Review: Well-written historical romance, steamy erotic scenes
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 9, 2012
I started on Out of Her League by Ava Archer Payne afterSecret Diary: A Forbidden Liaisons Erotic Romanceby Sandra Ross, and two other books. You can probably guess why they're both on the same category on my list. Katherine Riley is a smart and feisty character drowning in the miserable life she'd been left with after her parents died and her brothers, who'd never learned to face the consequences of their actions, squandered the money that they had. James Lancaster is a man of action, wit and candor who'd survived Crimea only to live with the possibility of never being able to walk again. These were the state of their being when they met each other. Katherine knew James was the man she would dream to fall in love with, but knew she would never be worthy of the station of being his wife. While James saw in Katherine the spark of life that could always attract a man like him. This combination plus the severity of sexual tension could of course only lead to the kind of illicit affair that they enjoyed. They were each other's sanctuary from the imprisonment of their spirits. The need to be released and to be each others release made their sex scenes explosive and involuntary, which is how falling in love is described by effective romance books. James and Katherine fell hard for each other, and so I love the book for being so convincing of that  in the end through how they both found the strength from each other to fight for their release from their chains (the despicable ones) in order to pursue a life with each other. Katherine's sexual awakening and her subsequent standing up for herself is empowering while James' finding out in the end that the will of a man is not diminished by his physical injuries are what made this book deserving of the five stars. A few technical errors but not distracting. Highly recommended as a rich erotic historical, even for the choosy reader.