[.uk] To Burn (ISBN 0843949856)

Still not impressed:
I've only read Claudia Dain's "The Temptation", so I thought I'd give this book a try. "The Temptation" was pretty awful (see my review), and, well, after reading this book, I'm still not impressed. The main problem with this book is the looooong inner monologues that go on in the heroine's head. Someone will ask her a question, and there will be a page and a half of her thoughts before she can get out a simple yes or no, for Pete's sake. I like to know what a character is thinking -- indeed, it adds to a book to know that characters ARE thinking -- but not to the point of annoyance. And by about 1/2 through this book, with this inner monologue constantly going on, I was becoming very annoyed. Also, the romance between the hero and heroine is just not very compelling. Admittedly, I don't know much about post-Roman Britain, but I felt that using that setting for this romance was not well thought out. Cannot recommend this book, but still hope to find a book by this author that is better than the two I've read so far.

Warm, but deffinately not burning:
In my opinion this was a decent novel, as far as romance novels go. However, there were a number of holes in the plot that were never addressed. One being the death of Melania's father. Just because it was not Wulfred himself that killed him makes it acceptable?? Was he not the commander? Were people not killed on his orders? He had Melania laying next to her father's mutulated body for some type of perverse visual effect, but she still falls in love with him? Second, Melania constantly tries to kill herself to avoid torture and abuse, but Wulfred never really did anything to her! He stopped her from working, made sure she had good food & rest, no one touched her and then he married her, for crying out loud! For all his talk of making her suffer and such, how does that make sense? And finally where is the dialogue in this book? Most of conversation took place in their heads. I would probably pick up another book by this author, but "To Burn" was just warm at best.

Abysmal:
This book is really abysmal. We get no clear sense of either culture, Roman or Saxon. It is not Medieval, but the Dark ages, and very dark they are too in this book. The two of them snarl like a couple of wolves in heat. There is no sense of genuine commitment or love and the sex is pretty uninteresting. The book is littered with semi-colons I found myself counting them per page, 4 on average at the start of the book. Her heroic struggle: to commit suicide by starving herself or working herself to death? She just ends up seeming like a selfish, short-sighted twit. His heroic struggle? None so far as I can see. Abusing one Roman woman to get even for being made a galley slave is just too trite for words. Not to mention vindictive and foolish. This author really needs to have her very bad habits squashed out of her. The worst offence being that she is still writing bodice ripper style books which could have been done in the 70s or 80s, certainly I can't think why they are getting published in the 2000s. There is little of interest here for the modern, clued-in sensual young woman reader. Non-consensual sex scenes offend me.

Burned Out:
This book wore-me-out, I thought reading was suppose to be fun and relaxing. My first complaint was that the book was too long and secondly the bickering went on continuously. I was mentally drain by the time I finished this novel. There was so much more that could have been done with this book.

All I liked about this book was the cover:
Apart from that, there is not much to recommend it. The heroine is supposed to be smart, brave etc, but I found her simply stupid, rude, childish, simply awful! All the time the heroes are fighting. She always called him horrible things, oaf (oh, but he took is as an endearment!), coward (no man in that time would take it easily!), and I don't know what else. It was just... Whatever. And she was supposed to 'love' him. Yeah rihgt. Love him and treat him like dirt. And he allowed her. Did he have no spine?? I don't know what he saw in her. She might be beautiful, but it just wouldn't be enough with a character like that. And the 'ordeal' in the end of the story was just plain stupid. His wound healed in four days? Yeah, right. And in the last pages of the book they speak about adultery. Yeah, that's real love folks! If you have to read this book, just borrow it from a library. It is just to bad to spend any money on it.