Rating: 
Summary: Sequel to The Lover
Review: In The Lover, we met Gabriel, a 40-year-old man, a former prostitute who was taught to please men. He and his best friend Michael met as children and protected each other as they lived and survived on the streets. Now, Gabriel is an adult man, the wealthy owner of a popular brothel. But Gabriel has another nightmare addition to his horrifying past. When he was younger, he was brutally raped by two men. The first man, who made him beg for death or to be let go, is dead. The second man, who made him to his shame and horror beg for pleasure is still alive and now stalking him.34-year-old Victoria Childers was born a lady. In young adulthood, she fled her father and became a governess. Months later, she was fired from her job without references and forced to slowly sell all she owned and live in the slums. Unknowingly, she is being steered toward Gabriel's direction. She knows that he was a prostitute. She knows that he has serviced both men and women. She doesn't know that he can not bear to be touched since his rape 15 years before. Now she is caught up in Gabriel's horrifying story and finds that she has become the unwitting pawn of "the second man." Unlike your typical romances, Robin's Schones men are flawed and her women are in their 30's and somewhat plain. Gabriel hates himself, hates his best friend, hates his life, hates his past, and wants desparately to love. Victoria, too, hates her past, her present, and isn't too positive about her future. She needs someone to care for and makes it her goal to remove the pain that is instilled in Gabriel's soul. There are some shocking realities in this story that Schone is not afraid to tackle. Men do experience rape. Sex is often a mix of pain and pleasure, and there is often a fine line drawn between the two. Contraception is necessary. Schone takes you to the edge of what one finds "acceptable" in romance novels and then gently pushes you over. Her villian in this novel (the second man) is pure evil. She described him so not by the rape of Gabriel, but by trying to turn the innocent love of two boys into something dirty and sexual. The climax of this novel addresses the few loose ends in "The Lover." An intense, suspenseful, an erotic story that will undoubtedly shock many people.
Rating: 
Summary: Sensuous and it is sensual
Review: Anyone who picks a Robin Schone book knows that her erotic romance is uncompromising and her earlier works THE LOVER and AWAKEN MY LOVE are judicious evidence. Gabriel's woman is the continuation of THE LOVER and it is her most unflinchingly honest and gritty work up-to-date. A male prostitute trained in servicing men and women - Gabriel has opened up the decadent House of Gabriel with a secret agenda. He is desperate to unravel the truth behind his rape by two men - one of which is Michel's uncle. Victoria is the woman sent by his nemesis - and she is daring enough to auction herself off at the House with her viriginity as a price. Her intriguing appearance makes Gabriel wary - as his enemy is hunting him down.... Gariel's woman is by no means gentle. You find issues like homosexuality and self-pleasuring normally eschewed in romance. Schone's style is resplendent and blatantly affecting. The characters are flawed beautifully with savage tenderness - Victoria is forced into selling her body to ward off her employer's harrassment. Gabriel thinks his love for Michel makes him degraded. However, Schone's methodology in hiding the suspense can be quite vexing - she uses THE SECOND MAN to mask the identity and the mystery makes no sense until at the second half of the book. Patience nonetheless will be duly rewarded. Gabriel's woman is remarkable for the poignancy between the protagonists - it is sensual as it is sensuous. Schone's prose in their union can be clinical and yet miraculously erotic. it assaults your senses. The love between Victoria and Gabriel is sometimes twisted with such pain that it is excruciatingly agonizing. You will feel for them - and the revelation of love with Victoria's melancholic story at the end of the book makes you weep with joy. It is that viscerally unsettling with its beauty.
Rating: 
Summary: The only love story is between Michael & Gabriel
Review: This dark story is about Gabriel who we met in The Lover and Victoria, who is another virgin who needs sex tutoring. Gabriel is the typical schone hero. He is a tortured hero who was a victim of homosexuals. Though wonderfully written, i didn't find it erotic at all. Sure, the sex scenes are kinky but it lacks warmth and tenderness. The only love story here is between Michael and Gabriel - they are too close for comfort. I got the impression that the feelings they have for each is other is more than friendship if you know what i mean(almost like a homosexual bond). But Schone is a good writer that's why i gave it 3 stars.
Rating:
Summary: LOVED IT!!!
Review: I have only recently started to read Ms. Schone and have enjoyed all of her books.(Own them all now)This book struck a real cord in me. Her telling of Gabriel's story is heart wrenching and touching beyond words. You can feel his pain in many of the scenes. It made me laugh and cry more then once. She made me understand what it would be like to be a man and to have such brutality foced on him. A woman can try to explain the emotion of rape on a woman, but on a man? She did a fabulous job in the emotion that was displayed and his reaction to Victoria's lessons of love. I truely LOVED this book and have read it 3 times because it only gets better. Reader beware it is graphic!But if you have ever read any of her other books then you would already know that. Please enjoy Gabriel's story. It is one that you won't soon forget!
Rating:
Summary: great read
Review: I was enthralled from the beginning. After reading "The Lover" I was hungry for more of Ms. Schone's talent. You will not be sorry even if you pay full price for this one. Gabriel and Victoria are well developed as chararcters. You think of them long after reading the book. I eagerly await Ms. Schone's next work.
Rating:
Summary: Moody, Gothic, and So Very Sexy
Review: Robin Schone once again challenges our notions of female sexuality and male power with 'Gabriel's Woman'. Like her previous short works and novels, neither Gabriel or Victoria are the stereotypical romance couple. Gabriel, a former prostitute and now owner of an exclusive brothel that bears his name, is a man tormented by an act so tragic, that it has shaped him into the untouchable being he now is. Wealthy women will pay any price for his services, but he knows they would never pay the price for loving the man he truly is, nor would they wish to see that part of him. Victoria is a dimissed governess whose only crime was that of not responding to a former employer's advances--a situation that was quite the norm in Victorian England. She boldly offers her virginity up for auction inside The House of Gabriel, and commands a staggering sum in the process. Ms. Schone's use of the gothic style harkens one back to the great gothic novels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nearly everything that occurs in this novel happens at night, or in the dark. Strangers from the past, mysterious motives, and the dark deeds that belie the gentility of Victorian England are woven skillfully. Gabriel could teach Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester a thing about brooding heroes; and like Rochester, he too finds deliverance from the steadfast love of a woman who is as strong as himself. Victoria is a wonderful character, and no shrinking violet--she may not know what will come about in the end, but she dares what other women will not--to love a man with too many scars upon his soul. His best friend Michael des Anges (from Ms. Schone's previous novel, 'The Lover') is scarred on his face; Gabriel is scarred both body and spirit. An interesting note: There is an undercurrent of deep and fierce love between Gabriel and Michael, one that would suggest an almost homosexual bond. Like the frank eroticism, some readers may be put off by this, but I think Ms. Schone handles this matter wonderfully. In fact, I think their relationship goes beyond our notions of love between men, to see a deep and lasting committment that was forged in the most frightful of circumstances. The eroticism in 'Gabriel's Woman' is sexuality the way it should be written--passionate and intense. Ms. Schone's scenes drew me in and kept me there. Her atmosphere drips with the sounds, scents and sometimes overwhelming emotions of sex. In the shower scene (which I think was wonderfully written), I actually felt as if I were a voyeur, sharing this frightningly intense moment between two souls, and not merely two bodies. That, I believe, is what makes Robin Schone far superior to what has come before in the genre of erotic romance. Ms. Schone doesn't write textbook manuals on the act of sex, nor does she pepper her descriptions with silly metaphors ascribed to the various male and female genitalia (you readers who read steamy romances know exactly what I mean). Robin Schone writes about the emotions of two people who are making love; we see inside of them, and in some ways, become them, in their lust and in their longing. Once again, Robin Schone has delivered a romantic tour-de-force, a novel that will spark lively and much needed debate. I am recommending all of her books to any woman I see with a romance novel in her hands. I am also recommending her books to men who think they've got the exclsuive rights to anything frank and explicit.
Rating:
Summary: Finally, Erotica for Women who Aren't Scared of Sex
Review: I fell in love with Robin Schone after I read her contribution to "Captivated", Kensington's erotic romance anthology. To be frank, hers was the only story in the book worth reading. Just as she has done previously, Ms. Schone's characters are not the typical "flaxen-haired wenches" and "virile Vikings" most of us have come to expect from this genre. Her characters are wonderfully flawed, and one cannot help but to hope that by the end of the book, they find happiness together. More importantly, Ms. Schone gleefully challenges us as women to define sexy on our own terms. There will be some women out there who've never experienced anal sex, and may be a bit curious as to "how the other half lives", so to speak. She is an outspoken advocate for the right of women to be free in expressing themselves sexually, and instead of castigating her, she is to be commended for taking such a brave stance, especially in these politically correct times. 'Gabriel's Woman' is a darker novel in tone, and that very gothic element is what lends itself so well to erotica.
Rating:
Summary: This book is AWESOME!!!!!
Review: YOU WILL LOVE THIS BOOK! I love any book by Robin Schone. I discovered her books in the anthology with Bertrice Small. She is an excellent writer. This book tells you of the relationship of two people, each at the bottom of the barrel at one point in their life, that teach each other how to heal the past and love one another with sizzling passion. The scenes in this book are awesome. I have already read the book three times and have only owned it for a month!
Rating:
Summary: Intense, unconventional and extremely erotic
Review: If you are offended by frank eroticism and unconventional sex in your romance novels, this book is not for you. For the rest of you, hang onto your hats - you're in for a wild ride! Robin Schone's unique talent blends emotionally intense love stories with imaginative and graphic erotic scenes, and she pushes those boundaries even further in "Gabriel's Woman." Gabriel is familiar to readers of Schone's "The Lover" as the aloof proprietor of an establishment that specializes in all kinds of sensual pleasures. Gabriel himself, however, is not a participant. As a youth he was trained to be a prostitute that pleasured men and women, but due to some unknown trauma in his past, he can no longer tolerate another's touch. "Gabriel's Woman" begins with the grand reopening of the House of Gabriel. An upper class woman appears and boldly offers to auction off her virginity. Gabriel immediately realizes that the woman, Victoria, is a pawn sent to him by the mysterious man who brutalized him in the past. For her safety and in order to discover the mysterious man's plot, Gabriel buys Victoria. Even though his phobia of intimacy remains, he is inevitably attracted to her and his long dormant sexuality is awakened. Victoria has been unjustly forced from her position as a governess and was driven to the House of Gabriel by desperation. Nevertheless, she too is immediately aware of the intense attraction between herself and Gabriel. As she begins to know him better, she becomes determined to help him fight his personal demons and allow him to experience all the pleasure he has missed in life. Both Gabriel and Victoria are immensely appealing characters, and the reader can't help but become invested in their quest to make each other happy. As usual, Schone gives us several erotic scenes, some so extreme that even the most jaded reader will be startled. At times the book reads like a sex manual, including step-by-step instructions for new uses for breath mints. The surrounding plot is necessary to explain Gabriel's reticence, but it was my least favorite part of the book. The overall gloomy atmosphere got tiresome, and when the climatic confronation with the bad guy finally came around, I was so sick and tired of ominous references to "the second man" that I wanted to scream. Still, you don't read Schone for the plot, so this is a minor nitpick at best.
Rating:
Summary: You will like this if you liked "Last Tango in Paris"
Review: The story is clearly a sequel to "The lover". You should read it first to fully understand "Gabriel's woman". If you consider "The lover" too gothic and sinister for your taste, leave this out. The atmosphere of the book reminded of the atmosphere of some of the novels of Stephen King. Death, mystery and destruction practically lurks behind every corner. The story is a very interesting, suspenseful one. It fills in the gaps that "The lover" left. You will also see what has become of Michael and Anne, this alone is worth the read. And you finally understand why Gabriel cannot forgive himself for what has been done to him.
The story is about Gabriel, Michael' friend from "The lover" as you might have guessed. It starts with the reopening of the house of Gabriel, half a year after the story of Michael and Anne ended. A woman appears on the scene who wants to auction off her virginity. Gabriel at once suspects her to be an accomplice to the second man (him again!), yet nevertheless he purchases her. He soon discovers that Victoria knows nothing and is only meant as a decoy for him. Both of them desires to be touched and crave for physical intimacy, but are unable to accept their wishes. Victoria is the more daring one of them and eventually overcomes her and Gabriel's inhibitions. She is deeply affected by and drawn to Gabriel's extreme physical beauty. He looks like an angel, so he must be one like in a fairy-tale. She therefore wants to save him and stops at nothing to do so. In one of the saddest and most troublesome sex scene I have read so far in Schone's novels she offers Gabriel her "other orifice" to experience what he has experienced. 24 hours or so after she has lost her virginity she has that sort of sex with Gabriel. The experience is a very painful one and is realistically described. But despite of or because of the physical pain that is inflicted on her she has a climax. The whole scene is very cold and clinical and made me shudder. I personally don't care if heterosexuals unnecessarily ruin their sphincters but I certainly don't expect things like that in a Victorian romance novel. But this is not enough: Victoria has now developed a taste for exotic sex acts. She dreams of bondage sex, having sex with an artificial phallus and about other sex that is so weird that I cannot describe it here. Well, that was not what Victorians dreamt about. Even a notorious sex-crazed Don Juan like the Victorian Walter ("My secret life") didn't do all of the things mentioned in Schone's book (the idea never crossed his mind). And he really was a wild and wicked one. If you want an accurate picture of what kind of things free-loving Victorians drove crazy read Charles Deveraux' "Venus in India" or the pre-Victorian "Fanny Hill" by John Cleland. The sex acts described there are surprisingly innocent. Schone should do her homework. She is right that Victorians were quite sensual and very much interested in sex. But they didn't need kinky or exotic acts to get aroused. They weren't influenced by and surfeited of the medias. Lucky times for love! And I do really get annoyed by Schone's theory that true ecstasy is only achieved by complete submission of the woman and the combination of lust and pain (nota bene: Not for the man! He can have fun without having to suffer and submit). Where do she get those ideas? Perhaps she got a little bit inspired by the Marquis de Sade? Let him rest in peace, please. In her previous books she dealt with that in a more subtle and erotic way (like incredibly tight built woman meets man who is built like a stallion), here it is much to obvious. The only beautiful and painfree sex act was described in the end and I really loved it although I didn't care much for the couple for I couldn't see much love and tenderness between Victoria and Gabriel. They freed themselves from their inhibitions and explored the boundaries of sexual pleasure and that was that. If Schone had made Victoria a streetwalker who was saved by Gabriel and who loved him for a long time, the whole thing would have appeared differently. But she had to be a well-bred virgin who knew Gabriel only for a couple of days, the equivalent of Anne and Michael in "The lover". For the two couples I see only one way to further spice up their sex lives ( for they have already tried most of the things possible within days). Exchanging of partners! Gabriel with Anne, Victoria with Michael, Michael with Gabriel, Anne with Victoria...at least that would be funny and not so depressing. The only true love story was between Gabriel and Michael. I would have liked them to become lovers in the end for they were a dream couple. There were real and substantial love between them and I found it far more touching to imagine a dark-haired angel teaching a fair-haired angel to read and write than imagining Gabriel and Victoria having kinky sex together. This was the most loving and caring act in both stories. Schone doesn't seem to appreciate homosexuality, yet she appreciates homosexual acts between heterosexuals. Chacun à son goût. She breaks taboos of the genre but unfortunately the wrong ones. She still is a promising author, therefore I give three stars instead of two. I hope she will regain the wonderful erotic power of her earlier works like "The lady's tutor" and "Awaken my love".
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