The Italian Duke's Virgin Mistress (Mills & Boon Modern) [Paperback]

I have tried to read the book....at least 3 times. In about 3 chapters, I think the characters say maybe (just maybe!) about a paragraph to each other. The author repeats herself many times over with his 'past' and the heroine seems to think the same thoughts over and over and over and over...with a few word changes of course. I had to skip past all the parts that were repeated in the book, but by the middle of it I just lost interest. I like Penny Jordan's books for the most part. This book just seemed to be an old plot, with a lot of BS thrown in to cover the pages. I don't recommend it. Sorry Penny!

Lately I've been on a Harlequin Presents binge for no apparent reason other than the desire to read stories that are overly dramatic, passion filled, and jet setting. No I'm not being sarcastic, it's really my reason.

However, after picking up this book by Penny Jordan from the library, I was reminded why romance books carry such a bad reputation - it's because of truly awful offerings like this by authors who are "bestselling".

The story is simple enough and follows the Harlequin Presents norm: poor girl meets rich guy who takes her away to live a life of luxury for a short amount of time, romances her, then dumps her for no apparent reason other than he can, shortly thereafter realizing he loves her and she takes him back. The first half of the book follows this predictable plot line, providing nothing truly unique other than the chance for the reader to escape into fantasy land. However, it's after the requisite bedding and dumping of the heroine by the hero that this story takes a strange turn into crazy land.

Once the hero finds out the heroine is pregnant, he acts as if it's her fault and treats her like she's a gold digger looking to catch herself a rich man. PJordan, of course, let's readers know later on that that wasn't the "real" reason why he treated the heroine so shabbily. His reason is that there was an ancestor of his many centuries ago (it's not stated explicitly, but PJordan made it sound like medieval period or even earlier) on his mother's side of the family tree who was a cruel, sadistic tyrant who conquered and cold bloodily killed all of the men from a competing family before raping the only daughter, impregnating her, and marrying her off to one of his sons. Oh yes, this ancestor also was killed not long after by his own sons who then in turn got killed themselves due to in-fighting so that the result was the only remaining survivor of all this was the girl who was raped. She went on to birth the child, eventually resulting in the present hero's existence. However, through the centuries some of his ancestors have been known to literally be crazy or sadistic, and the hero believes it's a direct result of having "tainted" blood from the original pillaging and raping ancestor. He's afraid of his tainted blood because he possibly could turn out to be crazy or sadistic and doesn't want to pass it on to any children, thus the whole freaking out about the pregnancy thing. And no, my vocabulary does not consist only of the word "sadistic", it's what is repeatedly used by the author.

If you thought that was a little far fetched, just wait, there's more to this freak fest of a story. Once the hero shares all of this with the heroine, she says "You're not a sadist" and then stays with him for the sake of her child and because she loves him. One day put-zing around she discovers a letter written to the hero by his mother before she died (but somehow the hero never received it). In it his mother reveals that he is the product of a surrogate pregnancy in which the egg used was not his mother's but rather that of a close family friend, and she makes it a point to write that even though her blood is "tainted", the hero's is not because she essentially made sure of it through the use of a surrogate. The heroine shares the letter with the hero, he basically says "Yes! I've got no crazies in my blood" and they get married, eagerly await their child, and lived happily ever after.

I don't expect much from Harlequin stories; in my experience they're either really good or truly bad. In this case Penny Jordan has brought Harlequin books and the romance genre down to a new level of bad with this non-comical farce of a story in which the author seems to have interpreted "poetic license" as using any random scenario she could come up with to fill in the pages as long as she was able to conclude the story. Truly a terrible book that has nothing to recommend it other than it was written by PJordan. Luckily I have read other books by PJordan that are actually ok so I won't be tossing her to my discard pile, however first time readers may not be so fortunate.

I enjoyed the first book in this series and, because I really like Penny Jordan's work, was looking forward to the second. Unfortunately, it all felt way too familiar ... and in not a good way. It seemed as though the first book was well thought out, and this one just kind of fell along a template that didn't seem to fit the characters and their actions toward one another. I thought there was great potential -- and had been really anticipating the story when I'd read a preview of the opening -- but it didn't deliver.

Spoiler Alert: For instance, Raphael's family history was important, and I understand why it played such a strong line in the book: Believe it or not, a lot of people go through that kind of conflict in determining whether to have a family. It was compelling and would have been a great conflict... if I'd ever gotten the sense that he and Charlotte/Charley were actually meant to have a relationship that required the depth of having such a discussion. And, his ultimatum to her when they did fall into bed together would have stopped ANY woman in her tracks to demand an explanation. I don't care how carried away you might be in the heat of the moment, some things would make you stop short, so to speak. It had the potential to be a wholly unique and very compelling plot, but it got lost with all of Charley's hang-ups. There was just too much going on, so much back-story for the author to reveal, the characters themselves really didn't spend that much time together. Certainly not enough to build a romance.

I think this may be a case in which there were too many themes (both familiar and a few new ones) that were under way in this book, and they couldn't be brought to fruition in such a short space.

But there was much potential. The premise of an historic garden renovation was a great opportunity to bring them together, but it fell to the wayside. The idea of the heroine grappling with her insecurities over appearance and confidence are well, well, well trodden in Harlequin Presents. However, having her in charge of such an elegant project, that theme could have seemed fresher, a new way of allowing a woman to reveal the real, inner self while she transforms this ancient garden with the help/inspiration of the hero. Again, though, it seemed Ms. Jordan couldn't decide how dominant a line that was going to take: Was this woman going to be the tomboy Charley, as everyone called her, or the elegant Charlotte that Raphael called her in his mind?

I'm still looking forward to the third story, though.