great if you like feeling pity for your heroine
I agree with the reviewer that left the five star rating: the plot of this book is very well-worked out, very intricate.

And I thought that the character development was excellent, too. There were a lot of people in this novel, but it was never hard to tell them apart; Joyce manages to bring her characters to life quickly and vividly.

I, personally, just can't stand romances where the heroine is being abused for so much of the novel. So when the heroine, Olivia, was scared, insulted, humiliated, threatened, or beaten on every other page - the book just started to seem like a burden to me.

The hero has the same problem to a lesser extent; he is unfailingly wonderful to he heroine, but he is more or less constantly being insulted, threatened, or humiliated.

I really felt like all the fun and excitement of the romance itself was utterly crushed by the haze of self-sacrifice, embarassment, and hurt that the main characters lived in. And, really, what starts out bad just gets worse, and worse, and worse.

There's a good chance I'll pick up another Brenda Joyce - there's obvious talent here - but I found this one painful more than anything else.

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