Untouched

by Anna Campbell (Goodreads author!)

published

December 1st 2007 by Avon

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binding

Mass Market Paperback, 384 pages

isbn

0061234923 (isbn13: 9780061234927)

description

Beautiful Grace Paget has no reason not to believe these words. After all, she was kidnapped, spirited away to a remote country manor, and told sh...more

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Kym rated it:

05/26/08

bookshelves: historical-romance

Read in January, 2008

Grace Paget is appalled when she is mistaken for a common doxy and kidnapped. Grace is taken to the estate of a raving madman and expected to be used for his amusement. Though Grace protests her innocence, neither her captors nor the man who she is supposed to pleasure believe that she is really a respectable widow. When she refuses to play the trollop, she's given an ultimatum: seduce her quarry or be killed for her refusal.

Matthew Landsdowne, Marquess of Sheene, has been held captive in hi...more Grace Paget is appalled when she is mistaken for a common doxy and kidnapped. Grace is taken to the estate of a raving madman and expected to be used for his amusement. Though Grace protests her innocence, neither her captors nor the man who she is supposed to pleasure believe that she is really a respectable widow. When she refuses to play the trollop, she's given an ultimatum: seduce her quarry or be killed for her refusal.

Matthew Landsdowne, Marquess of Sheene, has been held captive in his own home for 11 years when Grace arrives. Matthew's uncle promised to obtain a whore so that Matthew would come to accept that he would never escape his captivity. Matthew is determined to resists the temptations of the beautiful trull who he is sure does his uncle's work. He will ignore her until she becomes weary of her game, then he will continue to live the isolated life to which he has become accustomed.

What these two don't realize is that they will need each other to overcome the circumstances in which they have been placed. If they can learn to trust each other and work together, perhaps they can both escape this nightmare unscathed.

I bought Untouched because I loved Anna Campbell's first book, Claiming the Courtesan. I have to say that more often than not when I do this with a first-time author I wind up disappointed because of what I like to call "the curse of the second book." I think it's so easy to become complacent when your first book is a runaway hit that it's easy to think you can take chances or risks that you otherwise might not have. In this case, they didn't work out, and made for a semi-boring and lackluster story.

Claiming the Courtesan is edgy, regency noir. It was not your typical historical romance. Campbell took chances there, including a scene of forcible seduction, that many authors would have been too afraid to try. The same is true of Untouched. Our hero is known as a madman, and we never really know for sure if it's true. He's been held captive in his own home for more than a decade. Our heroine is the first woman he's seen in all that time besides his elderly servant. It has the makings of a great love story, if we can overcome the potential snags. Namely, how can a hero who can barely protect himself protect our heroine? How can two people find love when they're both prisoners and their future is uncertain? How can we respect a woman who would seduce a man knowing that it means the end of his pride and hope for salvation? How indeed, and these are just a few of the questions that weren't answered to my satisfaction.

Untouched has the same sense of urgency, breathtaking romance, and flawed characters who can hope to fix each other that I found in Claiming the Courtesan. It's just the execution was flawed. Any other day I might give this story 4 stars, but I think the plot needed to be more thoroughly fleshed out and I think the ending was taking the easy way out. I liked this book, and I'll try more of Campbell's work, but it wasn't all that I'd hoped for....less

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