Nicoletta possesses a strange, magical healing ability, so the people in her small Italian village always call on her for aid and protect her from outsiders. After Nicoletta is summoned to an aristocrat’s manor, known as the Palazzo de Morte (the Palace of Death) by the villagers, she and her mentor Maria Pia attend a sick child and the devilishly handsome don himself.
Don Giovanni Scarletti has watched Nicoletta from afar, wanting her but knowing he can never have her because of his family’s curse. Several women have died in mysterious ways at the palazzo over the years, and Giovanni knows something is terribly wrong with his household and the men in his family. He fears taking a bride but finally gives in to temptation. As the don, he has the legal right to marry whomever he chooses, so he takes a very unwilling Nicoletta home with him.
Nicoletta is both strong and smart, and also carefree. She’s only 17, after all. Giovanni is resigned to living with the curse but also determined to keep Nicoletta from danger, which proved difficult. He’s ten to twelve years older than her.
For most of the book, Nicoletta and Giovanni barely talked. Since she feared him and at times believed he was capable of great violence, she felt torn between her fear and her attraction to him, and she rarely demanded answers to her questions even though she was in constant danger. Giovanni kept his distance from her because he was constantly busy dealing with assassination attempts and battling Spanish forces, but he was extremely jealous when she would laugh and talk with his brothers and the guards he assigned to protect her. Once they got married, they finally started talking and getting to know one another. Their attraction bloomed quickly and love followed.
The scenery was breathtaking—the ornate palazzo and hedge maze, the rolling hills and trees, and the sea and caves—everything was detailed and described. I’m not sure when the story is set, but I think it was in the 1300s since the Black Death was mentioned.
The story was told mostly from the heroine’s POV, but often strayed into many other characters POV. There are some surprising typos that took me out of the story. Overall, I like it, but I really wish the H/h had spent more time together falling in love before they were married.
3.5 Stars ( )

Now, I read far more indie than trad books, but this book was for sale at an eye watering 99 MXN and I am weak willed and ended up buying it. In a way, even though I usually read books in the original language they were written in (mostly English); I think they did a nice job with the Spanish translation. The translation doesn't sound wooden and luckily is neutral enough to avoid making me feel grated by excessive castellan colloquialisms. Another big plus I feel from reading the book in a romance language is that the story includes a lot of Italian words which will naturally flow better when the rest of the text is in a similar language.

Given this book has over a whopping 8000 reviews on goodreads and around 240 on Amazon, I don't feel any need to replay the basic plot so I will just jump to my impressions of the book.

Firstly, I sometimes read fantasy novels set in medieval settings and cringe when characters speak and think like modern times. This is one aspect I feel was very well done in this story. Set during the dark ages at an unspecified year, most of the peasants are illiterate, uninterested in science or world politics as long as their humble village isn't harmed, heavily religious and gratingly superstitious. Maria Pia who is the adoptive mother of the MC Nicoletta is constantly praying and lighting candles every time she says something even remotely improper for the heavily conservative tenets of the era. Given Nicoletta is always forgetting to wear shoes for some odd reason and blatantly rejects the somewhat forced marriage proposals of the young men of her little village, Maria prays.... a lot.

As the assistant village healer with hidden superpowers that Nicoletta tries to keep a secret to avoid being burned at the stake for witchcraft, she has a lot of modern ideas such as preferring to have a stable profession and freedom to choose her life. She feels disgusted a lot of her friends married at a very young age to older men at the risk of dying during childbirth and can communicate with ravens and owls that warn her when someone nearby is gravely injured. Everyone in the village both respects and fears their rather honorable feudal ruler Don Giovanni Scarletti, whose family and home are involved in a haunting curse where all of the women married into the family ends up dying under tragic circumstances. When Giovanni first experiences Nicoletta's special curative powers after falling ill, he becomes entranced by her brash nature and abuses a law where he can force any maiden in his lands to marry him. Nicoletta obviously feels disgusted about being forced to marry a terrifying (and yet insanely hot but she would never dare admit it out loud) feudal lord, and will try to find the way to either escape from his reach while she learns more about his family and the secret behind the terrifying rumors.

Now, I believe the author is quite a good storyteller and while I don't usually read bestseller novels, I can see why Christine's books get a lot of good ratings. I love how she describes the Scarletti castle which only seems more frightful because the superstitions of the villagers only feed the mass hysteria. However, there is magic of some kind in the novel tied to the Scarletti family, albeit that would be a spoiler. The Palaccio de la Morte of the Scarletti family is beautifully described and you can just feel the dreadful sea serpent artwork fighting demon statues at every turn of the corner. When it comes to describing places, the book delivers quite well without slowing things down.

As for the romantic scenes, this is where I felt some issues. It isn't a fault of the writing per se because I did enjoy the steamy scenes, but due to the fact such a huge portion of the story is focused on Nicoletta fighting over marrying a man she barely knows by force and discovering the secret to the family curse, you won't see the first steamy scene until around the 60% point of the book and then the book starts throwing steamy scenes in literally almost every chapter afterwards for 5-8 pages. You get so much building for the great sleazy stuff only to be stuffed with so much of it that you are much more invested in discovering the secret of family curse than how many orgasms Nicoletta can enjoy in a given chapter. When the steamy scenes are just getting too much in the way for the action and seemed to only be included for fan service, I simply started skimming through them to get it over with. I definitely skimmed through the scene when Nicoletta and Giovanni visit the hillside overseeing the palace from the ocean. I would have wanted that chapter to only have the characters talking and making out but nothing past second base.

Yes, that is another issue I have with the book. I understand that a controlling urge to feel jealous and possessive is a sort of trait that repeats itself over and over again in the Scarlettis, I would have wanted a bit more convincing character growth in Giovanni to overcome this personality defect. He just seems just way too overboard in this department and when you add into the equation he is the most politically powerful man in the surrounding area, and Nicoletta who at 17-18 is half his age has no fleeting chance to overpower him, this does create a very unbalanced character dynamic in the plot. She has virtually zero experience dealing with men except as her patients or childhood play friends, so a lot of her feelings for Giovanni seem to be stemmed too much from her excessive inexperience. She then sometimes feels disgusted with Giovanni's 15-16 yo niece Margerita and her life decisions when neither young woman knows what is going on and accepts the overbearing behavior of the 3 Scarletti brothers without question.

Despite these defects, I did have a fun time with the story albeit I preferred discovering the secrets to the curse. ( )

Christine Feehan truly knows how to build a story. I loved all of it.

I listened to the audio version. I liked the narrators voice, I just wished she did a better job so that I could distinguish between the different characters. ( )

I was torn between two stars and three stars for this book. Of all of the "Dark Series" books this was probably my least favorite. I love the characters in this series but this one just seemed to be out of his element. The story also lacked the support of the other characters as all the other books have had. ( )

A free spirited woman who is very often without shoes finds herself betrothed to the most powerful man in her Italian village after she risks her life to save his life and the life of her nephew from a sickness. The hero instantly falls under her charms and vows to have her as his wife. She fights him every step of he way. No0t because she doesn't feel for him also, but rather because of how arrogantly he went about winning her hand. He invokes an old tradition that a man with his title can chose any girl from the village of a certain age. But once they get past that, she realizes how deeply they can love each other and she gives up the fight. ( )