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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Rogers Hits Bottom,
By
This review is from: Sapphire (Mira Historical Romance) (Mass Market Paperback)
Sapphire Fabergine is a privileged young lady, raised by her loving parents Armand and Sophie on Martinique. About a year after her mother's death, Sapphire's godmother Lucia and her father tell her that her mother had a secret. Armand was not her father; instead, her mother had secretly married an English lord, the Earl of Wessex, but had been kidnapped by his wealthy family and put on a ship for America. Forced into prostitution in New Orleans, she met Lucia, and the two were subsequently saved by Armand when he married Sophie and raised Sapphire as his own. It was Sophie's dying wish that Sapphire travel to London to claim her birthright as the Earl of Wessex's daughter, so the dying Armand packs her off on a ship with her stepsister Angelique, who was an orphan when Sapphire's parents found her, with Lucia as their guardian.
It doesn't take Sapphire long to learn her father is dead, and in his stead as Lord Wessex is a handsome American, Blake Thixton, who won't listen to her pleas, believing she's a fortune hunter. Lucia concocts a ridiculous plan to embarrass Wexton into acknowledging Sapphire by making her and Angelique scandalous. After Sapphire is seen kissing Blake at a party and they are tossed from their hosts' home, Lucia sets them up to appear to be looking for protectors rather than husbands. Sapphire is tiring of the social whirl when Blake, also bored with London's charms, packs her unwillingly onto a boat bound for Boston, where he plans to make her his mistress. This is where the story lost me. From this point forward, Blake behaves like an overbearing jerk with nothing but looks and money to recommend him. Sapphire is a doormat. He locks her up in a ship's cabin and gives her nothing to wear but boy's clothes so she can't be seen in public; when they arrive in Boston, because she won't do as he says, he provides her with worn maid's clothes and forces her to work as a servant in his house. Instead of leaving immediately, she sticks around for the abuse and sleeps with Blake whenever he wants her, not finally waking up and leaving until he blatantly sleeps with another woman, practically right in front of her. She finally embarks on an adventure then, and builds a new life for herself. The moment Blake finds her, he demands to have his way again and threatens to ruin her life if she doesn't do what he says. Naturally, she goes along with him, sleeps with him, and then makes a quickly aborted attempt to leave. Not once does Blake ever treat her with an ounce of decency or respect, and she's so happy to be his sex object, she blows off the dying Armand, the man who lovingly raised her and gave her everything. Apparently, when she found out her real father was more important, a Caribbean planter ceased to matter. Meanwhile, her morally bankrupt stepsister and godmother Lucia, candidate for worst chaperone ever, are having their own little romances in London. This was a good story ruined by a completely unlikeable hero and a sweet but spineless heroine who often seemed fickle. Had Sapphire left Blake immediately upon her arrival in Boston and embarked on the same adventure with more time spent on that than letting Blake use her, and if he had ever been made to suffer and work to get her back, this could have been a wonderful story. As it was, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth and an intense desire to pound the crap out of both the hero and heroine. Rosemary Rogers isn't writing like she used to, but her books are mostly engaging and readable. Not this one. Rogers has written a lot of books, not all of them good, and this one unfortunately goes near the bottom of the pile. Avoid it.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The best part of this book was the cover,
By Frore "Frore" (USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sapphire (Mira Historical Romance) (Mass Market Paperback)
So here we have Sapphire. She is our beautiful, loving, sentimental, friendly, awesome - yet feisty and determined! - heroine plopped into the middle of the Victorian era, thrown from the luxury of Martinique into the glorious sophistication of London, then into the hard-knock atmosphere of New York City. She is brilliant, witty, curious, spiteful, and out to reclaim her honor! - or something! - and along the way she meets a side dish of our raven-haired beefcake Blake Thixton. She must be great. The book is named after her.
The plot of this book is one that has only been exploited in every historical romance novel ever written. Name your character after a gem, and no matter how much time you spend perfecting her personality, she will not be taken seriously. "Sapphire" has a horribly contemporary feel. I say "horribly" because when a novel is set in the 19th century, a certain expectation is felt for the author to uphold at least a slice of the elegance of that period (or maybe the use of a few metaphors and similes? Somewhere? Anywhere?). Instead we are granted transition words, and heaps of them. "However," "Meanwhile," "By the time..." "Fortunately," "Sapphire this, Sapphire that." With its minimal sensory detail, monotonous sentence length, and the spasmodically placed sex scenes, this story reads like a shopping list for your local XXX store. And Blake! Our darling Blake! Let us not forget about this hunk of man meat. This dark, mysterious stranger emerges from the business world of London, pockets bulging with cash - or maybe he is just happy to see her - as he constantly deals with the pesky romantic heroine addiction. This here lad is a twenty-something year old on the fast track to success until Sapphire coasts into his life and demands that he recognizes her for who she is - the daughter of her father, some big, powerful rich Lord who has now kicked the bucket - and nearly derails Blake Thixton's gravy train with those multicolored eyes of hers. One green, one blue. A lonely brown would be so prosaic. But his hardness extends passed his business life and into his cavalier social nature. For such a cold man, our executive has quite a few "steamy" sexual episodes with trollops, ladies of station, red-headed twins, and all of high society, each an emotionless tryst that buries him deeper into the self-denying loneliness he's up to his gyrating hips in. Sapphire is different. Sapphire is that little splinter he can not quite pick from his foot. Sapphire is the nagging little pest that he keeps coming back to - and in - for a reprieve from the aching aloneness that he refuses to acknowledge in any way other than sex. God forbid our intelligent, cunning hero introspects before he impregnates the entire female populace, further distributing himself across the globe. Or maybe that is why we like him. The fun does not stop with these two. The supporting characters are like the overly glamorized table lamps in a department store window. Not only are they underdeveloped and whiney, but they are terribly inconsistent in their mannerisms and what the author tells us to believe about them. We are supposed to believe that Angelique, Sapphire's best friend, is an honest girl that never tells a lie. Interesting. Didn't we just catch her sleeping with her best friend's fiancé in the very beginning of the book? That's one way to trounce any future of a truthful reputation. Even more amusing is how Sapphire is so quick to brush this offense off, especially while she is sailing across the seas to pursue a father that she has never even met for a title she never even knew about before that day. Whoa girl, slow down. Take care of the things at home first; you have a best friend who needs a swift dose of murder. Perhaps Sapphire's father was actually Dr. Doolittle and her mother Snow White. That would explain why she keeps gathering animal compatriots faster than the grill of a Ford Pickup. From the little homeless dog named "Stow" (because every homeless girl finds a dog. It happened in "Annie," and "The Gentleman Outlaw And Me, Eli, " so it can happen here) to the untamable black stallion that breaks the limbs of its riders, Sapphire Blue can turn any truculent beast into an angora bunny. Too bad she chopped off her locks and disguised herself as a boy, because that has never been done in a story before ("The Gentleman Outlaw and Me, Eli" again, "Brave Enemies", and I am sure you can think of more). "The Queen of historical romance" not only strikes below her title, but further strengthens my resolve that most of mass-produced romance novels are wretched sprawls of syntax. If I see another book by Rosemary Rogers, I may pick it up, I believe in second chances. I do not feel that one train wreck of a composition completely destroys any possibility of the author writing well. But the instant I see a sentence beginning with "Suddenly," or "Luckily," with a character named after a noun, I'm out of there.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Very disappointing!,
By
This review is from: Sapphire (Mira Historical Romance) (Mass Market Paperback)
I've read all of Rosemary Rogers' books and love the majority of them, this one seemed to be written by a different writer! Formula was there but no real plot or passion or personality for the characters. Lynn H.
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