MIDNIGHT FIRES by Andrea Layton

PUBLISHER: Playboy Paperbacks, 1/1979
GENRE: Fiction/Historical Romance
SETTING: New York & Massachusetts, USA 1770's
BODICE RIPPER: Yes
RAPE: Multiple
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: D

FROM PUBLISHER: Ravished by a cruel, merciless stranger...loved by the passionate man she might never see again...Carolyn Salford flees the brutal wilderness for aristocratic Boston and the arms of her fiancé.

Stalked by danger, vulnerable to the turbulent desires tormenting her, she is haunted by the memory of a man she dare not love but cannot forget.

SPOILER SUMMARY: Carolyn is eighteen years old. She and her family are traveling from New York to Boston, but they're travelling separately. Along the way she runs into George Nelson, a man two years older than her, who's in love with her. He rapes her once then it turns consentual. She goes on her merry way and is kidnapped and raped several times by some random Frenchman named Jean Lemelle. He gets what he's had coming to him and she's once again on her way. Not much else happens until the last fifty pages, when she meets up with her fiancé, William. William only wants to marry her because of the fortune she's to inherit soon from her British mothers family. He rapes her several times, including once anally, and holds her prisoner in his home and verbally abuses her constantly. He's keeping her drugged with laudanum and they set sail on a ship bound for London. She thinks he plans to killer her once they're married. She escapes, meets back up with George, who she's now in love with, and they get married.

MY THOUGHTS: This is truly one of the most boring books I've ever read. Luckily it was barely over 300 pages. The first 150 pages or so was Carolyn traveling, mostly by herself via horseback, to Boston. The plot was mostly talk of war and I got so sick of it. The only interesting part was the last fifty-some pages or so, when William came on the scene. William's a character I'd have liked to have known more about. Not even his age was given.