Customer Reviews

Rules of Surrender

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Read this book!

But don't start it if you have to work the next day because you'll be up all night. I liked Charlotte a lot, she was feisty and very proper. The children were good, especially Leila who made trouble without meaning to. Wynter was the best. He thought men were better than women, and it was funny watching Charlotte teach him differently. Also, it was good to see Adorna from THAT SCANDALOUS EVENING get her own romance. Great stuff!

In Ms. Dodd's latest work we meet Charlotte, a governess who is hired by Adorna--the incredibly beautiful "airhead" from "That Scandalous Evening". Charlotte is to teach Adorna's two grandchildren, who have grown up in Arabia; what she doesn't know is that she also needs to instruct Wynter, their father, on the intricacies of British etiquette.

If you have seen "The King & I", you'll have a pretty good idea of how their interplay is going to go. Wynter is very Yul Brenner, right down to the hands-on-his-hips stance. On the other side is Charlotte, who tries to remain at all times the picture of British gentility when what she'd really like to do sometimes is hit him upside the head with a frying pan. Sparks fly when Wynter gets it into his head that Charlotte would make a convenient wife.

The sparring between these two characters is entertaining, at times what we all wished had happened betweeen Deborah Kerr and the King of Siam. Unlike their counterparts in so many other works, the children's antics here ring true and are hilarious enough to endear them to readers. However, after having so enjoyed Adorna in the previous novel, I wished we could have seen more of her "I'll pretend I'm stupid to get what I want" act.

I love Christina Dodd stories, and was especially awaiting this one. What I usually appreciate about Ms. Dodd are her strong, no-nonsense heroines. This book left me a little disappointed in the last couple of chapters, in that I really didn't understand what Charlotte wanted or how it could be resolved. All in all, I thought Jane Higgenbothem (from Scandalous) was a stronger character. However, this book is clearly the first of a trilogy, and I'm awaiting the stories of Charlotte's two partners in the governess business.

Lady Charlotte Dalrumple (also known as Miss Priss) has the unenviable task of civilizing two children who have known only life in a Bedouin tribe until their father decides that it's time to return to his family responsibilities in 19th century England. The children, however, turn out to be a piece of cake - it's their father who is truly the beast. Although he lived his first fifteen years in England, he seems to have lost his civilized English veneer and he's wholeheartedly assimilated a thoroughly male-centric world view: men are like the sun, and women revolve around the sun, loving it and drawing from its warmth and protection. Of course, "everyone" knows the sun doesn't love those that orbit it - its job is only to stay strong, warm, and functional. Picture Miss Priss trying to teach this man (because she ends up getting drawn in to becoming his governess, too) how to conduct himself in polite Victorian society, when HE has already decided that she is need of his warmth and protection (and it doesn't hurt that he likes her body, too), and you have the story.

I liked the plot, but I found that the characters were not always as likable. Lady Charlotte often came across as a thoroughly neurotic woman who developed a load of guilt for something fairly tame (however, I suppose Victorian England really was that repressed - I just kept waiting for us to learn about a far juicier past than she turned out to have). I found Lord Ruskin surprisingly dense, for a man portrayed with a fair amount of native intelligence. However, the conversations between these two sparkled, and the sexual scenes were slowly and wickedly developed. I stifled a laugh at the vision of Lady Charlotte falling off her chair in panic, in front of Queen Victoria - the author has a gift for painting pictures with words! All in all, an enjoyable read.

The Rules of Surrender by Christina Dodd captured my full attention from the first page. I had a wonderful time reading this story. There are so many interesting and exciting characters in the book. You never know quite what Wynter or his children will say next.

Lady Charlotte Dalrumple is a lady who is down on her luck. She and two friends have opened a business and Adorna Ruskin is their first customer. Adorna needs a paragon of propriety to teach her grandchildren how to behave correctly in polite society. Charlotte is more than qualified for the position hence her nickname "Ms. Priss".

Lord Wynter Ruskin has just returned from El Bahar a desert country. He has apparently lost all of his gentlemanly qualities. To make matters worst his two children are wild knife throwing hellions.

Charlotte is both fascinated and awed by Wynter but she is determined to do her duty. She will not let Wynter and his children prevent her from instructing them in correct behavior. Wynter is determined that Charlotte will become his future wife while she adamantly refuses.

The story is wonderful and the characters eventually realize they love each other more than anything. Some of the scenes in the story are absolutely hysterical. I really enjoyed reading this book.

I read this book because I enjoy Dodd's way with dialog, and I thought a governess-employer relationship offered lots of opportunity for verbal sparring, a la Victoria Holt's Mistress of Mellyn. Was I in for a disappointment! The hero, if you want to call him that, is a bone-headed neanderthal who spent his years from age fourteen onward with a tribe of Bedouins who taught him a) to survive in the desert and b) to believe women were chattel, impossible to love. When he finally decides to return home to his grieving, if scatterbrained, mother, he immediately selects his children's governess as the woman for him, and so sets about socially humiliating her and sexually molesting her until she is forced to marry him. Even his mother calls him a "jackass." This caveman carts his new bride off to a tent after they are wed, rips her wedding clothes of off her with a knife, and rapes her. Never fear, we are told she liked it. As she wondered later, "What kind of primitive creature lived in her heart, craving his mastery?" Indeed, I wonder, too. A psychotherapist would have a field day with this crowd. The story line of workplace sexual harassment circa 1830 is fleshed out with a supposed embezzling scheme and the heroine's fruitless task of civilizing the hero. The embezzling angle is wrapped up in less than a paragraph, and the "civilizing" theme is very sketchy--on one hand, we are supposed to believe the hero is a hot-blooded shiekh of the desert who somehow forgot everything he learned prior to age fourteen, and on the other hand we are told he plays 'stupid savage' just to be sure to get his own way. Finally, his children (!) assure our dysfunctional hero that yes, indeed, he does love his bride. Supposely a light bulb goes on over his head, and he is a Changed Man, yet we are told once again that "reluctant maidens should be kidnapped." The only way to really enjoy this uncomfortable, illogical tale is to take it as some sort of spoof of 1970's-era bodice-rippers, and laugh off all of our hero's caveman behavior as if it were just a pie in the face. Good Luck.

Lady Charlotte Dalrumple has been known to have the magic touch with difficult debutantes. So nobody is surprised when a lovely viscountess offers to pay her a large sum to whip her half-savage grandchildren into shape. But she is shocked speechless when she meets the children's father, who has lived among the Bedouin most of his adult life. . . and then discovers that the real reason she was brought there was to tutor HIM in the social graces!

Unfortunately, Lord Wynter Ruskin seems to anticipate her every move and find a thousand different reasons to proclaim the Bedouin way of doing things more civilized than the British. The corset, for example. He is determined to get Lady Charlotte out of hers, for he has decided that she will be his next wife.

Lady Charlotte, however attracted physically to Lord Ruskin, scorns the Bedouin idea that men do not love their wives. She fears being trapped in a loveless marriage and taken for granted by her husband. . . as more of a possession than a mate. Although it is obvious that Lord Ruskin does indeed love her--some men do seem to have difficulty saying the words women want to hear--Lady Charlotte is right to insist upon it. It isn't until Lord Ruskin sees how much her unhappiness upsets him that he realizes that he does indeed love her. . . and that the Bedouin who taught him otherwise was a coward who never knew what he missed.

Christina Dodd has done it again. . . a truly delicious romance with a nice mixture of sensuality and humor. You won't want to put it down!

I truly enjoyed this particular book. It was a typical romance plot line (a lord falls for his children's governess, she is really a lady in hiding, they marry), but with very atypical characters.

The hero, Wynter, is a bit of a dunderhead when it comes to romance. He knows he wants Charlotte as his wife, but won't recognize the admiration, repect, and attraction he feels for her as love. Charlotte is attracted to Wynter from the get go, but relies on her governess credos to tamp down her curiosity and interest in her employer, as the last thing she wants is to lose her job.

Throughout the book, Wynter continues his pursuit of his, as he sees it, inevitable wife, and Charlotte continues to attempt to evade him. But through a nice touch of character developement, the reader is treated to an understanding of what the hero and heroine feel towards each other, and most importantly, why they feel that way. Too often in romance novels, the actual qualities of the hero's and heroine's personalities that would realistically drive a mutual attraction are overlooked and brushed aside for the more basic (and less complex, thus easier to write) physical attractions. My favorite novels always have included physically imperfect main characters, with a fleshed out personality such that the reader can see a lasting stability to the romance.

As for Wynter's persistance and eventual marriage to Charlotte, I could understand her reluctance despite how she loved him and his children, but I could also envy her for being pursued so ardently. If she could make him understand the principles behind the emotion of love, she would have herself a remarkable and lasting marriage.

The scene following the wedding, where the two consummate their relationship, I fear other readers may have misunderstood. It was not a rape, but a fight between principles and desire. They both wanted each other, but each wanted a different set of terms underlying the marriage. She wanted respect and acknowledgement as an individual, and he wanted her to fall into the role of a Bedouin wife - adoring, blissful, taken care of, but not taken into consideration. Charlotte could have stopped Wynter at any point in that scene, merely by screaming, or crying, or indicating in any way true distress or fear. But instead she tussled and fought to make her point, enjoying the combat as much as he did. And as she resigned herself to the one-sided relationship, she still was able to give him a dose of his own medicine, such that he inevitably came to his senses (with some help from his own children).

The secondary characters and plot lines were well developed, as so often these things are more irritating distractions than a true piece of the main story-line. Sure, we lost track of the children for a while there, and certain bits which were surely meant to have been important to the main story-line intitaily sort of fizzled out instead, but I none-the-less enjoyed the secondary play of characters and plot as much as I enjoyed the primary play.

I can easily recommend this book, and I am waiting in anticipation for the next book in this series.

I did not enjoy this book one bit. Honestly, I got about 1/3 of the way through it, put it down for several weeks, then picked it up again when I was home sick. My main problems with the novel are as follows:

1. Wynter does not appeal to me at all. He is self-centered, puerile, and lacks any sense of humor that bases itself on anything but someone else's embarrassments. I kept hoping he would redeem himself by the end of the novel, that he would grow as a person and mature into a charming gentleman, yet he failed in all these aspects. He is a womanizer who did not deserve Charlotte's love, not that I think too much of Charlotte in the first place.

2. There was very little character development. Wynter was, essentially, a static character whose beliefs in the beginning of the novel failed to change over the course of the story. It was difficult to get a grasp on why he felt the way he felt. Granted, his "desert father" taught him that that was the way true men behaved, I'm still not buying it. I suppose that was my over all problem with the novel.

I didn't buy the attraction between Charlotte and Wynter, and with a romance, that is the key to the entire book - getting the reader to buy into the love affair between the two main characters. I would not recommend this book, nor will I be buying anymore of Ms. Dodd's novels.

I have not read too many books by Christina Dodd, but the ones I had read prior to Rules of Surrender were wonderful. This book simply made me angry. Our hero has been off with the bedoins in the Sahara for 13 years or so and has adopted their annoying male chauvinism. I found nothing lovable about Wynter and could not figure out what their love or attraction was supposed to be based on. What are we supposed to see in him? Charlotte does not seem to like him and yet decides she's in love with him. He was overbearing and seemed to browbeat her into submission. He had awful opinions about women and their subservient roles and second class emotions. To top it all off, the love scenes were all coerced and read like rape fantasies . . . definitely off putting.

I did not enjoy this book. I spent the whole time reading it expecting her to slap him and yell at him, which never happened.

The most arrogant English man just happens to be the most lacking in proper English manners. Lord Wynter Ruskin just returned from decades abroad in El Bahar, where he ended up as a boy while trying to escape the painful memories of his father's death. And his mother, Lady Adorna, the Viscountess Ruskin, decides that a good governess is needed to reeducate his son and her two grandchildren. (Interestingly enough, we last saw Adorna as a debutante in "That Scandalous Evening"!) A granddaughter whose skills on a horse is rather... heartpounding and a grandson who likes to throw big knives at her pristinely papered walls. But Wynter, has other ideas when he meets the beautiful and well-born Lady Charlotte Dalrumple. Especially when he sees that she loves his children beyond the call of duty. His ways of the desert (more chauvinistic, than not) wins no points with the new governess but continues to push Charlotte's buttons in more ways than one. "Lady Miss Charlotte", also known as "Miss Priss" to most Londoners, returns to her hometown to be with the Ruskins which holds painful memories, which she'd rather not rehash... with anyone. But she really needed this assignment to get her new governess school off the ground. And she couldn't afford to make mistakes with her first client.

The first in the governess series, this book is funny and entertaining. Wynter Ruskin is a refreshing and interesting hero with his El Bahar background. Which also happened to give Charlotte (and myself) some frustrations. And Charlotte and her ways with Wynter and children are utterly charming.