4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Irrational and haughty heroine make this a one star read, August 27, 2008
This review is from: The Roman's Virgin Mistress (Harlequin Historical) (Mass Market Paperback)
Thanks to an incredibly haughty heroine, this novel gets a one star, and the hero is not that much more likeable either. Taking place during the Roman Empire at a seaside village/resort, beautiful Silvana lives with her ambitious uncle. Hero Fortis meets her as she swims to shore escaping from the lecherous advances from her grown step-son.
Silvana is a widow but a virgin as her deceased husband was an old man. She has a younger brother who is trying to be a tribune in Rome so she has to be above censure but this is where the story ceased to make sense. If she is so concerned abut being proper why does she engage in scandalous behavior like having many male dinner guests constantly in her home, and gaming too.
She meets her match in Fortis who believes she is as loose as she is reported to be. This angers her but she makes no attempt to correct his impressions, in fact she goes about cementing them as she pretends to be a money hungry female after Fortis's younger cousin. And Silvana wonders why he does not have a good opinion of her. Seriously the man has only arrived in town. The heroine expects him to belive she really is a generous, selfless person when she pretends to have a calculating character, she is is unrealistic.
Fortis is attracted to Silvana and when she needs his help when her family is in trouble, he is always there to come to her rescue even though she is cold and prickly. Fortis is mad at himself because he could not guess her true character from the limited time they shared together; hethinks he was supposed to see through her manipulative ways. Please, as the reader, I had a hard time understanding Silvana let alone poor Fortis.
I had to force myself to finish this novel. I kept hoping that the heroine would become warmer and less prideful but it never happened. Finally, a little more historical background would have been nice in this novel. I had no idea why it was so scandalous for women to dance or play the lute or game, I thought Rome was decadent but obviously this seaside town was not.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
"Faro's Daughter" Redux, March 29, 2008
This review is from: The Roman's Virgin Mistress (Harlequin Historical) (Mass Market Paperback)
I really like Styles' first book that I read- "Gladiator's Honor". A bit formulaic, a little derivative, but still good. The Roman's Virgin Mistress is so derivative it is actually a retread of "Faro's Daughter," a Regency written by Georgette Heyer in 1941. The similarities are, to me, too numerous and too glaring to be coincidental. Every main character and most of the plot points were exactly like Heyer's.
In BOTH books:
* The heroine has gone to live with a flighty relative (an uncle in this book, an aunt in FD).
* The flighty relative, in an attempt to get out of debt, bought a huge house and turned it into a gaming, raucous house for the fashionable young gentlemen of their town to come party. Every night they open their doors and the heroine presides over the gambling and the entertainment. Bills are still piling up though, because the relative is extravagant and has no head for money.
* The mortgage on their house is held by an unscrupulous gentleman who is hoping to use the threat of foreclosure to make the heroine his mistress. * The heroine is virginal and pure, truly above reproach by society in anyway, but she has still managed to get the reputation of being a loose woman of low morals for acting as hostess at her relative's "card parties".
* The hero gets pulled in when his young cousin falls for the heroine. * * The young cousin tells his mother he means to marry her. The mother, our hero's aunt, calls the hero in to extract his young cousin from the heroine's "clutches." To pay her off if he has to, if that will get rid of her.
* The heroine, of course, has no intention of marrying the inexperienced young man- even if he is rich and all his money could solve her family's problems.
* She has every intention of telling the hero this to reassure him but he treats her so badly, like a loose woman, in fact, that she decides to teach him a lesson by pretending to be exactly what he thinks she is- a coarse, money-grubbing harpy.
* This, of course, leads to many misunderstandings and scuffles on their path to true love.
* The hero challenges the heroine to gamble with him for very high stakes. He lets her win at first and then bleeds her for an obscene amount of money to "teach her a lesson".
* The heroine has a selfish younger brother in the army who doesn't appreciate her and needs her to come up with the money to buy his expensive commission.
* There's a horse race with the hero.
* The hero eventually wins the mortgage off the evil suitor on a wager.
Again, all the elements outlined above are IN BOTH BOOKS. All of them!
I really liked Gladiator's Honor and Styles' other books sound interesting too. This book just irked me, though. It was far too similar to me to just be a coincidence and she doesn't acknowledge Georgette Heyer anywhere in the book, not the dedication or the author's note. It just seemed inappropriate to me and it's been bugging me for awhile.
Apart from that, though, the book itself is trite and what parts she didn't lift are predictable and formulaic. The heroine is a shrinking violet, dull and insipid. There's a tacked on subplot with pirates that is so easy to unravel it makes her heroes look foolish that they don't crack it sooner.
I say if this plot sounds interesting go read "Faro's Daughter", and if its ancient rome you're craving go watch Gladiator instead of picking this hodgepodge of mediocrity up.
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