Review: Not bad - but a little too muh going on...
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 7, 2013
This wasn't a bad read.  The story was lovely - if slightly unrealistic.  I enjoyed the madonna / whore complex - of the husband not knowing to do with his lady wife - a paragon of virtue and innocence...  Unfortunately the author does not write sex very well.  It really wasn't steamy or sexy at all.  I don't mind dirty talk or calling things by their rightful names, and I am all for graphical sex-scenes, but these just didn't really work for me...Then we have the heroine, who apparently has spent her life reading etiquette books and being a good girl.  Except that later on, she was a hoyden all through childhood?  She doesn't really add up.  It's as if the author really wasn't quite sure where to go with her.Also, there was just too much going on: the hero's struggle to fit into his two different worlds, the snubbs he is given in society, the fact that he doesn't feel worthy of his lady wife and that he grew up orphaned in the slums - being sexually abused by his employer, that he desperately bungled the wedding night and the fact that his wife dresses up as a whore and follows him to a brothel to have sex with him... oh, and the strange hints that the heroines friend is a lesbian - although this is in no way resolved - so I am guessing, she will crop up in another story?Did we really need the blackmail / theft / police story too?  wasn't the above enough?  I for one, feel sorry that the author felt the need to add this extra plot to the story.  This could have been a wonderful angst-driven character story .  We didn't need the criminal suspense too.  Would much have rather have seen the two trying to settle their marriage without this foolishness on the side...And lastly it also felt slightly unrealistic, that this man - having been subjected to continuos sexual abuse in his childhood / early teens - did not have ANY sexual hang ups what so ever?All in all, an ok read - but I don't think I will be rushing out to buy the sequel.