Well, the set-up was stellar. Skittish (hovered on the "traumatized" shelf for a minute there), insecure, plain heroine with a limp is forced to marry by the king's decree to a handsome hero who, frankly, is a total asshole to her. He suspects she played a role in his brother's murder; she alludes to martyring herself to protect her family. I was wringing my hands in glee and anticipation of some sweet angst and groveling. Instead, I ended up with a protracted court intrigue and a suddenly brazen heroine with a magical vag. She is a dynamo in bed all of a sudden? And this makes the hero suddenly think she is beautiful and eventually fall in love with her? (Not without borderline cheating on her with his mistress of course.) This is terrible messaging to give women! Listen up ladies: if a dude is mean to you, gropes his mistress in front of you, tells you point-blank that he does not give a single shit about you, there is NO amount of boning him that is going to somehow "win" his heart. Stop hoping he will change, collect your self-respect, and leave his ass.

Anyways, I would have forgiven that terrible messaging had it let to my aforementioned angst-and-grovel-fest, but the second half of the book kinda lost me and I found myself skimming. I didn't buy the heroine's character "arc" (sudden, drastic personality change), nor the hero coming to love her. And, sorry, but Malcolm being a good guy in the end??? What the hell! But overall, there was a lot of elements that I like in my historical romance, so I'll give it a good rating in the end. (3.5 stars) ( )

Not a bad storyline. Kind of slow in places and disconnected. ( )

Not a bad storyline. Kind of slow in places and disconnected. ( )

Wow. Bad. Random actions by the characters - I never had any idea what they would do next. I don't know the era very well, but there were major inconsistencies in the politics - or maybe they were just badly expressed - and the physical settings made no sense more often than not. Yeah right, teach a woman self-defense in one lesson against men who have literally spent their lives fighting? ha ha. And they had zilch tying them together - oh, except for ungovernable lust. A very poor version of the ''if the sex is good it's true love'' notion so common in romances. And what exactly was the point of the 'dryness' and rash on Grace? Just to explain why she had such poor self-esteem? And just when/how did she get burned - can't have been when her parents died, that was a simple ambush. And so on - and on - and on… Bah. I finished it - I'm proud of myself for that. And now I never have to read it again. ( )