Customer Reviews

The Reluctant Suitor CD

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(78)

 

 

"He could only marvel at her willingness to offer her virginity upon the fleshly horn of passion so that they could complete their union, and yet, she had done just that in her sacrificial desire to be one with him." I am seriously considering the possibility that this book is really meant to be a spoof. At the very least it has to be a ghost-writer...no one who has written well in the past could produce such wretched prose accidentally. And the tediousness of it! The character's first meeting goes something like this: 1. He says something. 2. She reflects back on a similar thing he said as a child. 3. She remembers what how much she adored him as a child. 4. Some other suitor looks on angrily. 5. We learn what this other suitor was like at a child, what he's doing now, and what he ate for breakfast. 6. The dogs bristle at the other suitor's response, and we learn the life story, eating habits, favorite chew-toys, and position of every hair on the head of these dogs who on one page are 8 and 10 years old respectively and on the next page remember the man who has been away for 16 years. 7. He looks at her and muses about her slammin' body, in sentences containing twelve verbs, fifteen adjectives, and the word "orbs" used at least twice per page to describe both breasts and eyeballs, sometimes so interchangeably you don't know which is which. 8. She responds to his original comment with a warbling laugh or trilling rejoinder, while you've totally forgotten what he even said because it was twelve pages ago and you've been trying to decide whether you should laugh in derision or cry in despair or simply slap the author upside the head review-wise on Amazon. Guess which one I chose. :-)

Being a very avid Woodiwiss fan, I eagerly purchased this book on March 18th - the first date out on the shelves. I am very saddened to say that Ms. Woodiwiss has not redeamed herself from her last novel (which was absolutely horrible) with this novel which I have yet to finish. Even re-reading The Flame and the Flower for the 50th time, it seems, I find is enjoyable and very difficult to put down. This novel, The Reluctant Suitor, drags on and on and on and on ... until about three quarters of the way through the book, it gets interesting, only to get really stupid in the end. Honestly! I have 80 pages left to read, and I am dreading it but need to finish.

I have a TON of respect for Ms. Woodiwiss as a highly talented author. She has a great talent for her literary art of using descriptive words and phrases so that you really can visualize what is happening and what each character feels ... but there is a limit! The Reluctant Suitor and her last novel (see its name doesn't even pop into my mind - while all her others do) are a great disappointment. I eagerly await her next novel because really, it can only get better. And I will buy it only because it is one of Ms. Woodiwiss' novels. I hope I am pleasantly surprised.

I checked the audio book read by Lynn Redgrave from the library, and wow, was I howling with laughter through most of it! This was probably one of the most overblown, ridiculous, predictable and over-written piece of purple prose I have ever stumbled across.

The characters weren't likable in the least; Adrianna was insipid, silly and mostly bland and Colton was obnoxious, rude, arrogant and occasionally just plain creepy. The secondary characters weren't much better.

So many little points just made me grit my teeth. One of the worst was the fact that Adrianna was so upset over being "rejected" by Colton years before, and went on and on about how "heartbroken" she was. She was SIX years old at the time! Little more than a baby! And he was only sixteen! Of course he doesn't want to marry a little girl, because ew. Just... ew. And speaking of major ew, what was with the scene in the bathing chamber where he refused to leave and leered at her while making suggestive comments? They are both supposed to be high-born aristocrats, with much better manners than that. Adrianna would never have been left alone to bathe, and if she had and some strange man wandered in the way Colton did, you'd better bet she'd be screaming down the house. Well, she would if she had any spine whatsoever. Colton was a pig, plain and simple.

And then, after she was thisclose to being raped by Convenient Evil Character Roger, Lord Jerk leers at her even more and thinks about how he wants to ravish her?? The poor girl was almost RAPED and Colton is still all lusty? Pig pig pig. And Ms. Woodiwiss, what an extremely poor choice of words, since "ravished" and "raped" are pretty close to the same thing.

And let's touch briefly on her word choices, shall we? I kept an "Orb Count" and I ended out the book at eighteen. Of course, three of those were referring to breasts, but still. And honestly, if I see the phrase "limpid pools" once more time, I'll probably lose my dinner.

I could gone on more about Convenient Plot Device Pandora the first "wife" who tricks Colton into marriage (yawn) and then suddenly isn't dead (yawn) even though the priest pronounces that she is. Or the predictability of having Utterly Evil Roger suddenly turn into a murdered and a sadist when at the beginning Adrianna was flirting and playing with him. And that's another thing! If she was so disinterested in him, why didn't she just tell him to get lost from the get-go? Made absolutely no sense. But then again, not much in this book did.

I did enjoy listening to Lynn Redgrave, though. Gorgeous British accent, and she made the characters sound more interesting than they actually were.

I wish I could give this book negative stars, because that's what it deserves.

I don't usually review books, but I felt compelled to warn others away from this load of drivel. I really like romance fiction, just not THIS book.

In the first few chapters our hero happens to walk into bath while our heroine is naked it the tub. Not only does he act like a hormonal teenager in a locker room, but then we're reminded of the episode every few pages for most of the rest of the book! Soooo sexy... NOT!

In another episode, a second "hero" finds a woman battered and bleeding in the road. Her husband has murdered someone and nearly murdered her which caused her to miscarry. This hero takes her home and puts her to bed. He soon starts making passes at her since she'll soon be a "free woman." (i.e. her husband will be hanged for murder) She's still bleeding for heavens sakes!!! YUCK! He's supposed to be a good guy??!!

The language was so overblown, overwrought, and repetitive I was fixated to see how bad it could truly get. Sort of like watching the tsunami coverage on TV. It just got worse and worse.

I was given this book. I wasted my time reading it, but at least I didn't waste my money. Don't waste yours.

This is definitely one of the very worst romance novels I've ever read. It felt like a chore...The only reason I was able to finish it was the fact that I had 12 total hours on a plane going to and from Europe.

So the first 100 or so pages were spent, amazingly enough, describing Adriana & Colton's meeting after 16 years of his absence. No action, just flowery, excessive, repetetive dialouge. 100 pages of tiny print. Let that sink in for a moment.

When finally we got out of that hallway, I felt like I had acomplished some amazing task. I was hoping that NOW maybe the book would go somewhere? Nope! And it never really did!

First there was really no romance between our characters...Even though the book summary promised that Colton would be our "reluctant suitor" he certainly wasn't! He began lusting over Adriana from the very first day, when he intruded in her bath and stands there staring at her for a good 10 minutes, then makes crude remarks to her when she wants him to leave. Oh, how romantic. Then we are reminded every other sentence of the fact that this happened, and just in case we forget, that Colton wants her hot bod.

It was ridiculous how Adriana was so affected by Colton's refusal to enter into a marraige contract with her when she was 6. S I X. then about 50 or so pages are taken up with her lamenting and chiding Colton over his actions...like her heart was broken.

There was nothing likable really about either of our main characters. they were uninteresting to the extreme. Beauty was basically the only thing mentioned to redeem them...I'm sorry, but taking care of orphans and being a war hero are such cliched devices...

They get married about halfway into the book. From then on, we really dont' see much of them. There, the story begins to drunkenly focus on some of our 'secondary' characters, both unlikeable. Roger is so unrealistic, and it seems that his character actually changed since the begining of the book. Hmmm, as I recall, the very first sentence was of Adriana running playfully away from him and laughing, when later she claims she could never stand him! and him being scared to enter due to the memory of Colton's father (who lived there) even though later we learn it was he who murdered him in that house!

The whole plot device of the actress Pandora, Colton's 5 second marriage to her, and the baby that she claimed was his but somehow miraculously was later proved to not be his, but a relative totally detracted from everything.

Some ridiculous scenes I can remember from this book are: after Adriana is pretty much naked and was just almost-raped by Roger, Colton is left alone with her after he saves her, ogles her, and can only think of his lust for her. Wow.

When Colton is shot and brought into a room, the butler Hodges starts talking to Adriana trying to make her feel better or something. It was a ridiculously long speech. I would love to type it up for you, but it's like half a page long. See page 414, about half way down...If you were unfortunate enough to have bought this book...well maybe you use it as a doorstop or cuprest or something.

and yes, the author loves the word orbs. i also noticed she loves 'ensconced' and 'chortle' . and she seems to have a preoccupation with thin and slender fingers.

I'm sorry I wrote so much...I've never been so motivated to share with others the details of a book. consider it a warning!

I won't go and say I've been a huge fan of Kathleen Woodiwiss but I have enjoyed several of her books. I too question whether the same person that was capable of penning "Shanna" was responsible for this effort. Thankfully I waited until it came out in paperback instead of shelling out more money for the hardback.

What are the problems you ask? Well, the prose is thick and overblown as other reviewers have already stated. Characters. What can we say about the characters that hasn't already been said? They are unlike able and totally taken with superficial things. This book is one of the reasons romance gets such a bad rap. Nothing but nothing was redeemable about this read.

I agree with many of the reviewers that reading the reviews was more entertaining then reading the book. It also pains me to pan a novel. It takes great time and effort to get a story down and to bring charaters alive, characters that the reader will care about. I don't think this is so much Ms. Woodiwiss's fault as so much as the editor. Throwing a book together and then adding a well-known authors name on the cover may sell some copies, but word will get around if the book is not up to the standards that a true fan will expect. I hate to compare but this book is NOTHING like what she is capable of and I can only hope her next effort will be better then the past three.

I am relatively new to the romance genre. Well, I have read romance since I was a young girl, but I read the classics by the likes of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, and modern non-traditional romances in which the female characters had a backbone and an attitude and novels with romance as one of its subgenre. I have recently begun to read traditional romance novels and have loved some of them. I have been quite selective and pick those with rave reviews and authors who are considered to be the best of the bunch (like Georgette Heyer, Judith McNaught, Jude Deveraux and Mary Balogh, for instance). Romance novels, if written well, are a wonderful way to spend a few hours reading a great story with conflict, sexual tension and character growth. But when a romance novel is written as badly as this one then you can see why this genre has such a bad rep. Oh. My. God! Kathleen E. Woodiwiss has always written with excess purple prose and dialogue that borders on being silly, but her stories, for the most part, were engrossing and addictive, especially the wonderful A Rose in Winter, Ashes in the Wind and The Wolf and the Dove. The Reluctant Suitor has got to be one of the worst novels ever written! You know you're reading something horrible when the twenty-two-year-old heroine hasn't gotten over a suitor's rejection when she was SIX years old. And you know that you are reading something truly atrocious when all the hero does is lust after said heroine even after she is almost raped by the cardboard cutout villain...

There are so many awful scenes here it is difficult to pinpoint which one is the worst one. Could it be the one in which Colton leers at Adriana while she is taking a bath? (Which reminds me, this is a Regency-era romance. Where is the personal maid or chaperone during this scene? I thought high-born young ladies didn't take baths by themselves.) Was it the fact that the author spends a large portion of the book delving on Lady Adriana's feelings of betrayal when a sixteen-year-old Colton refused to enter into a marriage contract with her when she was six years old? (Give me a break! Is this storyline in any way believable? If something like that had happened to me when I was six, not only would I be long over it by the time I turned twenty-two, I don't think I would have even remembered it!) Could it be that Colton is the creepiest, most disgusting "hero" ever invented? And it matters little to me that he fought in Waterloo. It seems to me that most Regency heroes fought in Waterloo anyway. Could it be the large number of adjectives and adverbs used in a single sentence? Could it be the excessive use of the words "orbs," "eyebrows," "pools," "beauty," and "manliness"? Could it be that this novel was overall so incredibly long-winded it almost brought me into a coma? This is the most irresponsible piece of literature(?) ever written. The Reluctant Suitor (stupid title, for he never seemed reluctant to me) is every romance cliche come to life. Woodiwiss has always been partial to prosaic wording, but at least she used to write good stories. It is a good thing I bought this book for one dollar at an used bookstore's bargain bin. I overpaid for this drivel if you ask me! Do yourself a favor and don't waste your time or money on this train wreck.

I am a HUGE Kathleen Woodiwiss fan and was eagerly awaiting the release of this book. Perhaps my expectations were simply too high, but I was not overly impressed with The Reluctant Suitor. I thought the romance between Colton and Adrianna lacked depth and seemed to come about too quickly. Also, in past books, Ms. Woodiwiss has had strong heroines, but I just did not see this in Adrianna-she was a likable heroine, I suppose, but she also seemed to be a bit shallow(maybe this isn't exactly the right word, but close enough). My feelings for Adrianna were not helped by the other characters constantly extolling her virtues- I think her virtues should be obvious, but constantly repeating them seems too forced.

Beyond some character flaws, the story just seemed so confusing. I was able to follow it most of the time, but it seemed as if way too much was going on and this detracted from the central story of Adrianna and Colton.

If you've never read Woodiwiss before, do NOT start with the Reluctant Suitor, but instead, read one of her classics like Shanna or Ashes in the Wind.

The best book I ever read is KW's "Shanna". I keep extra copies around just to loan out. And I keep waiting for another good book from her and have been disappointed. But I keep hoping, so I eagerly bought this hardcopy hot off the press. I've read 100 pages and still don't know what its about. A real waste of money. Thanks for Shanna BUT Sayonara, Kathleen.

I am a longtime fan of Kathleen Woodiwiss, huge fan of the Romance genre and librarian for 14 years so I say this with great confidence: I could not believe how awful this book was - even by its genre standards, this was simply horrid. The writing was unbelievably poor, the characters were childish, unrealistic and the descriptions throughout the book could be used in Romantic Times magazine's poor writing example column. Even the action scenes continually fail to hit their mark. I was trudging through the reading from the first chapter, hoping it would get better; but the constant reference to the bath scene and the repetitive references to her beauty were poor uses of technique. After the near-rape scene, rather than feel enraged or protective or even possessive of Adriana, Colton is still described as being lustful, ogling her and thinking of nothing but the sexual tension he had yet to satisfy. After practically being raped, our "hero's" reaction was so unbelievable, it was disgusting. I tossed the book after that and was incredibly sadden to have this particular author come crashing down from her pedestal in my book.