Review: Lord of la Pampa by Kay Thorpe

November 21st, 2009 | 1.5 Stars, Book Review, Business, Category, Contemporary, Gentry, Interracial, Love Triangle, Marriage of Convenience, Ranching, Rape/Abuse, S-U, South America, Virgin Heroine

bookreview2

MOC + second suitor + jealousy = win! Or… maybe not.

When a tour mixes up dates, Lian is stranded in Argentina with a minimum of Spanish. She takes a job as a hostess at a club only to find to her horror that a hostess is really just a polite word for prostitute. Help comes in the way of Ricardo who tells the owner and a client that Lian is his already for the night. He then proceeds to get her out of there and off to the nice hotel where he is staying.

His help come at a price. Lian must agree to a marriage of convenience or he’ll send her back to the club. Lian chooses marriage. Ricardo reveals he was bluffing. They marry and set off to his smallish plantation with a pit stop at the wedding of his half brother Carlos to prove he was wed first and retains all legal rights to the plantation.

Things progress semi-normally, at least for what one can expect from an older Harlequin. Then a acquaintance of Ricardo’s shows up. Lian is a little too friendly with Grant and earns a fierce rebuke from Ricardo. She defies him and maintains her overly friendly ways all the while attempting to figure out how to escape her MOC. When Grant suggests flight for the 8th time she agrees and off they go.

Ricardo tracks them down. Detains Grant and forces Lian back home where he proceeds to forcefully claim all his marital rights and tack on a required male heir stipulation before he’ll set her free. Martial rape… again. Why is this a consistent theme in older Harlequins/romances in general? Is this the only way a man is capable of sharing his “feelings” until the heroine cracks and says “I love you!”? Let me repeat this once again… rape is not romantic.

One of the better things in this novel was when the heroine rescued the hero at the end of the novel. The ending high is very nice.

Rating: 1.5 Stars