his fortune on the grandson who succeeds in marrying her.

Rian's a thoroughly despicable character. He whores, gambles, duels and relates to Morgana as if she's "his", i.e. something to be used as he sees fit. I kept hoping he'd keel over and croak, especially during one of his repeated attacks on her. For the life of me, I cannot see what she sees in him, except that she's able to achieve orgasm with him.

The only characters in this novel that treat Morgana with respect are the Irish country doctor, Michael Kelsey; the sailor, Jeb; and the sea captain, Taylor Jones. Unfortunately, Morgana has been brainwashed by Rian and her demented family to respond only to insults and arrogance that she refuses to accept that she has the right to be treated with respect.

As a time capsule, it is representative of the era it was written in - the late 1970's - when most heroes were raping/forcing their heroines. As a novel, it's just this side of craptastic. I commend Brandewyne for Morgana's continued defiance of Rian, but I cannot countenance Rian's continued violence towards women.