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Finally!

Revisado: 04-20-25

I’ll start by saying, yes this book is almost identical in plot to the book before it. But if you are only going to read one, skip the one before and read this one! Unlike almost every other Cynster book, you have a hero who thinks it is stupid not to tell a woman he loves her AND you have a heroine who doesn’t play games or speak in riddles.
It was so refreshing to finally get to another Cynster book where the hero isn’t afraid of his emotions and can identify them! And to have a sensible heroine! There’s absolutely no “I’ll make her want to marry me by giving her good sex” crazy reasoning here.
I easily put this in the top 3 Cynster novels simply because the hero and the heroine are not thinking/doing the same things as almost very other hero and heroine in this series.
I can’t give this five stars because so much of the kidnapping plot is similar to the previous book. But, thankfully, this one focused on getting away from the kidnappers and not “what are my feelings?”/“she has to marry me and I will convince her with my body so I don’t have to say I love her or even hint that I might”/“I will only marry for love and you can’t make me” tired plots.
I hold out hope that this means the author has FINALLY realized she’s been writing the same hero:heroine and plot book after book. Maybe the next book will stray from that pattern too! One can hope!

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More of the same

Revisado: 04-08-25

If you, like me, were excited about he kidnapping plot because it might break the author out of her established patterns, then you will be disappointed. The hero once again wants the heroine and decides that if he has sex with her and gets her addicted to pleasure with him then she will def marry him! And he feels this special feeling during sex and intimacy (he’s… surprise!..a rake and it’s never felt this way!), but he can’t figure out that’s love. And, of course, the heroine won’t have a marriage dictated by society (like pretty much every other heroine this author has written). Just once, I’d love for one her her heroines to say “eh, why not?” It would be a breath of fresh air into these stale plot points and repetitive sex scenes. I’m so tired of the sex scenes by this point, I speed them up double time to get through them (and I really typically enjoy sex scenes, but these one are all the same).

As far as plot beyond her normal, repeated beats, the kidnapping plot and trek after rescue is an interesting one. I like the hero and the heroine (though, like a lot of her heroines she tends to be labeled as smart and practical, yet pretty stupid at times).
And, of course, this hero like almost all her others just cannot say that he loves this woman or that he has any sort of affection for her. He can’t do it. Instead, he’s gonna have sex with her and she’ll know. I don’t like this author continually supports the myth that sex equates love. The heroine goes to the hero and gives him a “wordless declaration of love”, which is essentially just having a lot of great sex with him. Guess what? Declarations are explicit statements or announcements; they can’t be wordless. And if she’d actually said something, then the end of this book would have ended happily probably two hours sooner. But no, it doesn’t turn out the way either of them think because neither of them are mind readers and it turns out great sex can be interpreted as just great sex.
Again, more of the same that has been in every single book. I would rate the kidnapping part of the book, which is the maybe the first half, four stars. I rate the rest of the book 0 stars because it is so tired of a plot.
I just wish the author could write something different.

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Yet another Cynster hero who doesn’t want to be in love

Revisado: 03-07-25

Again, another tiresome main plot where an unlikeable hero insists on being cold and in an apparently loveless marriage. He know he loves the heroine, but he doesn’t want her to know or experience it. The author does her absolute best to make it seem like this absolute horrid behavior should be accepted. While I understand historically this might be true, but who reads these books for that kind of wretched attitude. He’s extremely unlikeable. And then the heroine still has sex with him over and over even though he treats her and her feelings like crap. It was incredibly frustrating. If this had been the first book in this series like this, it might be tolerable, but this is probably the 8th story with the same major plot point (hero doesn’t want to show the heroine he loves her and treats her like a piece of gum on his shoe and she insists on love but still has sex with the idiot every ten pages).
I’ve never skipped a sex scene until this book. I just couldn’t stomach listening to a sex scene after he had been so emotionally abusive to her. It was gross.
The 20% of the plot that isn’t sex or “I don’t want to love you/why won’t he love me?” Was interesting. Yet again, the author made the wrong things the major plots.
I really hope this is the last of this tired plot. It’s like listening to the same book with different character names.
The narrator is great with the narration. I’m not a fan of the voices (his men sound much older) and his women do not sound like women. I do wish we couldn’t hear his lips part or smack together (or whatever that sound is).

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Almost exactly like the rest

Revisado: 02-24-25

After the previous two books, I thought maybe the author had fixed her problems of reusing the same basic hero and heroine. I sadly was wrong.
This book is so close to Demon’s book it’s silly. I did like both the hero and heroine more than Demon and flick (who was so dumb it was hard to finish).
But here again, the hero can’t say he loves the heroine or puts it off for some stupid reason and that causes issues. And ofc, the heroine is supposedly intelligent, but does one dumb thing after another. The author tells us she is intelligent, but then makes the heroine impulsive to the point of idiocy. Worst still, is the weird obsession the author has with making the heroine deny a proposal because she thinks it’s based on society dictates, but, ofc, she doesn’t stop to talk with the hero about it— she just preaches to him about it and says no without actually having a conversation. It makes it so frustrating. I wish the author would stop using the misunderstanding because we
I enjoyed the previous two books the most (so far) because the hero and heroine were different and the plot wasn’t once again based over

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Best one by far (so far)!

Revisado: 02-14-25

I loved that there was a real plot outside of the sex AND that the hero was different than all the previous heroes (which were basically the same man with slightly different looks and a little different interest). Loved that Michael had no problem saying he loves and desires Caro beyond the physical. And I adored that Caro was logical and not stubborn just to show she’s a strong woman. Her strength showed through her actions unlike most of the other heroines (who sometimes did the dumbest things for no reason). I hope the future heroes are like Michael and not like the rest!

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If you love the other Cynsters, you’ll love Demon

Revisado: 01-01-25

I really like Demon as a hero (so far), but Flick is turning out to be an idiot. I know she’s young (and the age gap is larger than I’d like— even though I know that’s historically accurate), but she continually does the stupidest things. Her inability to use common sense and, for example, stay out of view of the doorway of an inn she, and unmarried girl, is occupying with the hero is just too dumb for words. I have a hard time with heroines who are supposed to be intelligent yet act like idiots. I just want to throw them from the story and replace them with someone with a modicum of sense.
About halfway through the book once again the author has a huge problem develop because of the lack of communication between the hero and the heroine. He decides he needs seem uninterested to the point no one thinks he has any feelings whatsoever for her because of the ton (it’s reasoning that makes no sense and really is only there to create tension between them).
And she goes on and on about how upset she is to see him dance with other women and not pay her enough attention at balls and seem to have a mistress and how she wants to marry him, yet she still won’t accept his proposal and actually says they aren’t engaged when asked by another gentleman. I think I’m supposed to feel for her, but I mostly just feel like it serves her right to be miserable. She’s being so stupid. She wants to marry him and yet refuses because she feels he doesn’t love her, even if she knows he cares for her and desires her. It makes her seem like a child instead of a woman. She also spends a lot of time complaining about the younger men who circle around her at society functions and about how young they are (even though she’s likely younger than them), but she seems much more childlike than they do.

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If you like the first two, you’ll like this one

Revisado: 12-28-24

Scandal, like his brother Devil and cousin Vain, is a man’s man. He can’t say “I love you,” with ease (which is annoying), is attractive, is committed completely, and an amazing lover. His heroine, Katrina, is a “witch” (a fact that the author repeats over and over and over until you can’t take it any more).
The sex scenes are plenty (almost too many, which is never thought I’d think) and hot.
The problem with this story is how long the author goes on the “we refuse to say what we think or communicate over and over and over and over” and then we misunderstand and things go wrong. This is alright is short term, but as a plot point is incredibly annoying as a reader. That’s literally the entire conflict of the second half of the book. Them not talking to one another and being idiots. It’s so frustrating. In their thoughts the characters go on and on about how upset they are and how they feel, but they never actually say anything. When a quick conversation can fix a problem that goes on for chapters, that’s a problem.
The narrator is fine. His hero sounds like he is 60 (though he’s supposed to be in his late 20s/early30s). His women sound like a man with a “softer” voice. When reading narration, he’s very good (although, you can hear when he separates his lips or swallows and that drives me crazy).

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Sexy if a little frustrating

Revisado: 12-16-24

This series is that it doesn’t shy away from depicting pleasure, and those scenes are among the best written in the book (if not the best written). But, sometimes, the plot feels secondary to the sex. As if the author wrote the sexy scenes and the characters’ thinking about them first and filled in the rest of the set number of pages with the story. I think as long as you don’t mind that, it’s an entertaining story.

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Those horns

Revisado: 09-22-24

At random points of this audiobook holiday horns go off. Not at the beginning of chapters, just randomly. To quote Turnip “it’s deuced havey-cavey.” And by that I mean really annoying and jarring and ruins parts of the book. In the middle of an emotional scene you get trumpet fanfare.

Love Turnip— he’s such a different kind of hero. A human golden retriever. Arabella sometimes is too cerebral for her own good. She knows Turnip isn’t the brightest and yet she overthinks his possible motives and often chooses the one further way from him.

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I want to like Morgan but couldn’t finish

Revisado: 08-11-24

But it’s starting to get difficult.
Listen to this book if you like a war story (this is mostly that and if you don’t like them it will make the story as tedious as the heroine), a heroine who is “very young” (as she is described several times, a heroine who is allegedly intelligent but really acts and thinks like a young teenager, a older hero (12 years older than the heroine, almost twice her age) who is out for revenge against the h’s eldest brother (who is his peer), and like to be incredibly frustrated by foolish af choices like staying in an area about to be a war zone so the teen heroine can attend a ball. I hate to skip the book since it’s part of a series, but this heroine is so stupid. All she does is repeat her philosophical thoughts about war over and over and over and over and OVER AND OVER AND OVER. She even says she is harping on about it and then she still goes on and on. It might make it realistic, but it also makes it dreadfully tiresome.
The redeeming this about this audiobook, the only one, is Rosalyn Landor. Thankfully, her voice is deeper so Morgan, the young girl at the center of this story, does sound like her age. Unfortunately, everything else about the character makes it clear she is still very immature, no matter how often the author tries to insist she is an intelligent woman.

I stopped listening because I couldn’t get past my annoyance of the heroine (Morgan barely mourns her own brother) and the age gap. The hero’s continual observations and comments on how young she is and his plan to entrap/ruin her for revenge were gross. I understand that age gaps are normal for historical romances, but usually the heroine is more mature than her age (Morgan is not) and the hero doesn’t keep noticing how young she is (it felt like her age was the feature for him and I find that disturbing).

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