Customer Reviews

Scandalous Deception (Super Historical)

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

 

 

Brianna Quinn's stepfather intends to take her to his hunting lodge and turn her into his own personal sex slave. When she appeals to Edmond, the apparent hero of this story, for help, he basically informs her if she wants his help she'll have to have sex with him instead. When she refuses, he tells her to figure out her own problems. How wonderfully gallant and honorable. Brianna, preferring ruination over having to sleep with her stepfather, not "giving a bloody damn about London society" so she says, now sneaks into Edmond's house and locks herself in a bedroom. When he discovers she's there, he crawls into bed with her in his dressing gown and instructs her how to please him with her hand. Now I'm completely turned off. The next morning, he comes up with a lame solution to her predicament and she complains to him, now, about being the ruined she doesn't want to be, which made her a spoiled whiner. That's when I couldn't take anymore and I was well under 100 pages. Edmond cannot possibly redeem himself and I doubt he'll try and Brianna is too immature a heroine to like. I'm sure in the end they'll be together but I couldn't care less how.

Ok. This book has way too much sex in it. I read the back, bought the book, then began reading. I felt like every other page was just sex sex sex. I have nothing against a few really great sensual scenes, but when there's next to no plot, when there clearly was supposed to be one... it's not a great read. there was potential for a really fabulous plots, but they just fizzled and didn't exactly resolve, unless it happened to be pure coincidence. Edmond was a possessive freak in denial. Stefan, though good intentioned, asked Brianna (who isn't all that bright in my opinion) to marry him after a day together when they hadn't seen each other in years. I miss the old Jane Austen kind of classics where love came first and the men, though someone difficult, were actually respectable, and women were just... well, not like Brianna. No disrespect to the author, but this is one of the worst reads I've ever had.

I love this book. The story was interesting and I loved the fact that both chars were headstrong and not wanting to back down till the end. And the fact that it was such a miss match to start with, since he had always scared her as a kid and she was secreting crushing on the brother. The fact that as a woman she ended up falling for the one guy she would never had thought of. And the way the brothers were brought in to decide they both wanted the same girl but for different reasons, one thought it was his duty to keep her safe and the other wanted her cause he wasn't ready to let her go and didnt' know why till he finally realized he loved her. Another great book by rosemary.

Brianna has known the twins all her life, Stefan, she had always considered her friend, his warmth and trust in everyone a beacon of security. Edmund was the very opposite. And it was Stefan's very trust in all that causes Edmund to leave the polictical intrigue of the Russian Court to try to discover who in England wishes his brother dead.

Into the mix storms Brianna, desperate to come under Stefan's guardianship and protection, since her step-father has proven to be a villian who would rape her and steal her innnocence.

Brianna encounters Edmund pretending to be Stefan and using her beauty and a little blackmail she manages to get the protection she needs against her step-father, and a whole lot more than she bargained for from the presistant and quite irresistibly sexy Edmund.

The love story was one that allowed you to learn of the character and grow to love them, and because of it the romance between Edmund and Brianna is one that is hard to forget once you've finished that last page.

Of course, in most of Ms Rogers book I have found this to be true. She takes you to the very heart of her characters and lays them bare to you.

The adventure behind the romance is interesting, always making me feel as if I am seeing what I am reading and living the adventure right along with the characters.

Ms. Rogers does that very special thing----she brings you into the story, makes you feel a part--she doesn't just tells you how characters feel, she shows you....and I think it is this very special magic that makes all of her books MUST reads--and will always make them memorable.

In 1820 adviser to Czar Alexander English Lord Edmond Summerville learns his twin brother Stefan, the Duke of Huntley, is in danger as someone wants him dead. Used to the lethal contest of Russian politics, Edmond leaves his mother's homeland to go to England, the land of his father, to help his sibling. Edmond insists on being bait to draw out the killer by pretending he is the Duke.

Fearing her stepfather's depraved assaults are getting worse, Brianna Quinn turns to her childhood friend, Stefan for safety; as a Duke he can keep her odious relative away from her. However, she realizes immediately that the duke who greets her is not Stefan, but his brother Edmond. They are attracted to one another so when the Czar needs him she accompanies him back to Russia. As they fall in love, someone threatens his beloved forcing Stefan to choose between his beloved and his beloved Russia.

This terrific historical romance is at its best when the hero is in Russia as the audience obtains a powerful taste of Czarist intrigue a century before the Revolution. The segment in England is well written also especially as the lead couple get reacquainted, but does not possesses the uniqueness of the Russian chapters. The story line is fast-paced and filled with action as heroic Stefan risks his life for his brother, the Czar and especially for Brianna. Rosemary Rogers provides an exciting early nineteenth century romantic intrigue thriller.

Harriet Klausner