Rating: 
Summary: An o.k. read...
Review: although I wished the heroine (Sarah) had been a bit more stronger and the hero (Michael) a little less wishy washy with his feelings.I can understand the trauma Michael and his brother James (from Love Lessons) went through as children but I don't necessarily think this should cause Michael to go out and have sex with every woman he runs into and live a degenerate life without love. I found the older brother James a little more redeemable than than Michael. After initiating Sarah into the art of sexual pleasure, Michael is forced to marry her out of duty because Sarah's brother has plotted to find her in a compromising postition and wishes to get her married because of gambling debts. Michael takes for the city after dumping Sarah in the country and leaves her behind for six months while he cavorts around with his ex mistress. Readers are to believe that these two did not have sex and was only companions to the other. This was too far fetched and I felt that Sarah should have dumped him promptly when she found this out and especially when she discovered that Pamela stayed at his home on occassion.(platonic according to Michael) I did not like how he ordered and verbally abused the women about in the book which only furthered my opinion that Sarah just needed to leave the cad and move on to greener pastures. Although I did enjoy the start of the story and the ending was what should be expected, Michael did not come off as the romantic hero and was a disappointment. Love Lessons was a much better romantic read with a better hero and heroine.
Rating: 
Summary: Less 'sex' please and more romance!
Review: I am by no means prudish and enjoy a romance (in whatever form, i.e. historical, thriller, etc.) with sex scenes as long as they move the plot along and/or are important for the characters' development. This, I feel, can not be argued for this book. The sex is tawdry (note: sex not making love) and dare I say it, made me feel icky; the reason is that it's not romantic or special and just plain dull. I felt that once I'd read one scene that I'd read them all - and there were more than a few. As for the plot, it's standard historical romance fare - tortured hero meets spinster and forms a 'relationship', a misunderstanding develops that separates the two lovers and all is resolved in the standard happy ending. There is no panache or real originality in the writing of this, and the author's style of writing is not attractive. All in all, I won't be buying another of Cheryl Holt's books - this was my first and last experience of her writing.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I enjoyed Holt's Love Lessons, but Total Surrender frankly bored me. The main characters were not fully fleshed out and never really came to life for me; neither seemed to have much depth to his/her character. The story itself didn't really engage me and seemed almost like an afterthought to link the erotic scenes.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing!
Review: I have previously read Cheryl Holt's Love Lessons and enjoyed it tremendously. It was romantic as well as very erotic. I cannot say the same about Total Surrender. There was something missing in this book. It never really captured my interest and it took me weeks(!) to complete this novel.
I will think twice about buying her books, simply because they are very repititive.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting story, ruined by the writing
Review: I picked up this book because I was intrigued by the plot description, and the fact that I enjoyed the basic plot of the story kept me reading even though I was tempted to hurl the book away from me in disgust by the writing style many times. Two major issues marred the book for me:
Firstly, as a previous reviewer said, it seems like Cheryl Holt sat down to write this book with her trusty thesaurus next to her so she could look up the longest words possible for every adjective and adverb and to make sure she never used the same word twice. Unfortunately, if that was not bad enough, I don't think some of the words she chose mean what she thinks they mean. I'm pretty sure a phallus does not "dilate" even harder, in the context she was using the word. And "enervate" is not the same as "excite." The floridity of the prose - the choice of words meant to impress with length and quantity, if not meaning or appropriateness - made reading this book painful. I felt that I should have had a red pen and edited as I went.
Secondly, I was shocked at the sex scenes. No, not because they were there and graphic - I love erotica. I was shocked at the contempt the author seemed to feel for physical expressions of sexuality. She peppers her descriptions with words such as "degrading" and "aberrant" and "sin". Almost every encounter, be it between the hero and heroine or observed actions of other characters, seems to be portrayed at some point in a negative light. I was left with the feeling that Cheryl Holt doesn't really like sex at all, or at least has a massive guilt complex about it. When I pick up a sensual book I want there to be some joy in the telling. This left me cold.
All in all, an interesting story that could have been so much better. The one star is for potential, which is all the book ended up having.
Rating: 
Summary: This was 1st Cheryl Holt novel I've read
Review: I really enjoyed this novel. The one thing that kept it from being a 5 star in my book is that she spent so much time writing out the charactgers thoughts, that after a while I found myself getting bored. Also I really didn't think that a marriage would work in reality with these two and when she decides to bring them back together, they fall right in with each other again even after all the pain that was felt in their 6 months apart. I also wish the author let us know what happened to Pamela. I mean if Sarah was willing to forgive her husband she should have forgiven Pamela. Well they were just my observations and I must say that by page 317 I would not have forgiven Michael, but that doesn't make a good romance novel. I know that this doesn't sound like I liked the book, but I really did enjoy it. I just wanted to point out some parts that I found took away from a 5 star rating.
Rating:
Summary: Beware...
Review: I'd recently read Holt's Deeper than Desire and I liked that so well that I went to buy more of her novels. Though the plot of Total Surrender was engaging, I was still left rather disappointed. I can't stand the psychologically tortured rogue type; the "I'm only being a sexy bad boy to act out my resentment for my bad childhood" type. Better he should have been an unrepentant rake, reveling in the life he leads, when love finally finds and claims him. Still, Holt kept my attention throughout this book, irritating main male character notwithstanding, and I intend to read her other books.
Rating:
Summary: Just so-so
Review: I'd recently read Holt's Deeper than Desire and I liked that so well that I went to buy more of her novels. Though the plot of Total Surrender was engaging, I was still left rather disappointed. I can't stand the psychologically tortured rogue type; the "I'm only being a sexy bad boy to act out my resentment for my bad childhood" type. Better he should have been an unrepentant rake, reveling in the life he leads, when love finally finds and claims him. Still, Holt kept my attention throughout this book, irritating main male character notwithstanding, and I intend to read her other books.
Rating:
Summary: Like Reading Roget's Thesaurus, But With Lots of Sex
Review: In "Total Surrender," Cheryl Holt attempts to join the growing movement of women writing intelligent and romantic erotica for other women. Unfortunately, that boat has sailed without her this time. Holt's idea of writing an intelligent story seems to consist mainly of filling her prose with as many "big words" as she can find, even if they often make little or no sense in the context, or when a smaller, much more common word would have been the better choice. Yes, this book is very steamy, but the heroine is a dolt, the hero is a cad, and the prose is very purple, so unless your idea of great erotica is the "Letters to Penthouse," you should pass on this one. Cheryl Holt's first book, "Love Lessons," was better.
Rating:
Summary: exciting erotic Regency romance
Review: In 1812 England, though the daughter of an Earl, Lady Sarah Compton knows her family is ruined due to the bad judgment of her kind but now deceased father and the absolute idiocy of her brother Hugh believing that gambling away everything is his divine right. Needing cash to support his decadent lifestyle, Hugh demands Sarah snare a wealthy husband, but she thinks little of the idea especially when she reflects on her one disastrous season. However, Sarah does attend Lady Carrington's house party in Bedford not so much because of Hugh's orders, but as her last chance for fun before poverty becomes her life. However, this is no rustic tea party as the aristocracy has come here for sexual games. Among the participants is Michael Stevens, the most notorious rake in the land. Her innocence unnerves him, especially when she insists he teaches her the art of pleasure. As they fall in love, an unknown enemy will do anything to insure that Michael fails to find the proof that he seeks. This is an exciting erotic Regency romance starring two intriguing characters who in spite of the explicit scenes are typical of the sub-genre, i.e., the rake and the virgin. Still the story line grips the audience from the start until the final nude setting, as the lead characters are a dynamic couple battling for TOTAL SURRENDER. The suspense element adds tension, but the tale belongs to Sarah and Michael. Cheryl Holt turns up the heat with this enticing historical romance. Harriet Klausner
| 
