intimate enemies by shana abe

How I got it…

I hunted. A bookstore had my prey. I netted it, with cash and bookstore discount card. I will not rest until I have all Shana Abe titles with me. My obsessiveness with collecting entire series sometimes crosses over to authors.

Why I read it…

I enjoy beautifully written historical romances that is high on romance and passion but low in smut.

The politics of marriage back then was incredibly complicated. Thank goodness  for the Vikings, warfreaks, forcing them out of their comfort zones, and two from warring clans to come together.

What’s the story?

His enemy had grown up to be a goddess. The last time English Lord, Arion, saw Lauren Macrae was when she was a thin brat he saved from his uncle’s dungeons. His people and her clan are enemies, fighting over a small but fertile island, the Isle of Shot for generations. She returns the favor by rescuing him from invading Northmen, but the hostility and distrust are still there. Acting as the clan’s chief, with her father dead and her cousin gravely injured, she reluctantly accepts Arion’s offer of a truce, and an alliance against a common enemy. Maybe the fact that the effect they had on each other was like a blow to the stomach made the alliance very attractive, therefore extremely frightening.

What I liked about it…

• Forbidden love. She is promised to another clan lord. And he is the enemy. To give in to their feelings is a betrayal of the highest kind, unforgivable in the eyes of their society.
• He pursues her nevertheless. He thought up of the alliance, and is willing to risk war for her.
• Courage and defiance. She embraced the duties of war for the love she bore her father, for her people’s sake, and for her own sense of right. Is it right to turn her back on her people? Her courage fascinates him. His strength makes her weak.
• But it gave her the wisdom eventually to see beyond clan loyalties and family obligations.

What I didn’t like about it…

• The cover, which is like any other historical romance. How can an ordinary browser realize that this book stands out from the rest?
• It’s not as good as the other Shana Abe titles. Or I just didn’t like it as much because there were no magical elements involved, but the emotionally written narrative carried me along just as well as the other books.

tapestry by lynn kurland, madeline hunter, karen marie moning, and sherrilyn kenyon

Woven into four worlds of chivalry and honor, of danger and desire, are threads as fine as the touch of their creator, or as rough as the earthy desires ringing in the  cash register. Containing a healthy balance of these two types, Tapestry was a good read, an in-between-er that allowed me to rest my mind from my current main read, which is Prospero’s Children by Jan Siegel.

Of the four stories, my favorite is To Kiss in the Shadow by Lynn Kurland, where a young man discovers his noble quest is to love and protect a shy young woman hiding her ruined beauty behind a tapestry frame. An Interrupted Tapestry by Madeline Hunter is a sweet tale about a wealthy trader who  won the best deal of his life by finally declaring his love to an impoverished noblewoman he has loved for years, saving her from dishonor in the process. Shamelessly indulgent and escapist, Dragonswan by Sherrilyn Kenyon followed up the lust-on-first sight with an info overload of the story’s mythology so the fight and bed scenes could get it on with little competition—I didn’t care for this one.

Karen Marie Moning’s Into the Dreaming involves another Highlander, made mad from being imprisoned by the Unseelie King in an ice world for centuries; to ruin the plans of her enemy, the Seelie Queen transports a 20th-century aspiring romance novelist to 15th-century Scotland to bring some life back into the man of her dreams.This last was very funny, though I must honestly say the aspiring writer-heroine sucks at writing. Fortunately, her medieval audience are less critical of her bawdy style of writing.