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FORMAT: Book
TITLE: The Bargain
AUTHOR: Julia Templeton
Yes, this is a trashy romance novel.
01. Crappiest tagline ever.
02. The actual plot of this sounded really interesting. Renaud de Wulf captures the fortress Aleysia and her brother Adelstan have been defending against the Norman forces. According to his king, Renaud has to kill Adelstan (as the leader of the rebel movement), but Aleysia bargains with him and eventually exchanges her body for Adelstan's life.
Now, this could turn out to be a very good read. The author could have dealt with the psychological effects upon Aleysia that would result in being forced to share a bed with her enemy. She could have given us a lot of information about Adelstan and how he had come to be the leader of the rebel movement. And she could have kept the characters' minds off of sex for more than forty seconds.
But alas, this is a romance novel, and there is no time for silly things such as plot development.
03. Instead, what Templeton does is decide that Aleysia is going to become a sex goddess her first time sleeping with Renaud (and she's a virgin). Now, I've never been in this position myself, but if I had been forced to hand my body over to someone who had conquered and killed my people in exchange for my brother's life, somehow I don't think I would have been that eager to have sex with him.
Just a thought, though.
04. To her credit, Templeton does try to bring some semblance of plot into this, but that "plot" consists of Renaud arguing with various lords over Aleysia and a side story about his second-in-command's love for his sister. They're pretty shabby excuses, especially since you know they're just filler until you get to the sex.
05. There are way too many sex scenes in this. After the fourth one, I actually started to get bored with them. They were all the same, and soon I was just flipping through them, trying to find the point in the story where there was a plot. It was an unsuccessful search, obviously, but finally Renaud decides to hand Adelstan over to his king (which means certain death for him).
Cue the angst.
06. We are then treated to several pages of each of them whining, and Aleysia finally tries to rescue her brother. But no matter how furious she is with Renaud, we know she's going to be having wild, hot, and sweaty sex with him in a couple of pages, because it really is that predictable. To be quite honest, I was expecting at least some attempt at having the two being forced to salvage their relationship, but clearly I forgot that this was a romance novel.
07. The ending of this sucked. It was done way too quickly and easily. Basically, Adelstan goes and swears loyalty to Renaud's king, and the out of the goodness of his heart the king is like, "Oh, Renaud, if you really love her, that's okay," and they marry. But why waste time worrying about a conceivable ending, when you can cram a seventh sex scene into the book?
08. Basically, I'm giving this one star even though the plot deserves three, because there was absolutely no character development and the ending was so bad.
TITLE: The Bargain
AUTHOR: Julia Templeton
Yes, this is a trashy romance novel.
01. Crappiest tagline ever.
02. The actual plot of this sounded really interesting. Renaud de Wulf captures the fortress Aleysia and her brother Adelstan have been defending against the Norman forces. According to his king, Renaud has to kill Adelstan (as the leader of the rebel movement), but Aleysia bargains with him and eventually exchanges her body for Adelstan's life.
Now, this could turn out to be a very good read. The author could have dealt with the psychological effects upon Aleysia that would result in being forced to share a bed with her enemy. She could have given us a lot of information about Adelstan and how he had come to be the leader of the rebel movement. And she could have kept the characters' minds off of sex for more than forty seconds.
But alas, this is a romance novel, and there is no time for silly things such as plot development.
03. Instead, what Templeton does is decide that Aleysia is going to become a sex goddess her first time sleeping with Renaud (and she's a virgin). Now, I've never been in this position myself, but if I had been forced to hand my body over to someone who had conquered and killed my people in exchange for my brother's life, somehow I don't think I would have been that eager to have sex with him.
Just a thought, though.
04. To her credit, Templeton does try to bring some semblance of plot into this, but that "plot" consists of Renaud arguing with various lords over Aleysia and a side story about his second-in-command's love for his sister. They're pretty shabby excuses, especially since you know they're just filler until you get to the sex.
05. There are way too many sex scenes in this. After the fourth one, I actually started to get bored with them. They were all the same, and soon I was just flipping through them, trying to find the point in the story where there was a plot. It was an unsuccessful search, obviously, but finally Renaud decides to hand Adelstan over to his king (which means certain death for him).
Cue the angst.
06. We are then treated to several pages of each of them whining, and Aleysia finally tries to rescue her brother. But no matter how furious she is with Renaud, we know she's going to be having wild, hot, and sweaty sex with him in a couple of pages, because it really is that predictable. To be quite honest, I was expecting at least some attempt at having the two being forced to salvage their relationship, but clearly I forgot that this was a romance novel.
07. The ending of this sucked. It was done way too quickly and easily. Basically, Adelstan goes and swears loyalty to Renaud's king, and the out of the goodness of his heart the king is like, "Oh, Renaud, if you really love her, that's okay," and they marry. But why waste time worrying about a conceivable ending, when you can cram a seventh sex scene into the book?
08. Basically, I'm giving this one star even though the plot deserves three, because there was absolutely no character development and the ending was so bad.
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I'm slightly addicted to romance novels. >.>
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Goddess of the Sea
Goddess of the rose
Goddess of Spring <--all by PC Cast. They are seriously my favorite romance books of all-time. :)