Customer Reviews

Reckless Angel

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

 

 

There's something just not right with a romance between a 15 year old girl and a 29 year old man. What could Ms. Feather have been thinking? I've read and enjoyed many of her novels but this one was horrible.

I was so disappointed in this story. I have read numerous Jane Feather books and have always
thought them a good read. For the life of me, I just could not like the Hero OR Heroine in this
book..

This is the Story of Sir Daniel Drummond, a Malignant Noble during the time of the execution of
Charles I and exile of Charles II and of Henrietta Asby (aka Harry) the mis-treated and mis-
understood, willful country gentle maiden.

They meet when Sir Daniel rescues Henrietta from the Battlefield at Preston. Due to the terrible
circumstances of her homelife, Henrietta ran away from home to be with her "supposedly" true
love Will, who was fighting with the royalists. In a quick turn of events Sir Daniel proposes to
Henrietta, she accepts, and the story however bad it started out, gets worse.(in one week she
went from Loving Will to marrying Sir Daniel?)

Henrietta is the kind of fictional character you literally want to strangle. She is so wishy washy.
The girl doesn't know whether she is Arthur or Martha. At times she is about at animated as a
limp rag and when she does do something, you just want to cringe and think to yourself. Ohh
well THAT was stupid!!!

And then there is Sir Daniel our stoic hero. He acts like a bit of a git really. He is so
condescending to the Heroine. Although you tend to feel for the man because he has saddled
himself with Henrietta.

I couldn't do it. I picked it up three times and all three time I threw it back down. Read a
magazine, that's what I say.

I reviewed this novel for Romance Reader At Heart website.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

The only reason I chose to review this novel is the low, and I mean a very, very low score it received from the readers on Amazon. I've just recently discovered this author and from only a handful of books read so far, that score bothered me.

Here is the original 1989 Book Blurb:

She turned his life into chaos as she melted his heart...

Sir Daniel Drummond had amazed himself by offering to marry Henrietta Ashby to save her from her tyrannical father. Now the little hoyden had turned his household topsy-turvy with her unconventional ways. Yet he had to admit that his impetuous "Harry" brought a unique ardor to their bedchamber, making each night a glorious celebration of silken skin and satin caresses...snaring his world-weary heart.

Henrietta had learned much from her bold, cynical husband whose skilled lovemaking sent the blood singing through her veins. But as they followed their deposed king into exile, she wondered if she had enough courage, enough love, to face the perils of court intrigue... and save her beloved Daniel from a traitor's death!

This book was originally published in 1989 (the age of Bodice Rippers) with an interesting setting of England right before Charles I had been executed, during Cromwell's rule as well as Charles II's attempt to return to England. I am surprised it went unnoticed by me. Yet, reading the blurb, I'm not so surprised. The blurb actually doesn't do the book justice, and in my opinion, is atrocious and aims to titillate rather than draw a reader to the story. It misrepresents the hero as a "bold, cynical husband whose skilled lovemaking sent the blood singing through her veins," and misses the mark by leagues in talking about the heroine as "impetuous 'Harry' brought a unique ardor to their bedchamber, making each night a glorious celebration of silken skin and satin caresses." The hero was never bold or cynical, and the heroine, while impetuous, was still very young and could never have acted `ardently'. As much as I was happy to see Avon rewrite the blurb, in my opinion, it still misrepresents the hero and heroine.

Sir Daniel Drummond is twenty-nine; Baronet of Glebe Park in the village of Cranston, in the county of Kent; His Majesty's most loyal servant; a widower who was faithful and loved his wife, until she died birthing their second child; and a father who adores his children, yet always tries to apply gentle discipline. He is the epitome of the word 'hero'. A hero, from Wikipedia, describes one as "(male) and heroine (female) came to refer to characters who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self-sacrifice--that is, heroism--for some greater good of all humanity. This definition originally referred to martial courage or excellence but extended to more general moral excellence." That is exactly who Daniel was.

Only a hero would stop at the end of battle to help a young girl, wounded and helpless; only a hero would attempt to return her to her father; and only a hero would save her in the end from that retched man by offering her safe haven as his wife. He was aware of her tender years; aware of her ignorance in regards to marital relations, and for a man that went four years after his wife's death without the said relations, had the forethought and great restraint not to take any chance in leaving his young wife with child until he thought her ready to be. It bothers me when people use the age difference in the characters as an excuse not to finish the book. For goodness' sake, this is 1649 and the age difference between these two was acceptable and preferable. Did you know that "between 1625 and 1649, life expectancy at birth in England and Wales was 38.7 years for males and 37.6 for females"? Both of these people were already middle-aged, so, get a grip people.

Henrietta Ashby is a fifteen-year-old young woman that has never known love of any kind, yet she knew how to give it. Her father and stepmother were willing to give her in marriage to a man twice her age, only because they owed him money and would never even consider allowing her to marry Will, a young man she deeply cared for and thought herself so much in love with, that she ran away from home and willingly followed him on the battle field at Preston, which Royalists lost to the Puritans. This girl was pure of heart, and what some might see as selfish and manipulative, I saw as too eager to help and make herself irreplaceable, therefore worth keeping, worth loving. She also embodies the term `heroine' as much as our hero, Daniel. Everything she does is motivated by her love of others and her loyalty to those that have shown her affection. Her willingness to help them may not always, or most of the time, be the right course, but the motivation behind it is pure.

My favorite paragraph is at the end of this tale, as Daniel is watching her sleep, thinking... "Daniel gazed upon his sleeping wife and wondered how such a wondrous, magical creature has been shaped, how such a loving and giving spirit could have emerged from the arid soil of her childhood. And he had wondered what he had done to deserve the gift of her love, the measurable joy of her self to inform his life."

RECKLESS ANGEL is a romance with sensual overtones that should make Ms. Feather proud. She has achieved a perfect balance of romance and history by introducing us to England as it was at the time of civil strife, and gifting us with characters that were three-dimensional. Combined with a very plausible plot and a quick pace, this makes for a wonderful, extremely entertaining and fun read. I would go so far as to even recommend it to sixteen-year-olds! There are no overly explicit scenes in this book that would make it inappropriate for this generation, or for that matter, any generation. I highly recommend it, and strongly urge you to ignore the negative reviews of this delightful romance story.

Melanie

Don't waste your time!! It was given to me but I won't bother passing it on to any one else. Matching a 15/16 year old with a 29 year old bothered me. Harry's trickery bothered me. It all bothered me. I didn't even bother with the last 10 pages. I was that close to the end, got interrupted and thought "So what?" I am not yet convinced that Jane Feather is worth trying again.

I was disappointed with the maturity level of Henrietta. Granted she was 16, but she was a spoiled little girl from the beginning to the end. The moral of the story shouldn't be "it's alright to do things for people as long as you believe it's right." Henrietta demonstrated a distinct selffishness that disappointed me in the end.

I was disappointed at the way the author had failed to develop the heroine to her full potential. I felt the hero to be too unyielding and the age differences between the two to be too vast. I was left feeling disatisfied and felt as if the story was not yet complete. It also seems as if the hero did not fully appreciate her differences and spent too much time trying to change her. It is not til the end that I felt he had let go of his first deceased paragon of a wife and finally fully embraces his new wife. It was not one of the best books I've read thus far this year.