THE VALCOURT HEIRESS by Catherine Coulter

PUBLISHER: G.P. Putnam Sons, 10/2010
GENRE: Fiction/Historical Romance
SETTING: England, 1278
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: D

FROM PUBLISHER: Twenty-four year old Lord Garron of Kersey is on his way home to succeed his late brother, Arthur, as the Earl of Wareham. But on arrival, Garron discovers his home, Wareham Castle, has been nearly destroyed by The Black Demon and his band of bad bad soldiers looking for Arthur's cache of silver coins which remain hidden. The handful of servants who've survived includes a young girl named Merry, supposedly the castle priest's bastard, who is as clever and enterprising as Garron.

Garron is told this Black Demon destroyed Wareham because no one would tell him where Arthur had hidden stolen silver coins. Equally puzzling is the too-smart bastard Merry -- as well bred, literate and brave as any man he's ever known. Indeed, she galvanizes his people to action before he can even ask her assistance. She's a natural leader and a skilled healer, but Merry has secrets of her own...secrets that could endanger Garron and his people. He knows she's hiding something, knows she could bring more bad things down on his head, but he likes her and her fast mind and her ready wit. But can he survive the truth?

MY THOUGHTS: The heroine is blue eyed, red haired, 18 year old Marianna 'Merry' de Lucede Mornay. The hero is Lord Garron of Kersey. He has black hair and blue eyes. The whole plot of this book is Garron trying to get his brothers silver coins back.

This book was terrible. There was some magic running throughout it that I didn't care for, as I'm not a fan of the paranormal. None of the characters were interesting. Merry's mother is a terrible person. Basically, she was trying to sell Merry to someone she didn't want to marry in exchange for the silver coins that were stolen. She needed the money to buy more things to create spells with. Toward the end there was some silly stuff involving a secret sibling thrown in. Pointless. I never saw any love between hero and heroine either.

NEVER KISS A STRANGER by Heather Grothaus

PUBLISHER: Zebra, 1/2011
GENRE: Historical romance
MY GRADE: C

SYNOPSIS: Nowhere in medieval England are three women so powerful -- or adored -- as the heiresses of Fallstowe Castle: Sybilla, the ruthless beauty, Cecily, the pure-hearted innocent... And Alys, the youngest sister, whose wild spirit has yet to be matched...

Lady Alys thinks everyone knows the legend: If a man and a woman meet at midnight within the ancient Foxe Ring ruins, they are as good as married. But when she finds a captivating stranger lurking there in the middle of the night, she discovers the one man who is unaware.

It's a deadly pursuit that brings Piers Mallory to the Fallstowe lands. But now that fate has attached the alluring, and curiously insistent, Alys to his side, it may work to his advantage to play by her rules, at least for a time. Yet the danger Piers courts is no game -- and the passion he and Alys share is all too real...

MY THOUGHTS:  The story takes place in England in 1276. I think the story only spans about a month or so. The heroine is eighteen year old Alys Foxe. She’s got pale blond hair and brown eyes. She’s the youngest of three sisters. Her parents are deceased and her older sister, Sybilla, runs everything. Alys runs away because Sybilla is making her marry someone whom she doesn’t want to marry.

The hero is thirty year old Piers Mallory. He’s poor and on a mission: to claim his birthright from the King. He comes across Alys sleeping at something called Foxe Ring. It’s a stone ring outside that is supposedly where you go to meet your future spouse. Alys becomes convinced that they’re now husband and wife. I found that to be very annoying.

At the beginning, Alys is given a monkey, whom she names Layla. The vicious monkey is on almost every page of the story. I didn’t care for that at all. That too was very annoying. I don’t believe a romance book should feature a pet. The monkey was very distracting and pointless, really.

Piers suffers a terrible attack by two people who are very close to him. I like those characters because I feel all books, even romance, need a villain or two. I think they add to any story. I don’t think the ones in this story were given enough time to develop their characters. There wasn’t enough character development with both hero and heroine either. Piers lost his mother when he was just six. We don’t really know anything of his life before he met the heroine. Same goes with Alys. What was her life like, especially with no parents? We learned nothing about their pasts.

Almost from the start she claimed she loved Piers and not long after he claimed he loved her too. That was way too rushed, came too fast. They don’t really even know each other. They were sort of thrown together and they didn’t have anyone but each other during a stressful, scary time. Their feelings for one another grew faster than most, I guess, because of it.

I also didn’t like the ‘wood’ people, who live in trees, literally. I thought that was bizarre and unbelievable, more like something you’d read in a Grimm’s fairy tale. I guess it was a bit creative but a little too out-of-the-box for me.

I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.