This had to be the strangest romance novel I ever read, and I've read quite a few. I had, however, never read anything by Claudia Dain; I liked the look of the cover art, & the plot blurb on the back cover sounded intriguing...stupid me! Don't buy a book by its cover!! It's not that it's so badly written, but with the heroine having her period throughout the whole book (just about)...what a plot device! There's the hero's impatience to consummate the marriage, and then when her father reveals his true nature...in somewhat graphic detail...Ewww! My one-star is for a moving passage about 10 pages from the end of the book, when the heroine questions why God didn't save her from her father's attentions, and the hero responds about Christ having suffered horribly, why should his servants suffer less? I've just messed up the quote, but I think that's what the author wanted to convey all along but she couldn't get that across until the end (maybe). Anyway the rest of this book was really kind of gross. Avoid at all costs.
