I am burning out on COYER. I need something other than Harlequin romance. Bring on Halloween Bingo!

Challenges:

BL/GR: 128/150; 85% completed

Pop Sugar: 2; 42/52 prompts filled

Library Love Challenge: 2; 42/36 for the year

COYER: 12; 82% of list read from June-August

1. Falling for the Enemy by Naomi Rawlings (COYER) (Pop Sugar) - 5 stars

2. Homicide in High Heels (High Heels #8) by Gemma Halliday (COYER) (Library Love) - 4 stars

3. Chaucer's Major Tales by Michael Hoy and Michael Stevens (Pop Sugar) (COYER) (Library Love) - 2.5 stars

4. Her Holiday Family by Winnie Griggs (COYER) - 4 stars

5. Mission of Hope by Allie Pleiter (COYER) - 4.5 stars

6. The Baby Barter by Patty Smith Hall (COYER) - 3 stars

7. Emma and the Outlaw by Linda Lael Miller (COYER) - 1.5 stars

8. The Bootlegger's Daughter by Lauri Robinson (COYER) - 1 star

9. Love, Special Delivery by Melinda Curtis (COYER) - 2 stars

10. Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin (COYER) - .5 star

11. The Dragon and the Pearl by Jeannie Lin (COYER) - 4 stars

The cover attached to this review is for the original book, published in 1991. I read the 2014 reprint.

Emma Chalmers is a seven year old girl who, along with her two sisters Caroline and Lucy, are sent on the orphan train by their biological mother at the request of the mother's newest lover. Caroline is adopted first, leaving Emma and Lucy to continue on the train west. Emma is adopted by a woman who is hoping to get a free domestic servant for her household and possible sexual servant for her husband. Lucy continues on the train west. Emma is rescued at the train station by Chloe, a brother. and saloon owner who wanted a daughter and paid off the vile woman. Emma ends up in a nice home and has a good upbringing.

Chloe decides to open up a public lending library so Emma has a job after coming home from normal school (teachers' college). Even though Emma loves and defends Chloe, Emma also wants respectability. She feels her life is stained twice over with a biological mother who was weak for men and brandy and being the daughter of the local madam. Hence her courtship with Fulton Whitney, the banker; yet he leaves her cold. Emma hasn't given up on the dream of re-connecting with her sisters.

One day, a drunk decides to celebrate his birthday by bringing a stick of dynamite into another saloon and an explosion leaves many saloon patrons injured. One of those patrons is Steven Fairfax, a former Confederate soldier and an outlaw wanted in his home state of Louisiana. Chloe takes Steven into her home so that he can heal; Emma does nurse him back to health in between shifts at the library. There is a lot of lust from Steven's side already. A few days of nursing and they are having make out sessions. Steven decides to stay in Whitneyville and court Emma, Fulton be damned. Emma decides to play Steven against Fulton so she can be rid of both of them, but ends up falling for Steven.

Once the sex starts between Steven and Emma it doesn't stop. EVERY CHAPTER after Steven takes Emma's v-card in a field of daisies has at least one sex scene. Steven really likes Emma's breasts;  so much nipple sucking and licking. Seriously after a while, the sex scenes were just repetitive nonsense.

Macon, Steven's half-brother and technically the real villain (although Fulton gives that role a real shot), is searching for Steven so he can bring Steven back to New Orleans to stand trial for the murder of Dirk (Macon's bastard son) and Mary McCall (Dirk's lover who wanted Steven....it's complicated). Macon uses Emma to get to Steven; they travel back to New Orleans, more family secrets are discovered, Macon repeatedly promises that he will rape Emma over and over again after Steven is hanged for his crimes, Macon actually attempts to rape Emma while the rest of the family is at Steven's trial, Lucy (Macon's wife) mental illness....Old skool romance crazy sauce is HIGH in this book. Being a romance, the true killer is found, Steven is cleared of all charges, Emma has a baby, finds one of her sisters, and Macon takes off for Europe.

Daisy, the African-American cook and house cleaner that works in Chloe's household is the only POC character that is treated with respect. The Fairfax plantation owners treat it's household help as if blacks were still slaves. Emma is the only one to show any respect for the workers. A few black characters are physically described by their hair and size/whiteness of their teeth. The black servants of other households in New Orleans were also given a crappy hand; the one black servant to the McCall family goes home to her husband who is the epitome of black angry man and abuser. And then there is this gem, courtesy of Lucy Fairfax:

"Please tell Miss McCall that Mrs. Macon Fairfax and Mrs. Steven Fairfax have come to pay a visit," Lucy said in a business-like tone that belied her odd ways. "And kindly don't leave us standing out here in the midday sun while you dillydally."

The woman hurried away, and Lucy turned to Emma and confided "You must be firm with people of color. After being told what to do for so long, they can't always be trusted to reason for themselves." (pg. 305)

It was at that moment that the book became intimately acquainted with the wall opposite my reading chair. Reminder: this book was published in 1991.....not 1891. Memo to publishers/authors: before reprinting old romances, revise/update/edit the fuck out some shit that you got away with earlier, for modern readers are going to red flag that shit. Between the racism and the constant verbal rape threats/real sexual assaults by Macon and Fulton on Emma, I started to become sick and couldn't wait for the book to end (I was curious about the killer's identity).

Maybe it's just bad timing reading this book after the IRL events of the last couple of weeks, but the bitterness held by the Southern characters over the Civil War was the last thing that I needed. Not a book I can recommend.

Do you remember that part in Disney's The Jungle Book where Kaa (brought to life by the very mellow, slightly Southern accented voice of Sterling Holloway) hypnotizes Mowgli in order to, well, eat him? That's very much like the reading experience I had while reading An Old Passion by Robyn Donald and, truthfully, like quite a lot of those old skool HPs. Like Kaa, they have their "subtle little ways" and before you know it, I'm humming "trust in me, just in me" just like Kaa.

An Old Passion is my latest adventure in HP Land, and it's the first Robyn Donald book I've read so I really wasn't sure what to expect. I'd heard things, but still there's nothing like first hand experience. It has so many of those not-so-subtle "little ways" that make HPs so fascinating: a particularly virulently violent alpha hero, angsty goodness, childhood friends to lovers, lovers reunited after a separation trope, a secret love affair, tons of jealousy, an unexpected pregnancy (yes, I say that with a straight face) a particularly annoying and pitiful other woman, way too many punitive kisses, several scenes bordering on forced seduction, a hint of a past forced seduction or outright rape, and a heroine who, for reasons unknown and not understandable to me, begins to make excuses and/or rationalizes the hero's emotional/physical abuse about half way through the book. Despite all the Harley cray cray, Robyn Donald is an excellent writer, and for reasons I'm still not completely sure of I kept reading and cackling madly. Mostly. 

The bottom line for these two characters seems to be what happens when two people share an obsessive and destructive love/passion. Because Merrin Mowatt Sinclair and Blase Stanhope have that kind of relationship, one that I'm still not completely convinced will survive long term. My crystal ball is telling me that these two will have a team of lawyers and divorce decree looming at some point on the horizon or a team of lawyers defending one or the other against a first degree murder charge. Or failing that, multiple divorces/remarriages a la Liz Taylor and Richard Burton - constant bickering, making up, bickering again, divorcing, wooing and wedding, repeat and rinse. At any rate, I suspect there will be no matrimonial happy ever after pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

In a nutshell, here's the background: Merrin has been in love with Blase since forever, and despite all the reasons they should not have, they begin a secret affair when she is 17 and he is 23. In Harleyland that's not that bad, nothing to raise the eyebrows to the hair level at all. But Blase is a pseudo "family" member much like an "older brother" to Merrin for much of their shared pasts, a person in authority as her "boss" as well as a "master/servant" relationship in the way she is subservient to him and his aunt. Merrin's position is one that straddles the internal class system at Blackrocks, being neither fish (not a true member of the family) nor fowl (not a true servant/employee) which leaves her vulnerably open to be exploited by someone in position of authority. Anyway, it's the unequal power dynamics that are so troubling. She was the orphan daughter of Blackrocks Station's head shepherd, lived in the same house as "almost" one of the family, and was employed by Blase as his "secretary-cum-housemaid."

Their secret affair gets the kibosh when Blase's cousin, Terry, steals the payroll to buy drugs and frames Merrin for it. He not only stages it so that it appears she gave him the money, but he makes it appear they were lovers. Which makes Blase well, very blaze-y. Merrin tries to tell him that she was watching TV with his aunt, went to her bedroom, discovered Terry putting the key to the safe back in the drawer she kept it. That the kiss he witnessed as well as Terry's damning "Thanks for the money, honey" was all a lie. Unfortunately, Aunt Hope lies to protect her son, Terry, about Merrin being with her, and just like that Blase is the injured party if you can believe it.

What follows is a week in hell for Merrin (beginning with "You little slut!" then seven days of intensely insidious physical and emotional terrorism inflicted on Merrin), an under-cover-of-darkness lucky escape on a bus, an "unexpected" pregnancy, an ill-advised marriage, sexual frigidity, alcoholism, physical violence, a miscarriage, a suicide, and an unhealthy dose of guilt, grief, and overwhelming sadness. I, for one, was glad she ran despite her tragic marriage to Paul Sinclair. After all, how long would Blase have continued with his "sadistic" cruelty and to what lengths it would have escalated doesn't bear thinking about. I do believe he raped her during that week. Phew! And that's all in Chapter 1. *humming* Trust in meeeeee.... Just in meeeee..... I can feel Kaa's coils creeping up, tightening all around me but am powerless to fight.

Following her year of hell, Merrin has been working as an assistant/secretary to a well-known writer, Ellis Kimber, famous for his best-selling thrillers for five years. In that time she has grown in confidence, poise, maturity, and is content, if not happy. Until Ellis announces they will be visiting an old college chum up in the Northlands, the owner of a place called Blackrocks Station, Blase Stanhope. Dun dun duuuuunnn.

One thing about these old Harleys especially the Presents line is that the titles very rarely, if ever, have the word "billionaire" in them and most of the titles are actually, you know, relevant to the characters and the story as well as being lyrical. I love seeing it's relationship to how the romance plays out. An Old Passion follows this tradition very well.

The phrase "an old passion" was taken from a poem by Ernest Dowson, "Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae" ("I am not as I was in the reign of good Cinara" or so Google says.) aka "The Cynara Poem" for philistines like myself. Mr. Dowson borrowed his title from a snippet of Horace's Odes, and the poem also gave birth to the title of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind. But, fiddle-dee-dee, I'll think about that tomorrow. Blase references the poem first, after yet another of his diabolically cruel "private" conversations with Merrin in which he tells her three very important things:

1.  He hates and despises her (yes, "hates" and "despises" are the word he uses.)
2.  She was a fool to return to Blackrocks. Well, duh.
3.  He would give a "a few years of [his] life to (...) indulge this degrading passion" to screw her silly until he is satiated, to "force" her body and brain "to give up every secret, to become nothing more than an instrument of pleasure" to him.

That's some sexy talk right there, isn't it? Rwar! Let me think about this a minute. With all those tenderly passionate inducements and words of love, why, she wouldn't even need Marvin Gaye crooning "Sexual Healing" to get her in the mood. Though another old song "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)" was rolling around in my brain. But it's not sex he wants here, it's control, power, revenge. He wants to reduce her to an object without a mind, without emotions. She would be no more than a blow-up sex doll to be used and discarded. Yeah, like that's a big turn on. And he follows up with a quote from Dowson's poem:

'Never anyone like you,' he said on a sigh, mouth twisted in cynical bitterness. 'Never since, never before. I look at you and like the poet said, I'm desolate and sick of an old passion.'

Oh, she knew how he felt, knew too the quotation, 'I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion,' she whispered, knowing now that for them there could be nothing ahead but the ashes of the dead past.

He smiled, cruel mouth without humour. 'Oh, that, too,' he agreed. 'Like committing adultery, each time a nasty taste in the mouth.' (104)

And as is his usual modus operandi, Blase follows his version of sweet nuthins with a "crushing" kiss, overpowering and controlling her physically - a hand painfully tangled in her hair to hold her still, his other hand manacling her wrists, his body heavy on hers preventing any movement - until she stops protesting. He's very good at using his physical strength against her. I lost count of kisses that bruise, cut, and subdue; of the way he appears to hold her hand but is really purposefully and stealthily crushing her fingers until the tips turn white. He wants and needs to hurt her in all ways. Physical harm alone isn't quite satisfying enough, he has to verbally savage her, flail her with words - demeaning, degrading, dismissive, humiliating words. Just don't get me started on how many times he was lying in wait for Merrin in her bedroom or alone in a car or in a secluded spot at Blackrocks to show her exactly how little he thought of her, always using sex as a weapon.

So. I did not like Blase. At all. What a dick. In fact, if he was on fire, I wouldn't spit on him to put it out. But unbelievably this is where Merrin begins to excuse his behavior, to rationalize, to take the blame upon herself for his bitterness, his hatred, his thirst for revenge. Somehow she, the victim, is to blame. Again. And still those HP coils would not let me go.

Here's just a sampling of Merrin's mixed up thoughts:

He had been hurt, six years ago, wounded in some vulnerable part of him so much that he could still only cope with it by hating the innocent cause. Her return had opened the scar, releasing the poison of years. Perhaps after he had humiliated her enough he would be able to love again.

And yet, if she could see him love again, his wounds healed, she would go out of his life happy with that. She had not intended to hurt him, but perhaps it had been inevitable. He had always been possessive, and where there is jealousy there is pain.

It was Blase's self-esteem which had been shattered by what he believed to be her betrayal, and it had been further shattered when he discovered her marriage. (103)

Later, Merrin invokes Dowson's poem after Ellis reprimands her for not being merciful or compassionate or forgiving of Blase as he thinks she should be, and she rakes herself over the coals for holding out against Blase's onslaught. Let's just allow that to sink in for a minute.

What kind of hunger was this, this unbearable starving need? Strong enough to bind them together after six years, consummated not just once but scores of times over a year, and yet still it was not satisfied. (...) Merrin turned her head into the pillow, remembering the lines:

'I cried for madder music and stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara!'

Perhaps Blase was right. Perhaps they should become lovers once more in the hope of ridding themselves of this degrading passion, for degrading it was. No greater shame could be imagined than to love a man who not only despised her but despised himself for wanting her. (165)

After all this, you might have thought I would have pitched this lovely little piece of misogynistic claptrap and victim shaming/blaming against the wall. But I didn't. It shames me to admit that I kept turning pages faster and faster. Trust in me, just in me... I had to get to the bitter end to see if/how this crazy train was going off the rails or not. I had to get to that happy part of HP Land, if there was going to be one, where all conflicts are resolved, where the future looks, if not bright and happy, at least hopeful, where the dick hero pulls that secret weapon from his hip pocket - THE BIG GROVEL - to convince poor HP heroine that he loves her, wants her, that he's abjectly sorry for putting both of them (but mostly her) through hell. Yeah, I'm still waiting for that to happen. I am not hopeful. I am not convinced he loves her or she him. There was no BIG grovel. At all. But I am finally awake and conscious and free of Kaa's, er, An Old Passion's mesmerizing cray cray and running for the hills.

And what of love and happiness for Blase and Merrin? Well, in the words of an immortal philosopher "What's love got to do with it?" Blase admits that he would have "killed" her if he'd been the one to find her after her when she ran. Thank God for private detectives. How's that love in any form or fashion? I hope Merrin gets the counseling she needs desperately. And Blase? Well, I would love to kick his ass into Tuesday, but maybe Amazon has an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator just like Marvin the Martian's. Zap! 

Leigh Dormet is 25, a secretary/assistant to the CEO and owner of Meredith's (some type of unspecified factory), from a large family (3 younger sisters and a brother) of red heads (except for younger sister, Stella. More on Stella in a bit), engaged to love of her life Bruce Jermyn ("dear, big, clumsy Bruce" who everyone except Leigh sees as a man who needs to "lean on" someone stronger than he is). Bruce popped the question at Ricki's diner in front of the tea urn whereupon Ricki decided to gift the couple with "Ernie" (the tea urn) when they marry. She is the perfect secretary: efficient, calm, cool, impersonal. So much so that to her boss she blends right in with the filing cabinets, desks, and typewriters. I kind of like that Nerina Hilliard was flipping the boss-secretary trope so popular with those early Harlequins by having neither one of these characters think "romantically" of the other at all. In fact, Ruiz notes that Leigh is "no believer in the secretary-boss romance." *wink wink*

Ruiz Diego Palea de Aldoret is 34, said CEO and owner of Meredith's of the unspecified factory, has been estranged from his only family, an elderly but forceful grandfather, in Mexico for 10 years. As a young man he met and decided to marry the love of his life, Mercedes Lastro, "a dancer in a less than third rate cabaret", but grandfather would not hear of a dancer becoming mistress of Carastrona and mother of any future Aldorets so he gave Ruiz an ultimatum: Forfeit the tart or your heritage. He chose Mercedes.

Unfortunately, she valued Ruiz's money and position more than she valued him because when she found out he'd been disinherited, Mercedes danced right out of Ruiz's life while he's out buying flowers for their wedding. Mercedes did a reverse Harlequin equivalent of "Honey, I'm going out to get cigarettes" but then is never heard from again, leaving poor Ruiz heartbroken, wiser, and more cynical. So Ruiz leaves Mexico and travels to his mother's family in England where he inherits Meredith's. To Leigh, Ruiz is not romantic despite his Latin good looks. In fact, she declares there's "more romance in the leg of a chair" than in Ruiz's whole body. Why, he "wouldn't know how to make love to a girl if he tried", and, in fact, to him, women are "useful appendages for holding pencils and such like, to take down letters and attend to other clerical duties of the firm." He is most likely a "woman-hater" and a "walking iceberg." I'm not sure he's a woman-hater, but he definitely had no desire to marry especially after the fiasco with Mercedes.

And then two things happen to shake up the status quo: Stella, Leigh's beautiful younger sister by one year, with her glossy raven hair (the only one in this family of redheads), the acknowledged "beauty of the family" and film star extraordinaire comes home to Korveston Heights for a visit. Stella is pretty close to being a sociopath in my opinion. She cares for no one except herself, she uses her beauty to charm others into doing what she wants them to do, admits to herself that she has no "feelings" for her family (or anyone, really) except for the way they stroke her vanity and ego. Only two characters see Stella for what and who she really is: Kerry, Leigh's best friend, and the large white family dog named Leigh affectionately describes as the League of Nations but answering to "Snooks." Stella seems to have no conscience at all and has a history of taking the things Leigh loves for her own merely to ruin and destroy them once her interest in them has waned. Like the teddy bear (found later with eyes ripped out and stuffing erupting from its belly) or Leigh's beloved doll (minus the head, it's china body smashed). So what does Leigh have now that Stella wants? Bruce, the fiancé. Dear, big, clumsy Bruce. And like Lola, whatever Stella wants, Stella gets.

So Stella throws out her lures, and Bruce is caught in her net very easily. A more appropriate marine/fishing analogy would be Stella the Shark gobbles up Bruce the chum in about five minutes flat. I really admired Leigh for her self-sacrificial nature, but giving up Bruce and breaking her engagement so that her "beloved" sister would be happy bordered on martyrdom, I think. The only thing I enjoyed about this is that I knew Bruce was going to try to stick like glue to Stella so that seemed just desserts for her treachery and betrayal.

The other event is a letter Ruiz receives from his grandfather's attorney, advising him of his grandfather's death and that he has inherited Carastrano, the family estate in Mexico, after all. With one proviso: Ruiz must marry within three months or lose it all. Again. Fate can be so cruel in these Harlequins at times. But Ruiz discovers a loophole. He must marry but nothing in the will says he must stay married. So he concocts a business proposition type of proposal and immediately thinks of Leigh as fitting his requirements of a temporary wife to a T, "cool, so composed she sometimes hardly seemed human."

"...a girl who would be willing to enter into such a cold-blooded arrangement, a girl who was enough like him to have no use or place in her life for romance and who could be counted on to keep sentimentality out of the arrangement for the time they would have to spend together in Mexico." (27)

Ruiz calls her into his office and puts the proposition to her. I found this passage pretty funny as Leigh has no idea the reason he buzzes for her to come into his office. She brings her steno pad and pencils and "automatically took down what he said without actually realizing what it was." Of course, she turns him down, explaining that she's already engaged which floors Ruiz as he was sure she not capable of feeling the finer emotions like love and passion. But after she catches Stella and Bruce together, Ruiz's proposal is an answer to her prayer, a way to let Bruce go so that Stella will not feel guilty. (Oh woman, please! Stella wouldn't know what guilt was if it bit her on her shapely and firm little rump!) So Leigh breaks with Bruce, accepts Ruiz's proposal except she asks him to make it look like a "love match", which is another kind of authorial flip on the boss-secretary romance, with the truth of their union known only to them. Before long, however, their "secret" is not really a secret after all - Leigh ends up spilling the beans to both Kerry and Bruce. Plus, even Tess, Leigh's youngest sister, smells a rat too. Stella, of course, didn't just fall off the turnip truck so her radar is picking up blips like crazy.

I really liked Dark Star quite a lot. I liked that the romance between Leigh and Ruiz was slow and steady, not insta-lust. They really got to know the people behind their respective professional masks and learned they had more in common that at first thought. As they get to know each other, their mutual attraction grows naturally from that point so it felt realistic and one of a longer-lasting nature.

There were parts of Dark Star that reminded me of a few Betty Neels' books. The large rambunctious, loving family (except for Stella), the dog Snooks and the way he exuberantly greets the Dermot family members (except for Stella), Flix the cat and her ginger and white kittens in the kitchen (who wisely ignores Stella), and the village/suburb of Korveston Heights across the river from the more modern "semi-metropolis" Korveston. Nerina Hilliard juxtaposes the sleepy old market town with its more modern counterpart of tall buildings and bustling businesses.

The old town still existed, on the other side of the river - which was still as sleepy and meandering as it had always been - but facing it, with the old and new again in evidence, this time in the shape of the old wooden bridge and the modern steel structure, were the tall buildings of the new town centre, with its luxury flats as well as its office buildings, it's smart shops and large suburbs, with their neat little streets of houses, but on the other side of the river, further out, were the older suburbs, still retaining their rural, tranquil air. Some of them were even like detached, independent little villages, even to the traditional village gossip.

Korveston Heights was one of the latter, regarding modern Korveston somewhat in the light of a precocious child that had sprung up while the mother's back was turned. It was here, on top of one of the highest hills, known throughout the whole of the Heights, that the Dermot house, with is quaint name of Jingletop, was built. It was a friendly house, constructed of weathered grey stone and rambling all over the hill top, as if it had grown rather than been planned, standing in its own somewhat overgrown grounds. (65)

Plus, Ruiz gives Leigh a sapphire engagement ring worthy of any Rich Dutch Doctor engagement ring in a Betty Neels book. The only thing lacking were a few faithful family retainers for the Dermots and a WI meeting at the vicar's house. Since I'm a HUGE Neels fan, this made my romance reader's heart feel like it was coming home.

The foreshadowing of the upheaval Leigh was to face with Bruce and Stella's love affair, when she discovers her sister in her fiancée's arms in a very "compromising" position and the trouble Ruiz and Leigh have to face as a couple before getting to the "and they live happily ever after", though not subtle, was very effective at adding quite a bit of tension and conflict. During Stella's two-week visit, Leigh began to have feelings that something was off between her and Bruce, that something was just not quite right. Until THAT DAY. Dun Dun Duuun!

Then everything changed...everything became different."

The house seemed quiet and still when she arrived home. Julie and her mother had intended to go to a film during the afternoon and had apparently not yet returned. The twins were remaining a little late at school practising for some parade. By the quietness, Stella was also out or she was lying down, or perhaps reading.

Leigh opened the lounge door.(41)

Now, of course, you know what she saw. But still, my heart was sad for Leigh. Sad, that is until she decided she would be magnanimous and self-sacrificing, giving up her true love/teddy bear/favorite doll so that Stella could find happiness. As I said, these are not exactly subtle hints of an upcoming time of turmoil (I experienced a similar reaction to the very circuitous path the damning letter in The Scars Shall Fade took to land in the hands of Andrew Dalwin) but still effective in ratcheting up the tension.

Or like the fortune teller at Teotihuacan Leigh visits while on her honeymoon who tells her ominously that "sadness mists the water", "...there is a dark star in your life, my child, and not until it has set can the sun rise and lasting happiness take its place." Dark star, Stella. Stella, dark star. Well, you see what I mean.

I chuckled a bit at the two conversations Ruiz overhears about himself at Ricki's diner and his consternation at the way Leigh has sold him short. Leigh details quite elaborately how Ruiz does not fit her ideal of a romantic hero, and he is forced to sit and listen to all his deficiencies in the sexy boss department. I laughed a bit reading about the "hooter" that sounds off to signal lunch and quitting time at Merediths. I really loved that both Ruiz and Leigh don't allow Stella's poison to separate them. In fact, they kind of double team her manipulations and schemes. Leigh finally sees Stella clearly and in time to decide to fight for the man she loves. Of course, Ruiz comes to the same conclusion at just about the same time and throws that hussy right out on her keister PDQ when he's presented with proof that she is out to sabotage his relationship with the woman he loves.

I enjoyed Dark Star tremendously. It's a charming book with a fair amount of angst, surprising depth of the characterization (despite the one-dimensional quality of evil other woman, Stella) of the main characters in such a short book, and a really sweet romance. I'm not sure why I had only ever read The Scars Shall Fade by Nerina Hilliard, but I am definitely going to keep my eyes open for used copies of the scant half dozen or so of her other Harlequins that I haven't read.

I'm reading this book for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge ("book published the year you were born" category - yay for 1979). It is horrible and I stopped at chapter four last night because I couldn't take it anymore. This book is so old-skool romance that it is painful to read, but I don't want to read anything else from that year either, so I am sticking with this one. The high-ish lights:

1. Love triangle spotted within first chapter. In this corner, childhood friend Morgan, who is clumsy at all romantic gestures (yes, even getting him trying to get frisky with heroine is cringe worthy) but he loves her so damn much (*cough* obsessive *cough*). In that corner, 32 year old privateer (he sides with the Americans in the Revolution, so he is a good privateer) Frenchman Andre, who knows how to kiss and other stuff because experience. This dumb as a box of rocks heroine, Devon, bumps into Andre by accident at the tender age of 13 and is instantly in love/lust with Andre (who at the time was about 27). At the fourth chapter point (Devon is 18, Morgan is 19, and Andre is 32), I hope they all die of syphilis.

2. All the characters are horrible people. Completely unlikeable. There is no actual villain yet, so just random, ugly on the inside people. Except for the heroine (strawberry blonde goddess ahoy!), who is perfectly perfect in every way.

3. Did I mention the TSTL heroine? She turns 18 and is kissed twice in the same day (see point #1). Of course, Andre's kiss flames the passion inside her, including the tingling sensation in "her hidden place" (oh man, the euphasisms are going to kill me) and make her breasts taut when she touches herself. She is so pure and innocent that she doesn't know what to do with these new feelings and has no women friends to talk to about these feelings. So she quickly dresses and tries to hide her shameful lust.

I hate sex-shaming, especially in romance novels. I don't care if the hero or heroine is a virgin or not, but don't make out sex to be shameful if it is not done within the confines of a partner's (especially male partner) gaze/actions. UGH, UGH, UGH.

I also hate isolated heroes and heroines. Seriously, only one friend and he has to be a potential lover? Not one woman friend in the entire bustling port town of New London to be friends with? I AM NOT BUYING IT.

4. Silver lining - it takes place in a time/location other than Regency England. Considering my usual choices, this is pretty bold choice.

I am probably going to knock out the travel book on Scotland to help break up the pain of reading this book.