REAP THE SAVAGE WIND by Ellen Tanner Marsh

PUBLISHER: Ace, 1982/Berkley, 1984
SETTING: 1764 Scotland, England, America
HEROINE: Merewyn MacAilis
HERO: Ian Montague
TIMESPAN: within 6 months
BODICE RIPPER? Yes
MY GRADE: B

FROM PUBLISHER: From the safety of her family castle to brutal degradation at the hands of a vicious enemy, the beautiful, headstrong Meiewyn MacAilis suffers agony and torment as she strives to restore her family's fortune.

But run as she might from despair and danger, there is no escaping Ian Montague. Like a fragile flower, she trembles in his hungry embrace... her own wild passion igniting as the urgent demands of his desire claim and conquer her... as the power o their love consumes them both.

SPOILER SUMMARY: The heroine is seventeen, has blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin and has Nordic ancestery. The hero has long dark hair and gray eyes. I don't think his age was given because I never read it.Hero and heroine meet early on in Scotland. She travels to his home to confront him about something and it turns ugly. Ian actually tries to strangle her with one hand while he's gripping her hair with the other. She flees and later is falsely accused of thievery and prostitution by someone whom we later find out is named William Rawlings, who's twenty-seven. She's shipped off to America and is to become an indentured servant but doesn't in the end.

Ian somehow finds out she's been kidnapped and rescues her. They continue to be combative toward each other. Not a whole lot goes on from here on out except a couple of interesting things that help the story along.

William is in a room at an inn with a prostitute, whom he murders while in the room with her. He dumps her body into the river.

Merewyn is out with someone (Ian?) and they run into Ian's jealous old flame, Elizabeth Comerford. She's got brown hair and pale green eyes. She's with William, the man who had Merewyn arrested but he doesn't recognize Merewyn at all. Merewyn recognizes him right away. He later becomes a bit obsessed with her, especially when she won't tell him her name. Elizabeth tells him who Merewyn really is, that she was  kidnapped and is being looked for but he still doesn't know she's the one he had arrested. Elizabeth comes up with a plan. She wants Ian, who is now engaged to Merewyn, and William wants Merewyn. So they send her a note telling her they know who she is and William wants to meet with her. Merewyn is terrified that William will recognize her and tell everyone that she was in jail for prostitution and is desperate to flee London, where they are now.

Ian and Merewyn marry and Ian finds a note that she was to send William. Ian mistakenly believes they're having an affair and abandons her and travels somewhere. Merewyn is out riding one night and William followes her. He plans to murder her. She'd previously threatened to tell the police that he had her falsely imprisoned for prostitution. William is terrified that if she brings his name up to the police that they'll somehow connect him to the murdered prostitute. And they later do.

Merewyn sees him chasing after her on horseback so she takes off on her horse and ends up at an abandonded home. She runs inside and tries to hid from William. He's chasing after her in the dark and shoots her in the arm. He ends up falling through the floor and dies when he lands. Her brothers show up just then and take her back home to Ian, but he's not here. They later reconsile and live happily-ever-after.

MY THOUGHTS: I've had this book a little over 1 1/2 years and finally read it. I enjoyed it but not as much as I'd hoped. My favorite part was when William and Elizabeth came up with their plan to ruin Merewyn. William never ended up with her, as planned and Elizabeth never got to be with Ian again.

This novel and Ian definitely fit the criteria for a bodice ripper. Ian is very angry and abusive. Not only did he try to choke Merewyn when they first met but is always threatening to do her harm. He once threatened to box her ears and another time asked her if she was trying to provoke him into murdering her! Say what?! A couple of times he ripped her gown off and even once told an acquaintance that he planned to 'beat her into submission.' Ain't he a keeper?

Merewyn is your typical fiesty heroine, never afraid to mouth off to the hero when necessary. She held her own against him. She was treated badly by him and somehow came to love him in the process. Their love came out of nowhere and wasn't at all believable. But that's OK with me.

It was believed that William murdered the prostitute in Scotland, Nellie Arling, but we never learned of how the authorities discovered that. I guess it's to be assumed he was seen entering the room with her or was seen dumping her dead body.

THE COURTESAN by Julia Justiss

PUBLISHER: HQN (Harlequin), 2005
GENRE: Historical Romance
SETTING: England
MY GRADE: D/F

SYNOPSIS: After years of dangerous fighting on the Peninsula, Captain Jack Carrington has returned home to take up family duties and find himself a wife. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he views a fencing lesson unlike any other. The talented student is no student at all, but a beautiful young woman, and the most infamous courtesan in all of London -- Lady Belle.

Who is the mysterious Belle? A jaded cyprian seeking her next protector? A kind friend helping those in need? Or a mistress of sensual delights that tempt a man to madness? Eager to uncover the true woman behind the facade, Jack wagers he can win a kiss from Belle if he bests her at fencing. And though Belle is a woman he can neither afford to keep nor dare to marry, he's willing to risk it all to win her to his bed.



It was mentioned on a romance forum/message board that the heroine was raped in this. That caught my attention because I had no idea that authors were still putting rape in novels. I didn't know it was 'allowed', for lack of a better word. So I got the book, started reading it sometime in 2006 and quickly got bored with it. I traded the book without having gotten very far in it and later regretted it. Three years later I got it again and just now reread it. Here's what goes on in it.

SPOILER SUMMARY: The story takes place in England in the 1800s. Belle, 22ish, blonde, blue eyed, is a courtesan (prostitute to noblemen) and her lover died less than a month before. The hero, Jack, see's her fencing with someone and discovers that she's a woman, not a man like he assumed. He's intrigued by her and later ends up in a fencing match with her. Belle accidently stabs him with the foil and it pierces his lung. He's in bad shape and is taken to Belle's home to recover. Here's where the story gets very, very boring. Jack is there for quite awhile recovering and that's about it. Nothing goes on between him and Belle. They're attracted to one another but Belle is determined to never be a man's 'whore', as she calls it, again.

While Jack is recovering there, Belle finds this young teenager named Jane working in a brothel. She kidnaps her, basically, and brings her to stay/work at her home. Once while traveling, their carriage is attacked and they think it's someone that the brothel owner has sent to get Jane back. They're right but they aren't harmed and Jane isn't mentioned much after that.

Near the end of Jack's recovery, completely out of the blue, Belle tried to seduce Jack but he was having none of it. He could tell Belle wasn't really interested in seducing him but was interested in him, in getting to know him better. I guess she thought the only way to express that was to offer him sex. Sometime after that, Jack told her he wanted to marry her. She told him it wouldn't be acceptable for him to marry an ex-prostitute and refused him. When Jack was almost well, he agreed to stay another week. During that week, they had sex for the first time. He then left her home when he was healed from the stab wound. They went their seperate ways and their lives got back to normal.

Here's where I feel the author didn't know where to go with the story so she just threw a piece of nonsense into the mix. Jack met his younger sister's friend, Kitty. He thought Kitty looked a whole lot like Belle. Kitty told him the story of how her older sister Constance (Belle) and mother died almost seven years ago, when she was about thirteen. They were buried at the inn where they'd all been staying and Kitty went to live with a relative. That sounded similar to the story Belle had told him about how she became a prostitute. She told him her mother died and was buried and her younger sister was planning to live with a relative. Belle, while at the inn, had met some much older, married man who offered to let him stay with him and his wife. I guess Belle knew she was going to have a sexual relationship with him. She didn't want her sister to know so she didn't tell her that. Belle later finds out that the man she was to live with told her sister that she had died right after the mother and was buried beside her out on the inn's property. He even paid to have a tombstone put there. Jack then travelled to the inn to check out Kitty's story and was told that no, the sister, Constance, didn't really die. That's when Jack knew Belle and Constance were the same person.

After that discovery, Belle was at home and Lord Rupert, a man who has lusted after her, paid her an unwelcome visit. He punched her in the head or face and knocked her unconscious. While passed out, he raped her and tied her to the bed. She woke up, they arugued, he told her all her servants were in another building on the property. He left her alone in the bedroom and out of the clear blue sky came her young male employee right down the chimney to rescue her! He pulled out a knife and cut her wrists loose. Right then, Jack appeared. He'd been going there to check on her. He hadn't seen her since he went back home after he'd recovered. Rupert came into the room and he and Belle started fencing, I kid you not. Of course, she beat him. Jack made Rupert promise to leave the country and never return.

While out somewhere at some party, Jack reunited Belle with her sister Kitty. Later, Belle finally agreed to marry him. That's how the story ended.

MY THOUGHTS: I must say this was one of the slowest and most boring books that I've ever read. Words can't really describe how let down I feel. The first two thirds or so was just Jack recovering from his wound at Belle's. To me, that just wasn't believable. There was no reason at all for Jack to have been taken to Belle's when he could have gone to a friend, or family members, home to recover. Why would you stay at a known prostitute's home? And adding Jane to the story was pointless simply because it did noting for it. Jane wasn't mentioned much after she came to live with Belle. And the stuff with Kitty thinking her sister dead, well, it just wasn't needed. I do think the rape was thrown in just for shock value and the strange thing was, it wasn't shocking at all.

She could have had the rape take place midway though the story and the rest could have been Jack helping Belle 'recover' and them falling in love with each other.

I won't be trying this author again. Overall, I was terribly disappointed with the story. It could have been such a great love story; man falling for ex fallen woman and all that pretty stuff. This wasn't a bodice ripper though it did have one bodice ripper-like scene near the the end, with the rape.

DARK FIRES by Brenda Joyce

PUBLISHER: Dell, 6/1991
GENRE: Fiction/Historical Romance
SETTING: England/New York, USA
SERIES: Bragg Saga, #4
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: C

DATES READ: 2003, 2010

SYNOPSIS: "He murdered his wife," they whispered. Nicholas Bragg, Earl of Dragmore, was notorious--even after a British court found him innocent. Now they called him Lord of Darkness, as much for his rakish good looks as for his black reputation.

She was an innocent at passion's gate. Arriving uninvited at the massive stone manor, she shivered with terror--and excitement. Jane Barclay was his ward. Her sunny, innocent nature was in violent contrast to his hot temper. He was wild, explosive, an uncouth Texas rakehell--exactly the wrong kind of man for an English beauty to tame.

Together they would be swept into the dark storm of their passionate destiny...and wild, all-consuming love.

SPOILER SUMMARY: The hero is Nicholas Bragg, 33, from Texas but living in England for 10 years. He has silver eyes, black hair and a dark complexion. His wife died in a house fire and Nick was accused of setting the fire but was later aquited. Everyone still thinks he did it and therefore has no friends but one. He has a five year old son.

His ward is seventeen year old Jane Barclay, platinum blonde hair, blue eyes. Nick is widowed and Jane, his dead wife's cousin, comes to live with him when her guardian can't afford her anymore. Jane's parents both died years before. Her mother was a famous actress and Jane has done some acting too.

Nick doesn't want her to stay there so he's pretty rude to her. He's also very attracted to her but doesn't act on it because Jane is so young, just seventeen. Nick is also very jealous of her and his best friend Jon Lindley. They get along great and flirt with each other.

Jane ends up falling in love with him and climbs into bed with him one night. While he's asleep, they have sex. He wakes up to find her in his bed and he is furious! Later she tells him she loves him. He tells her she doesn't know what love is, they get into an argument and she flees to London, pregnant, to stay with an old male friend of hers. She leaves a letter telling Nick where she's going but he doesn't contact her nor does she tell him she's pregnant. Nick sends her male friend money to help support Jane but the man never tells Jane this.

Nick, somehow, finds out that Jane has a baby, Nicole, and is told that she is his. The rest of the novel is pretty boring. Jane and Nick end up back together and get married. He tells her that he is the product of rape. His French mother was kidnapped and raped by an Indian, resulting in a pregnancy.

Out of nowhere, Nick's dead wife shows up. She tells him she's the one who started the fire. She and her lover fled to America, where she's been living. She's only returned because she's grown bored with the man and has run out of money. So she thinks she can return home, tell everyone she'd forgotten her memory, and continue on as if nothing ever happened.

Jane assumes Nick is going to stay with his wife so she and their friend Jon travel to New York to visit with Nick's younger brother Rathe. Nick doesn't know where she's gone. Rathe's story is in the book 'Violet Fire.' Rathe and his wife Grace think that Jane and Jon are lovers but Jane confides in Grace that she is in love, and has a child and one on the way, with her brother-in-law Nick. Rathe tells Nick that Jane is there so he travels to New York from England. Jane tells Nick that she will be his mistress but he tells her that he's in the process of divorcing his wife. So that's what happens. They then travel to Texas to visit his parents, whom Nick hasn't seen since he moved to England ten years before.

And they live happily ever after!
__

MY THOUGHTS: I've read this book twice now and I still don't like it very much. I think Jane is very weak and uninteresting. There's no fire in her. Nick is very, very angry and violent. He cusses all the time and is a big fan of the F-word. He's very jealous. Right before he came to England ten years before, he found out that the man he thought was his father, Derek, wasn't, and that his mom was raped and the rapist is his father. So he's really angry that the truth was kept from him. He was in love with his first wife but she hated him. Then when she found out that he was part American Indian, she really hated him and their son, Chad. Though there is no violence toward the heroine, I consider this book to be a bodice ripper because of the way the hero acts.

This is the order of the Bragg series:

Innocent Fire- This is the story of Nick's parents.

Firestorm- The story of Nick's sister Storm.

Violet Fire- Story of Nick's brother Rathe.

Dark Fires- Nicholas Bragg.

The Darkest Heart- The story of Shoz's (from The Fires of Paradise) parents.

The Fires of Paradise- Nick's brother Rathe's daughter Lucy's story.

Scandalous Love- Nick's oldest daughter Nicole's story.

Secrets- Nick's youngest daugher Regina's story. Her husbands name is Slade Delanza.

After Innocence- The story of Slade's youngest brother Edward and his wife Sophie.