Bella's Disgrace (The Balfour Legacy) (MB Continuities) [Paperback]

absolutley amazing!

i love this series :) love hero and heroin... really good plot...doesnt have a weak, annoying female lead. shes spunky and witty. hero in the begining is immediately attracted to her but think shes stupid for what she does. He teaches her that she cant get her own way all the time, but after a while she does get her way... ;p

Im biased though as i love all of sarah morgans books!

Sarah Morgan has yet again provided this reader with a most magnificent read. In fact I personally enjoyed it so much, I read it twice!

Bella Balfour intrigued me as she hid so many hurts. As we've learnerd in previous The Balfour Legacy series, their father Oscar holds a charity ball every year and it seems each one has some sort of press coverage of a new family scandal. Behind the scenes, Bella who is known for her beauty and being a party girl and her Olivia were locked in a battle over a shocking discovery and it was revealed concerning their sister Zoe. So their father like he has done in the past sent Bella away to a quite retreat in the desert to think about her behavior and how she could turn her life around.

Feisty Bella had noticed the stables across from the retreat and slipped away. She found a lovely mare and as she in her youth was an experienced horsewoman, she decided to take the mare to go into the city because she was going crazy at the retreat with no cell phone, internet, etc. Once there she would leave the mare. However, she got lost and thought she would die in desert alone.

Sheikh Zafiq was an amazing man and head of his country, Al-Rafid. He was a strong and proud ruler, loved his country and his journey once a year to find peace and meditation. He was devoted to his siblings and had raised them He at times, felt the burden of raising them plus the burden of his country so he was looking forward to his five days alone in the desert, with no one, not even his guards. You can well imagine when he found his prize mare and a beautiful young Bella lost, dehydrated and sunburned in the desert, he was furious.

Bella and Zafiq's time in the desert began on a extremely rocky note and then after he nursed her back to health, the sparing began and then the sexual tension. They have five days to get to know each other and their time and romancing you absolutely will not want to miss. Their attraction was as intense as the hot desert sun and Bella fell in love. Zafiq, well let's just say duty came first. He was determined not to be like his father and be weak and fall in love with a beautiful, spoilt and pampered woman. Bella shared with him so much of her life in England and her family and he knew he was duty bound to his country to find respectable wife and mother for his heir so he needed to say goodbye upon their return to Al-Rafid and send her home to England.

Bella didn't want to go home because she felt two things; 1) her sisters were still angry with her and 2) every time her father looked at her she reminded him of her mother's betrayal.

She also new the mare she had stolen, his prized mare was the prize in an upcoming race. Zafiq's marvelous horse favored to win. However, if he did not, then the sheikh stood to loose his mare. She begged him to stay and promised if he gave her a chance, she would work in his stables, anything not to have to go home and face her family. I so admired how Bella handled herself with the grooms and horses. How hard and long she worked and because of her love for this proud man she was willing to sacrifice her safety. It was brilliantly written and so many lessons for all reading Bella's Disgrace.

Oscar Balfour had many family rules and I think Bella learned a few under the desert sun which were dignity, courage, loyalty and commitment traits any man could love. However, she most importantly learned about sacrifice because that was what she was willing to do for the man she loved even if it meant sacrificing herself or injury.

I must have been reading a different book to the other reviewers.

I was so impressed by Sarah Morgan's Tortured Rake: Bad Blood, and enthralled by her writing and clever characterisation. In Tortured Rake, she created wonderful multi-faceted characters, believable chemistry and laugh out loud humour, so much so that I struggled to put that book down (highly recommended - go buy it). I purchased Bella's Disgrace expecting more of the same but I was sadly disappointed.

The heroine - her spoilt corny wise-cracking speech was reminiscent of an immature teenager and sometimes so pathetic that I struggled to feel anything for her but intense irritation. The hero was wooden, unattractive, Mr Chauvinist. Full stop. And I can understand the two beginning the story as such, but I didn't see the slow mellowing of each character, the slow burn of chemistry heightening the tension between them, the changing of their ways, and other than sex, they actually had zero chemistry. In short, I didn't BELIEVE the romance, or understand why they had to be together. Other than liking having sex together (and even that wasn't that good), they didn't like anything about each other at all.

Sorry, I wanted to love this, was really excited to find a new author to enjoy, but it failed on lots of counts.