To Pleasure a Prince by Sabrina Jeffries
Rating: 3
Genre: Historical Romance
Page Count: 362
Year Published: 2005
BackCover Description: Beautiful Lady Regina Tremaine has turned down so many suitors that she's called La Belle Dame Sans Merci. The truth: she won't marry because she carries a dark secret. She sees no good reason, however, why her brother shouldn't court the lovely Louisa North- even if the girl's brother, the notorious "Dragon Viscount," objects.
Marcus North, Viscount Draker- bastard son of the Prince of Wales- is rumored to be a monster who holds women captive in his dark castle to have his way with them. He has been exiled from polite society for years. But when Lady Regina makes a plea on her brother's behalf, Marcus proposes an outrageous deal: her brother can court Louisa so long as Marcus can court Regina.
Review:
The Good: Yes the plot’s been done before, but I still liked it. Marcus and Regina’s relationship was good. It had a lot of beauty and the beast elements. Marcus has a scar marring his face and has stowed himself away in his country mansion, because society was mean to him as a child. Regina is the beauty who ventures into Marcus’s lair and drags him out into society where he snarls at pretty much anyone who tries to talk to him. I also liked Regina’s comparisons to Marcus being a lumbering dragon.
The Bad: To Pleasure a Prince has way too many misunderstandings for my tastes. At the beginning there were so many bargains and bets floating around with all the characters having different motives for making the bets, bargains, and secrets going on that it got a little confusing and all it was doing was setting Regina and Marcus down a path riddled with misunderstandings that of course got blown out of proportion. Also, Regina’s dark secret wasn’t all that dark. From the back cover I was expecting that she had a dead body walled up in her basement or something. Not that she was dyslexic and couldn’t read. That wasn’t a spoiler seeing as you find out her secret before page 30.
The Characters: Regina has turned down twelve wedding proposals because she fears that society will shun her if they ever find out that she can’t read. She’s armed herself with her cousin who follows her everywhere and helps Regina keep her secret. I liked Regina’s character primarily because she wasn’t the one in the relationship that blew things out of proportion.
Marcus lives life vicariously through all his books at his mansion. He agreed to let his sister remain out in society and date (court, whatever) Regina’s brother on the condition that Regina allow Marcus to court her for a month. Marcus had a major bastard attack towards the ending of this book. He of course redeemed himself a little at the ending, but I still would’ve knocked his lights out for what he said. Other than that he was probably the more interesting character out of the couple.
The side characters weren’t all the exciting. Marcus came out into society so he could watch Louisa closer and yet she was barely in the book. Just brief mentions of her and she had a few lines. Regina’s cousin was there too but she just mostly gave Regina looks from time to time and had less speaking parts than Louisa.
The Series: I’m still unsure on whether or not I want to continue this series.
The Cover: Not really. Its put together pretty good, but woman standing in a night gown in front of some doors with the sheer curtains blowing is pretty cliché and boring.
The Author: The author was new and I might consider reading another book by Jeffries but not for a while.
Why did you get this book? Because it was recommended to me by Amazon and it sounded interesting.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Passing it on
Saturday, March 04, 2006
March's To Be Read Challenge
Posted by Samantha at 7:05 PM
Labels: 3, historical romance, pd2005, sabrina jeffries
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3 comments:
Loved this book! Didn't like the one before it that started the series... and have the next tbr still (due to time really) and the first of the next one ;).
I don't recall anything about bets and such, so it either didn't bother me and/or my short term memory is at work. The dyslexic thing stuck me as way odd and I so agreed on the back of the book making it more than it was.
But then I stopped to think we are talking about a time when dyslexic wasn't understood. There was something mentally wrong with you or you were just stupid. I don't think she could have taken people seeing her that way.
But I still think she waited too long to tell marcus. Over all I would go more with a B. hee that is just me. I have read all her other books (not the two on top) so shout if you want recs.
The bet was between Regina and her brother about making Marcus into a society gentleman or something.
I agree with you on the dyslexic thing. I wasn't thinking about the time the story was set in and stuff.
I'm always open to recs. Lay 'em on me.
Isn't it funny though? I mean I read or at that time only read historicals. But it wasn't until after it was really annoying me that I stopped to think about it and was like duh. I mean it really wasn't that long ago when people could feel/be made to feel shame over being dyslexic. And more often than not where just checked off as 'slow' or 'stupid', even by teachers, because people didn't understand what dyslexica was or that it had a name.
Anywho... lets see recs:
The Lord Trilogy and Swanlea Spinster Series are connected to each other. This helps if you want (LOVE her site) but honestly at the time I read them I wasn't online much in romance land. And read them all out of wack with no trouble.
One of my very faves and the one I rarely see on other top SJ faves :) is A Dance of Seduction. Honestly I am not sure why I love this story so much but have read it about read times. Lady Clara and Morgan just click with me. She is the Lady Reformer type, wanting to help London's pick pockets find a new way of life. She runs a home to help them, Morgan a known baddie moves in next door. She is afraid of how he will ruin the work she has done and the chance he will talk the kids into working for him.
I am not one on having kids in novels but like this one.
A Notorious Love is up at the top as well. We first met the H/H in the first book A Dangerous Love a must read for Shakespeare lovers (and prolly should be read first). ANL is something of a on the road romance as Helena and Daniel chase after Helena's younger sister who has run off to get married. The excerpt, off the link here is one of my fave scenes. And now I want to go reread this.
A Forbidden Lord I see most often pop up on lists as readers favorite. I enjoyed it but have always wanted to go back and reread it since I don't recall the love others feel for it.
The Pirate Lord is a great story and base off a true event. American privateers taking over a convict ship full of women. I think this is SJ first book under this name. Another I really would like to reread.
uh... that should get you started :)
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