Review: I just loved it!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 29, 2013
Beguiled is good. Very good. I had certainly liked the characters and storyline Joanna Chambers had defined in Provoked. In the second book, the evolution of the characters changes them from charming into unforgettable.The story takes place two years after the events in Provoked. David and Balfour haven’t seen each other since the night they parted, when they quarreled violently. The last thing that David, grave and hard-working as always, expects is to meet Balfour when he goes his tailor. Just one glance brings back all the memories of their past together, and shows him that he is by no means immune to the roguish lord sex-appeal. When Balfour proposes spending time together, David first reaction is to avoid it, but fate seems to take him to Balfour’s house, and passion ignites again. Things get messy when people from the past, Euan and Elisabeth, come back to David’s life. Euan is now a dangerous radical, and Elisabeth has made a big mistake and married the wrong man… David’s need to help his friends endangers him and his new relationship with Balfour.I just love Murdo and David in this book. They have grown. They gave changed. David was a tormented character, in conflict with his sexuality and the guilt if provoked on him. His brief relationship with Balfour two years before made him suffer a lot. But it also made him open his eyes and see that a relationship between two men could be different. It could be sweet and intimate. It could be about sharing and receiving. As he himself puts it “There was no going back from something like that…the memory of it had tormented him. Yet it had fortified him too somehow. Sometimes he hated that he’d done it, and other times, it felt like the only sane thing he’d ever done in all his life”. When he finds himself in Murdo’s arms again, he realizes how much he had missed the intimacy they had shared: “It had been two years. It felt like forever. It felt like no time at all”. As for Balfour, he has changed from the arrogant and remorseless hedonist of the first book to a caring and interested lover. He turns from Balfour into Murdo. He also regrets how they parted in the past and desperately wants a second chance with David. He misses what the found in David, and he is not willing to let him go this time. At the end, he proves himself a real friend for David.The book is full of raw emotions. Both Murdo and David are intense and their feelings are powerful. I just can’t wait to find out what is going to happen now. The last book of the trilogy, Enlightened, is due to May… It just seems so far away!!!