Review: Wonderful read
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 30, 2013
THE BARBARIAN is a delightful, sexual retelling of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. I love the humor, sensuality and unique leads.  Any historical romance reader should read this.Lady Amias is bad tempered and tired of being a pawn to witless men.  Now she's off to the castle of her fifth and hopefully final fiancé, Stryker, but with low expectations.  Upon meeting the uncivilized Stryker, Amias is worried she'll be sent back to her abusive uncle so she strikes a deal with Stryker: her dowry for him being tolerable to her.  But Stryker and Amias are incapable of keeping their relationship strictly business.This is a delightfully witty retelling of Taming of the Shrew.  Amias is blunt, angry, foul-mouthed and strong.  She's a unique romance heroine but even more unique in a medieval historical and I loved her for this.  I suspect some readers will nitpick that Amias is too modern in her independence but I found her character pure fun.  Stryker is a good character in that he starts off clueless how to be kind or tender and stumbles his way into love with Amias.  I love both these strong, opinionated characters attempting to form a connection together when they're both trying to protect themselves and figure out how they feel.  The sexual intimacy mirrors their emotional romance and is steamy and heartfelt.  The romance forms the plot of the novel and had me invested from the moment Amias first appears.I do have to mention a modern day beginning and ending that doesn't really fit the rest of the story and I'm not sure of the point.  However, I acknowledge that this is book six in a series and I haven't read the previous five so maybe this modern day storyline makes more sense in the series context.THE BARBARIAN is a wonderful read with a spicy and emotional romance and plenty of humor to make it all pure fun.Reviewed by J9for TheRomanceReviews.com