3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I wanted to like it., March 8, 2009
This review is from: Veiled Passions (Zebra Historical Romance) (Paperback)
This is a hard one to rate. The lovely prose makes this a step above most of the pedestrian stuff offered on the historical romance aisle but other aspects of the writing bogged down the reading for me.
When I first started this, I thought I was really going to like it. It's Georgian. Yay! Has a heroine with a past. Woo hoo! Revenge! Love! I can eat all that up and come back for seconds.
The author's writing had an old skool flava to it. Some might call it lush. Others would call it wordy and flowery. The author also showed a wearying desposition for repetition. It seemed like a page did not go by without a sentence on how the heroine has become "cold" because of what happened. A scene did not go by without a description on how gorgeous either the hero or heroine was at that moment. Combine all this with a plodding pace and it took me TWICE the time that it normally takes to read a historical romance. And I really had to force myself to finish this book just for closure.
The best parts of the book were the depictions of the hero and the villain. The villain seemed totally evil at the start of the story but I appreciated that he was more nuanced than that. The hero was delicious. He was a self-made man: a playwright, a libertine, an artist, and a gambler. He spoke the language of the seducer very well. Example:
***************************************************
He reached out, skimmed her jaw with the back of a single finger. "Know this about me, for you are a lovely girl and you deserve to know who stands in your cabin this evening. Let me tell you what I am capable of: I could make you my mission. I could turn you into the focus of my entire existence, pursue you in a seduction to which you would have no defense. I could seduce you into my life, consume you with my world, and have you willing in my bed. I could possess you. I could play you like the cello, make you feel things you never dreamed possible. I could bring you pleasure beyond your imagining, and in doing so, I would enslave you. You would lick the floor in front of me, if I asked you to. You would do anything for me. And you would be mine, for as long as the affair lasted."
His eyes changed. They grew distant, regretful. He looked as though he were turned inward, trying to figure out when he'd become this man whom he spoke of with such familiarity. "And when I lost interest in you, I would walk away."
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Unfortunately, the good points could not outweigh the bad for me no matter how much I wanted it to.
3.5 Stars
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
What happened??? 2.5 stars, May 4, 2009
This review is from: Veiled Passions (Zebra Historical Romance) (Paperback)
This book started off wonderful! It had the perfect kind of hero I love to read about. Matteo was so darn sexy! He is Venetian womanizer- and A well portrayed one too! When you hear the things he says, you believe that he can seduce any woman. The way he dresses and his style is also that of A seducer. I also thought the plot would have been an interesting one - with Kieran wanting revenge on a man for a wrong that was done to her. Another great potential was in the secondary character of Nilo. I loved that the author bought a black man of that time to life, with him being a servant and not a slave, and he was compassionate and sweet, with his own little love story.
Even with all those wonderful things that should have made this book great, it still fell flat! The heroine destroyed this book! She was an unlikable woman that had no idea what it was that she wanted! One minute she despises the villain for what he did to her so much that she even wanted to die. The next minute she's contemplating marriage to him because he was a duke! I don't care what her motives were! Her actions confused the plot and made it un-enjoyable until you found out her real intentions. She also felt that she was better than the hero because he was a Commoner and her pride would forbid her to marry him. Even after he told her that he loved her, she was still thinking that she didn't love him because of that! Her family had to actually put her in her place. Through out the whole book I was trying to figure out what in the world the hero saw in her. I was actually wishing that he would have ended up with his Venetian mistress instead of her. There was also only one miserly love scene in this book and they don't even kiss untill half way through the book. This book could have been A winner but I'm sorry to say that it didn't make the grade.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best of the Series, October 10, 2008
This review is from: Veiled Passions (Zebra Historical Romance) (Paperback)
This has got to be the best of the three book series by Tracy Macnish. Main character Matteo is just so wonderful and alluring. It's a must read for any romance reader. I must stress that you should read the first 2 books before you read this one. It helps to understand the charaters better. Poor innocent Keirin in the second book was so traumatised. Really sad. But this book takes Tracy's writting to new levels. My favorite by far. I hope this isn't the end of The Veiled series. She is a fantastic writer. One of my favorites.
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