The debt Ionanthe will leave her freedom at the castle doors. Ancient laws demand an eye for an eye–she must pay the price for her sister’s mistake. The payment Recently crowned Prince Max plans to bring change to his country, but only after his new bride has arrived–as settlement for the debt he is owed…. The price A ruthless ruler and his virgin queen. Trembling with the fragility of a new … the fragility of a new spring bud, Ionanthe will go to her husband: She was given as penance, but he’ll take her for pleasure
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I laughed on more than one occasion, but I seriously doubt PJ meant this oh-so earnest R-O-M-A-N-C-E as a comedy of manners.
Penny Jordan creates an alternate dark universe for this manufactured angsty romance as if the manners and rules of HPland aren’t bizarre enough.
The hero has inherited a kingdom that is so archaic they want to and could stone the heroine to death for the adultery and general vapid behavior of her sister unless she dun dun dunnnnnn marries the H. She’s lured back by an evil Count to marry the boringstalwart Prince as compensation to the dishonor on the House of SoForthandSoOn.
Stoning aside, these two aren’t a couple you want at a dinner party. Oh, they won’t steal the silver, they are too busy patting themselves on the back for being upright, forthright and honorable. They will, unfortunately, suck all the oxygen from the room when the heroine is not in a snit over some imagined slight like the hero passing the salt to someone else.
Heroine”
‘Once it was my dream and my hope that I might work for the Veritas Foundation and learn from such a master. That was not to be, but there is something I can do for the people of Fortenegro, even if it is merely a small shadow of what he has done. Just as he educates the children of today so that they can grow to be to the leaders of tomorrow, I thought that as your wife I could provide Fortenegro with the ruler it so desperately needs.’
I hoped to conceive and raise a son who would be all the things that he will need to be to help this island. That was my hidden agenda in marrying you. No scheming to sell off the minerals that lie beneath the mountains,’ Ionanthe told him on a slightly shaky breath.
Guess who the awesome, self-sacrificing man she worships. Yep, the hero. This really shouldn’t be a problem, but it is.
Max simply did not know what to say or do to make things right. He knew what he wanted to say; he knew what he wanted to do. But he also knew that the very last thing Ionanthe would want to hear from him right now was that her hero—the man she admired more than any other, the man she had placed on a pedestal and at whose feet she had openly and proudly confessed she yearned to sit and learn—was no other than himself.
When she finds out that she’s married to the man she thinks is totally awesome, does she say, “Yay!” Heck no.
“Her pride stung, as though it had received a thousand savage cuts.”
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“How Max must have inwardly laughed at her when she had confided to him her admiration for the head of Veritas, unknowingly extolling his virtues, for all the world like some naive teenager filled with hero-worship. All she had to hold on to now was her pride. But she had survived before without love, without anyone to turn to.”
He wasn’t. Laughing that is.
HEA eventually, but only after a laughable but daring feat of derring where the hero rescues a plot moppet from a scary downhill fall on a snowy mountain. No bruise or pain can keep them from their love!
Alternate ending
Glad I did not get too attached to these two as I have no doubt that the evil Count will pop them off after the heir and maybe the spare come along. Then we can get a nice damaged hero and his story of revenge on the downtrodden daughter of the evil Count who is either really downtrodden and pathetic or merely hiding her downtroddenness under a facade of bad party girl. Reader’s choice.
2 stars for the romance
3 stars for the ridiculousness of the tropes and angst