Review: A very unsympathetic heroine
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 10, 2012
I had a major problem with this book - I found the heroine's behavior despicable.  Laura's villainous father wants money, and he enlists Laura's help to extort it from wealthy, kind,  and handsome Jake.  Laura has been in love with Jake from afar, and this, unfortunately, does not give her any incentive to refuse to go along with her father's plot. Her father drugs Jake and puts him naked in his (Jake's) bed, alongside a naked Laura.(No spoilers - the events in the following paragraph occur in the first few pages.)When Jake wakes up, he assumes he's taken Laura's virginity, and despite a chance to come clean, she stays quiet. The second step of the conspiracy has Laura's father bursting into the room ordering Jake to marry his "ruined" daughter or be hanged for "rape."  With those two wonderful options, Jake decides to immediately marry Laura.  And still, she does not speak up.I understand she was afraid of her father, but that does not give her license to ruin an innocent person's life. When Jake expresses some minor irritation at having been forced into marriage, Laura has the nerve to feel offended.  My opinion of Laura was sealed in these initial pages, despite knowing, as a romance novel reader, how it would end.Much of the remainder of the book shows various ways that Laura tries to prove she is not after Jake's money (e.g. continuing to work at her job.) I guess this was an attempt to make her sympathetic, but it was too late for this reader.