Helpful Score: 7
blah blah, Hot Sex, blah blah, Hot Sex, blah blah, Someone Is Trying To Kill Us!, blah, blah, Hot Sex.
Helpful Score: 6
Does not live up to the standard of Gypsy Lord, but overall theme okay. I overlooked the sometimes juvenile language at times. Too much sex for my taste.
Helpful Score: 4
I feel incredibly guilty for saying it, but I enjoyed this book and had it on my keeper shelf for several years - even re-read it again once. Every negative comment I've seen about it, I'd have to admit, has some merit, but I think old-school romance lovers will greatly enjoy it. By my current standards for a good historical romance, it's almost eye-rollingly contrived, and the prose can be downright silly. But think Kathleen Woodiwiss with a bit of a potty mouth, and if that notion appeals, you should definitely give it a try.
Helpful Score: 3
Martin's latest historical has a relatively fresh setting?the Austria of Francis II (I). Sadly everything else seems very, very old. The dialogue is rife with "twas", "twould" and "little minx"; shafts are rigid, lobes are nibbled, emotions surge and tears spill. In 1809, Elissa Tauber arrives in Austria from her home in Cornwall posing as the second wife of the late Count von Langen (her dead father), in order to find a traitor hinted at in a letter from her murdered brother. It's hard to imagine Elissa as a Napoleonic Emma Peel given that Colonel Adrian Kingsland, Baron Wolvermont, has to rescue her from a boar, a fall, a villain (part I), a Turk, a villain (part II). In fact, she's the kind of first-class twit that only a sexual predator like Adrian could love. ("I'll keep your secret if you promise you will come to me?whenever, wherever I wish. Not ten minutes later, not later that night, but the moment I send you a summons.") Basically, this is mawkish, distasteful and outdated.
