The Heir (Nova Audio Books)

Rating:
Summary: No "Man Of My Dreams", but still very nice
Review: "The Heir" is about Duncan MacTavish and Sabrina Lambert. Duncan is betrothed to Ophelia Reid, but she doesn't want to marry a man she's never met. When Ophelia is going to meet her fiancé for the first time, she is accompanied by Sabrina. Duncan and Sabrina become friends that same day. After a while, they fall in love with eachother, but they encounter two major obstacles: Duncan's engagement with Ophelia, and a scandal in Sabrina's family.

Most reviews I've read on this book say it lacks passion. Maybe it's not as good as "Man Of My Dreams", but I enjoyed reading it.
The idea behind this story is nice: two people become good friends first, before they fall in love. I think that's much more realistic than "love at first sight".
(I had been "just" friends with my own boyfriend for over 4 years, when we got together.)
Hopefully Ms. Lindsey will also write a book about Raphael (another enjoyable character in the story), just like she did for Vasili from "Once a Princess".

Note: I've read the Dutch version of "The Heir", which is called "Sabrina". I don't know if the English version has a cover with stepback. If not, the Dutch cover by Franco Accornero is better. It shows Sabrina, including her lilac eyes!

Rating:
Summary: Lacks Passion
Review: Cute little story about two people who become friends first and later lovers. I liked that much...it's more realistic. However, i was a bit confused. The heroine is supposed to be intelligent but hardly shows it. What kind of a dense person lets her friend(ANYONE in fact!) make love to her and then abandon her?! She was'nt being forgiving..she was being stupid! And HE mentions it only once for all of two seconds and even then acts as if it was no big deal! Excuse me?! Were you under some misconception that this is something she does on a daily basis?!?!
Aside from that... the book is'nt that bad. It's not very captivating but it also does'nt make you want to throw it across the room! The scandal issue though was [bad]. I was glad Raphael Locke pointed it out. Now here's a character whose story we'd like to read! And Ohpelia. She has potential! I guess these two characters were one of the reasons why i liked this book. To an extent! I'm anticipating their book as much as Jeremey Malory's!

Rating:
Summary: A bit bland for Lindsey, but still good
Review: Duncan MacTavish is shocked to learn that he is now expected to travel to England to take over his ailing English grandfather's duties as a marquis. He is even more shocked to learn that he is expected to marry Ophelia, a reportedly beautiful woman who he has never met. Thanks to his half-Scottish ancestry, however, Duncan is determined that he will pick his own wife!

Sabrina is not a great beauty, but she has a gift for making others laugh. Unfortunately for her, the little family scandal in her past is making the rounds of the London ton, and she'll have no chance of marriage there. She lives with her two spinster aunts, and she doesn't really care if she becomes a spinster too - until she meets Duncan by chance. The pair become fast friends, but there is so much working against them - will they ever be more than friends?

I liked this book, as I like all of the Lindsey books I have ever read. As others mentioned, this book was bland compared with other Lindsey romances - when I picked up this book I was expecting a scorching romance that Lindsey so excellently authors on most occasions. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in that regard - the book is very sweet, but there's little fire in the romance, even at the end.

Still, not all was lost. The book has other great qualities - I did like the main characters, Sabrina and Duncan, and I also greatly enjoyed the witty exchanges between Duncan and his friend Raphael Locke (I'd LOVE to read a book about Rafe!). Lindsey is great at describing what the characters are feeling at particular times, and explaining why they do what they do, and I love that. There was a lot of witty sparring in the book - Duncan and Rafe, the two spinster aunts, and the two grandfathers were all quick witted and funny. The plot was good and moved along quickly, never becoming stagnant. The book would have received five stars, in my opinion, except for the lack of passion in the book...it just didn't seem like a typical Johanna Lindsey book at all! Other than that, though, I really did enjoy the book :)

Rating:
Summary: Johanna Lindsey Gone Wrong???
Review: This book was decently charming, so how can so many people be saying it's not worth reading at all?

With an unmarred prespective, I can say that my opinion of this book was a fairly high one. Sabrina Lambert is a nice girl with a calm temperament, who tries her best to make people laugh. She's not bold, she's not incredibly beautiful, and she's not exactly frivilous with sex. She's what I would consider realistic in a time when women were pretty chaste.

Her love interest is the new Marquis of Birmingdale, Duncan MacTavish. He's tall, a bit muscular, and a bit unacustomed to having his new and old grandfather both pushing him for a wife. He, like Sabrina, and is an all-around pretty sweet guy. The news of his engagement has just reached him in the Highlands of Sctoland, his home, and he is none too pleased at having to pack up for England and settle the matter. It's possible that, had he not latched onto Sabrina like she was a life savor in an ocean of terribly flavored candies, we might have seen a more brooding side to him because of this. However, not very many people can stay unhappy around Sabrina. She has that effect on people.

The romance of this story is like so: Sabrina, although loosely related to gentry, doesn't expect to get much out of her coming-out Season (especially when Ophelia, the most exquisite lady a man could ever lay his eyes on, is the one taking her to all of the parties). Promised to Duncan, Ophelia is still determined to be the life of the party, and the fact that dowdy Sabrina has attracted a few stray admirers spurs her to spread the story of an old scandal. This pretty much ruins any chance Sabrina had of finding a husband. She relaxes and accepts this fact with only a little disappointment, having been raised by two maiden aunts. At the last party of her incredibly short Season, though, she meets Duncan. They become friends, and eventually fall in love.

In the end, I was left with a light little read that doesn't get too taxing, and doesn't get too long. I was surprised that the flavor of Lindsey's book was so different, but I still believe it was worth reading.

-Embyr Bradson (1/29/04)