Laura Landon

I thought this would be a candidate for the abused/traumatized heroine shelf, but the attempted rape seems to have had zero impact on the heroine and is treated as less of a betrayal than Stephan’s affair with her mother. While I enjoyed the mystery aspects, the supposed romance just was not plausible to me. The heroine is constantly lying to the hero and making stupid, short-sighted decisions, even when it is far past time to put all the cards on the table. And the hero is an asshole who kidnaps and threatens and extorts the heroine and is hostile and cruel to her when she refuses to have sex with him because apparently getting blue balls makes him the real victim. It felt random and somewhat bewildering when the hero and heroine decide they love one another. There has been nothing but lies and threats between them and suddenly over the course of a couple weeks they are in love? I just couldn’t buy it. This had a lot of promise, but in the end I felt like it was an unbelievable “romance” between an almost TSTL Mary Sue type and a cruel hero a la 80s bodice-rippers. I was surprised to dislike this as I’ve really enjoyed Landon’s other books.… (mer)

Not terribly angsty (probably because it's fairly short), but this was right up my alley. Hero insults plain, insecure spinster heroine, then they strike a bargain, and of course fall in love. It's a formula I adore and I liked this version quite a bit. I wish it had been longer, though, to give more time for the romance to develop - Hugh's feelings towards Nellie seemed to change rather abruptly, especially given that he hadn’t seen her in six months. They really have only spent a total of five weeks in each other’s company . A longer novel might have made the transition feel more realistic. Still, solid plain heroine story. (3.5 stars)… (mer)