I don't make a habit of reviewing romance novels, but I'm going to make an exception for this one:

When I was younger, my family spent a week or two each winter in a cabin in a snowy tinseltown. The town boasted a grocery, a general store, a couple of cheap restaurants, and a liquor store or two. The grocery was pretty basic, but it had, along one wall, a rack of books: romance novels with the covers torn off. (I didn't know, at the time, that this meant that the covers had been returned to the publisher and the books were supposed to have been destroyed...)

One of these books was about an American teacher who catches the eye of an Arab prince. She catches his eye, he (view spoiler)[installs her in the palace (hide spoiler)] against her will, (view spoiler)[marries her (hide spoiler)] without her consent, and then doesn't understand why she has reservations about being with him.

I have no idea what happened to that original coverless version of the book. But! Now I have one better: a few days ago, poking around in a charity shop, what should I find...but a copy of the very same book, cover intact! (The cover, by the way, is not the most impressive thing ever.)

My recollection of the story was surprisingly accurate -- yesterday, halfway through the book, I was telling my S.O. about having stumbled across it. "I'm only halfway through, but soon he's going to take her off into the desert to visit with a nomadic tribe, they'll (view spoiler)[make out in the limo on the way there, and they'll be married in a ceremony that she doesn't know is happening. Then they'll hop into bed, and in the morning she'll discover that she's married and be furious, but his mother will tell her that if they haven't consummated the marriage, no biggie, they can have an annulment, but if they have, they're stuck together for at least a month until they can get a divorce. (hide spoiler)]" Not long thereafter, I was reading while my S.O. finished some things up: "Aha!" said I. "'Malik studied her. "Next weekend I've been invited out to dine with one of our nomad tribes...I thought you might like to join me for the evening" [he said].'" Apparently my memory for books holds up pretty well.

Anyway. I won't go deep into discussion of this -- I rather understand the "ripped away and dropped in the lap of luxury" appeal. That said, Liana had such a stereotypical view of Arabian culture that even when the author knocked down some of her assumptions the book came across as a bit xenophobic. There also isn't a lot of room for strong females in the book -- I really wished one (or more) of the secondary female characters had taken Liana's side rather than saying "But look on the bright side! You're living in a palace, and look, you can be a princess!" That's a pretty simplistic view of the situation, yeah? Liana spends a lot of time telling Malik that her life is not his to control, but it's not clear that the message ever reaches its intended destination.

I did enjoy the book. Rather a lot, actually, although I suspect that's because I have a bit of a soft spot for it (and because parts of it were so outrageous that it provided quite a good laugh)...I just wish there'd been some nuance mixed in with the opulence.

There are some serious benefits to doing much of one's shopping at charity shops.