Customer Reviews

Total Surrender

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

While Love Lessons was outrageously carnal, it is bolstered by appealingly strong characters who connected emotionally. Cheryl Holt's latest emerges garishly lewd with gratuitous voyeurism and a lack of moral conscience in the central protagonist Michael Stevens. Even the most jaded romance reader will be disconcerted by the infidel who treats the enamored Lady Sarah Compton shabbily by sequestering her to the country. Impoverished Sarah is fatefully thrust to a gala in Bedford where it is actually a clandestine orgy where peeping holes and illicit sex prevails. Exposed to the tempting Michael in his naked splendor titillates the virgin Sarah to taste the forbidden fruit. They start an affair and Michael is overwhelmed by his passion for Sarah but a scheme by her cousin Rebecca shatters the trust between the couple. Total Surrender aims to be erotic with the gurgitation of sexual scenes and explicit orgy. The romance is sadly feeble and ridiculously contrived. It is a lame excuse for Michael to debauch himself just because of the lack of paternal love - and also for readers to empathize with him. It languishes into a salacious and ignoramous sex read detached from emotions while we acknowledge the fact that this book is certainly not Holt at all.

In "Total Surrender," Cheryl Holt attempts to join the growing movement of women writing intelligent and romantic erotica for other women. Unfortunately, that boat has sailed without her this time. Holt's idea of writing an intelligent story seems to consist mainly of filling her prose with as many "big words" as she can find, even if they often make little or no sense in the context, or when a smaller, much more common word would have been the better choice. Yes, this book is very steamy, but the heroine is a dolt, the hero is a cad, and the prose is very purple, so unless your idea of great erotica is the "Letters to Penthouse," you should pass on this one. Cheryl Holt's first book, "Love Lessons," was better.

This is the 3rd Cheryl Holt book I have read, the first one was Love Lessons, that I quite enjoyed, the second one was Absolute Pleasure that I hated and almost made me not want to buy another Cheryl Holt book, but since I had already read James' story, I wanted to know what happened to his brother Michael, whom I liked from Love Lessons, to I bought this book. And once again was completely dissapointed by Holt's style. This definitevely is the last book I buy from her.
First of all, she has a tendency to create heroes that are very hard to like, and that commit accions that are very difficult to forgive, but in spite of this, the female is always the one who in the ends seeks him out (totally humilliating herself in the process). If you have read other Chery Holt books, you know what I'm talking about, in Love Lessons it was somewhat justified. in Absolute Pleasure it was not, neither in this book. When I read about the way Michael treated her, merely because he suspects that she may have plotted with her brother to ensnare him, it made me dislike Michael very much. He sends her to the country to endure hunger, cold and misery while he lives happily in the city, "pretending" not to know of her situation, when he should have known better, since he was the one who caused it.
I kept hoping that he would learn the truth about her innocence and go looking for her and ask her forgiveness for his inconsiderate behavior, but instead, he had never planned to look for her, if it were up to him she could have died of hunger or cold, and he would have never even found out. Does this sound like a person in love? Of course not, however, Holt tries to makes us believe after she seeks him out, that he loves her, and feels remorse for his actions against her. I'm sorry but I found this very hard to believe.
In Love Lessons, Michael was a very likeable character,and this book completely ruined him. Even the reconciliation scene was all about sex and not about emotions.
I kind of liked the scene when Abigail gives Sarah the drawings of Michael, and when he finds out that his sister in law saw them. It was cute. But that was it.
It is a shame, because the original plot of this book could have made for a good romance novel, but it was developed poorly.

Well I was excited to read this story. I had enjoyed LOVE LESSONS so much that I started this one right away. I was very disappointed in the story. It lacked the emotion of the other book. This one was just sex and not much else. I didn't like Michael and he didn't improve any along the way. Sarah was a bit more likeable especially towards the end. I like finding out what had happened to James and Abigail from the first story. I wish I could have liked this more. The sex scenes are hot but I wouldn't call them love scenes. This book will not be read again by me.

I am by no means prudish and enjoy a romance (in whatever form, i.e. historical, thriller, etc.) with sex scenes as long as they move the plot along and/or are important for the characters' development. This, I feel, can not be argued for this book. The sex is tawdry (note: sex not making love) and dare I say it, made me feel icky; the reason is that it's not romantic or special and just plain dull. I felt that once I'd read one scene that I'd read them all - and there were more than a few. As for the plot, it's standard historical romance fare - tortured hero meets spinster and forms a 'relationship', a misunderstanding develops that separates the two lovers and all is resolved in the standard happy ending. There is no panache or real originality in the writing of this, and the author's style of writing is not attractive. All in all, I won't be buying another of Cheryl Holt's books - this was my first and last experience of her writing.

Needing some romantic escapism, I bought this book a few weeks ago. While I managed to finish it within a couple of days, I immediately returned it to the bookstore. "Total Surrender" started out promisingly but, following the the leads' first encounter, it started to fall apart. Steamy sex and explicit description I can take, even enjoy, but in this case they didn't engage me. There was never any remotely plausible reason behind Michael's sexual antics, and his behaviour after marrying Sarah killed any lingering appeal he may have had.

The plot and writing of this book also left much to be desired. Holt was needlessly repetitive throughout, bringing up in seemingly every chapter what a depraved reprobate Michael was, yet how his good looks attracted the ladies nonetheless. All this served to show was how thin the overall story actually is. An elegant, easy-flowing writing style could have masked this, but the author chose to use clunky multisyllabic words where simpler alternatives existed. It seemed she was unsuccessfully trying to ape the "formal" language of the period.

Overall, I am getting disappointed in my quest to find quality romance with an erotic edge. Holt joins a list of authors who can't effectively combine sex and romance: in fact, she doesn't get either right in my opinion.

I have previously read Cheryl Holt's Love Lessons and enjoyed it tremendously. It was romantic as well as very erotic. I cannot say the same about Total Surrender. There was something missing in this book. It never really captured my interest and it took me weeks(!) to complete this novel.
I will think twice about buying her books, simply because they are very repititive.

When I started the novel, I found it intriguing and a bit voyeuristic (which is not necessarily a bad thing). However, when Sarah is sequestered to the country by Michael to live in poverty because of a misunderstanding I have to say I wasn't pleased with either one of the characters. After being treated like something you wipe off the bottom of your shoe you would think that Sarah would have some semblance of pride and use her so called stubbornness to say enough is enough, square away enough financial assistance from Michael to accommodate herself enough to live decently, and be on her way. Instead she forces herself on this guy although his actions made it clear in every way that he didn't have proper respect for her. I was almost finished with the novel when the worst of Michael's abuse against Sarah occurred and I was so irked, I couldn't finish the book. All I thought was "You stupid, pathetic b$#%*. How could you let him treat you like that yet still insist on being with him? Have you no pride?" Why would the author strip Sarah so completely of any self respect by having her chase after someone who held no regard in the manner in which he treated her? Michael is a likeable character when he's not doing something discourteous to Sarah however no matter how attractive a guy was, there's no way I'd let him do things like Michael did to Sarah and still continue to vie for his affection.

I picked up this book because I was intrigued by the plot description, and the fact that I enjoyed the basic plot of the story kept me reading even though I was tempted to hurl the book away from me in disgust by the writing style many times. Two major issues marred the book for me:
Firstly, as a previous reviewer said, it seems like Cheryl Holt sat down to write this book with her trusty thesaurus next to her so she could look up the longest words possible for every adjective and adverb and to make sure she never used the same word twice. Unfortunately, if that was not bad enough, I don't think some of the words she chose mean what she thinks they mean. I'm pretty sure a phallus does not "dilate" even harder, in the context she was using the word. And "enervate" is not the same as "excite." The floridity of the prose - the choice of words meant to impress with length and quantity, if not meaning or appropriateness - made reading this book painful. I felt that I should have had a red pen and edited as I went.
Secondly, I was shocked at the sex scenes. No, not because they were there and graphic - I love erotica. I was shocked at the contempt the author seemed to feel for physical expressions of sexuality. She peppers her descriptions with words such as "degrading" and "aberrant" and "sin". Almost every encounter, be it between the hero and heroine or observed actions of other characters, seems to be portrayed at some point in a negative light. I was left with the feeling that Cheryl Holt doesn't really like sex at all, or at least has a massive guilt complex about it. When I pick up a sensual book I want there to be some joy in the telling. This left me cold.
All in all, an interesting story that could have been so much better. The one star is for potential, which is all the book ended up having.

although I wished the heroine (Sarah) had been a bit more stronger and the hero (Michael) a little less wishy washy with his feelings.

I can understand the trauma Michael and his brother James (from Love Lessons) went through as children but I don't necessarily think this should cause Michael to go out and have sex with every woman he runs into and live a degenerate life without love. I found the older brother James a little more redeemable than than Michael. After initiating Sarah into the art of sexual pleasure, Michael is forced to marry her out of duty because Sarah's brother has plotted to find her in a compromising postition and wishes to get her married because of gambling debts. Michael takes for the city after dumping Sarah in the country and leaves her behind for six months while he cavorts around with his ex mistress. Readers are to believe that these two did not have sex and was only companions to the other. This was too far fetched and I felt that Sarah should have dumped him promptly when she found this out and especially when she discovered that Pamela stayed at his home on occassion.(platonic according to Michael) I did not like how he ordered and verbally abused the women about in the book which only furthered my opinion that Sarah just needed to leave the cad and move on to greener pastures.

Although I did enjoy the start of the story and the ending was what should be expected, Michael did not come off as the romantic hero and was a disappointment. Love Lessons was a much better romantic read with a better hero and heroine.