It was a book with a lot of potential, but it failed to satisfy the romance reader in me.

The plot seemed so contrived that I could not get past it, I’m afraid. Ah, yes, virtuous widows from the country often travel to London with members of the demimonde and then dress up as whores to cavort in brothels in order to entrap their gentleman employers for a night (or two!) of illicit passion. And, of course, the duke-ish employer *never* recognizes that the unfamiliar lady of the evening is his own employee/object of lustful obsession since she is wearing a remarkably effective mask throughout their sessions of hot sex. Yeah, that is really likely….. And yes, penniless virtuous widows from tiny villages often throw their reputations away with both hands and seemingly think nothing of it.

One of the only things that I really liked about the story was the unconventional appearance of the hero and heroine (neither being particularly good-looking at first glance.) But then the relentless mental lusting began, and the highly improbable plot contrivances started to pile up, and I (too) was left behind as the fan bus left the station.

I actually don’t recall the hot sex scenes in this book, but that is probably more a function of my jaded romance reader palate than the author’s skill, since I find myself skimming these sections frequently these days.

The Serpent Prince is also getting “Ooohh-la-la!” reviews, but I would be very interested in the opinion of someone else who was underwhelmed by The Raven Prince. Please write a review if you do read it, Janine.

I agree with you that many men do this, but it is not something we see a lot of in romances, probably because it is not romantic.

Sure it is that was Brokeback Mountain.

LOL! That is exactly what I was thinking about when I typed up that response to you. Dichotomy of male sexuality as romance. I just figured it was just me being way too gay again though. And it did have a tragic ending so…

Reviews like this are one of the reasons I come back to this site, day after day. I love that one of you can post that a book’s the “next best thing to sliced bread� while the next can say “Are you kidding me?!�

When I first started reviewing here, I felt I should try to review only books that hadn’t been reviewed before. But Jane quickly got that notion out of my head. She said that Dear Author’s readers love it when a book is reviewed by more than one of the reviewers. With that in mind, I’ve often reviewed books that Jane or Jayne (or in this case, both) or Janet has reviewed in the past. That’s not to say that I make it a point to do that, but I just read and review the books I’m interested in trying, whether or not they’ve already been reviewed.

Mary — I have also had that feeling of “Is something wrong with me?” when everyone else loves a book and I don’t. One of the surprising things to me about this review is that I was expecting some readers to say that I couldn’t be more wrong, but so far, they haven’t, and some people have said that their response to the book was similar to mine. It shows, I think, that no book (except perhaps the Bible) can be universally loved, and that even when we disagree with the majority, we aren’t alone.

Jayne – Looking forward to your chat review of The Serpent Prince!

Well I have not read this particular book, but my opinion is that men do compartmentalize sex and emotion, they are the gurus of the casual sex act. This is not just a historical thing that men did, it is something they do today. They have sex for personal enjoyment (sometimes not surprisingly bisexual) and they have sex based on expectations of others (wife and kids), much like a murder mystery with opportunity and justification.

I agree with you that many men do this, but it is not something we see a lot of in romances, probably because it is not romantic.

I believe when the author goes there with the male character they can not just rely on “boys will be boys�

A lot of books do rely on “boys will be boys” though. There is a common fantasy that runs through a lot of romances of reforming a rake, snagging the guy who lots of other women want, or who has been with a lot of women. It’s almost like relying on those other women’s judgement as a gauge that yes, this guy is desirable, this guy is worth choosing.

they have got to be very careful what the guy is thinking sexually, what are the motivations that might lead to him seeking sex with someone else and set the boundaries

I think Hoyt did give that some thought, and did show that Edward was constantly thinking of Anna even though he did not want to be. The book probably wasn’t as realistic about the brothel-going as it could have been, though.

As I said in the body of the review, one of the problems I had with the book is that I felt there was a lot of lust between Edward and Anna, but I didn’t see a lot of deep love. But clearly a lot of readers disagree with my opinion.

I think there would probably be some disagreement about whether or not going to a brothel undermines the hero. I’m sure there are readers who feel that way but the popularity of books with brothel scenes shows that there are many who don’t . In my case, it didn’t stand out as one of the things that most bothered me about the book.

Would any of those reasons really help the heroine’s plight if she made sure he had sex with her magic hoo-hoo in the brothel? Maybe she is reinforcing his use of this brothel later in the relationship when she is not wanting the sex or something. If it is just for the purpose of replacement sex then I think you could be undermining the hero on the way to the HEA. Unless you find some way to sell it outside of the sex.

LOL. I don’t disagree with you. But I think there are many readers (and I am sometimes one of them) who are willing to give heroes a free pass on casual sex. In my opinion it’s partly that we’ve read so many books where the rake reforms that many of us have accepted it as a kind of romancelandia truth, and partly that some of the hotter books in the genre are about sex as well as love, and we are sometimes willing to excuse some things if it results in a hot scene.

I read this book after the initial bruhaha, and while I didn’t hate it, it didn’t “wow” me either. It was…okay. Interesting in that it wasn’t about the ton, which was a big plus for me. But I wasn’t all that comfortable with the woman secreting herself away to be his secret whore, either.

On the other hand, I very recently finished The Leopard Prince and I really enjoyed most of it (the Big Misunderstanding ending was annoying, and what criminal would really just happen to take his well-known carvings along with him?!) – much more so that Raven. I’ll definitely be watching for her third book, despite her books’ flaws.