Rating: 
Summary: Cute, but not one of her bests....
Review: I was so looking forward to getting my hands on and reading this book. And when i did i was delighted by the context and the characters. The novel started out well, i fell in love with charlotte from the first page, and equally with the children. Wynter was a diffrent matter. I really liked him at the begining, but gradualy started to dislike him. The reason i gave this book a 3 star is because of the ending. I was very disapointed with it. It was cheesy and unbelievable. If it had been written better i would have really enjoyed this book. It's a cute story, but the ending is too predictable and corney, but up till then it've very entertaining.
Rating: 
Summary: A master governess finds her newest charge a true challenge!
Review: Lady Charlotte Dalrumple has been known to have the magic touch with difficult debutantes. So nobody is surprised when a lovely viscountess offers to pay her a large sum to whip her half-savage grandchildren into shape. But she is shocked speechless when she meets the children's father, who has lived among the Bedouin most of his adult life. . . and then discovers that the real reason she was brought there was to tutor HIM in the social graces!Unfortunately, Lord Wynter Ruskin seems to anticipate her every move and find a thousand different reasons to proclaim the Bedouin way of doing things more civilized than the British. The corset, for example. He is determined to get Lady Charlotte out of hers, for he has decided that she will be his next wife. Lady Charlotte, however attracted physically to Lord Ruskin, scorns the Bedouin idea that men do not love their wives. She fears being trapped in a loveless marriage and taken for granted by her husband. . . as more of a possession than a mate. Although it is obvious that Lord Ruskin does indeed love her--some men do seem to have difficulty saying the words women want to hear--Lady Charlotte is right to insist upon it. It isn't until Lord Ruskin sees how much her unhappiness upsets him that he realizes that he does indeed love her. . . and that the Bedouin who taught him otherwise was a coward who never knew what he missed. Christina Dodd has done it again. . . a truly delicious romance with a nice mixture of sensuality and humor. You won't want to put it down!
Rating: 
Summary: Very "The King & I"
Review: In Ms. Dodd's latest work we meet Charlotte, a governess who is hired by Adorna--the incredibly beautiful "airhead" from "That Scandalous Evening". Charlotte is to teach Adorna's two grandchildren, who have grown up in Arabia; what she doesn't know is that she also needs to instruct Wynter, their father, on the intricacies of British etiquette. If you have seen "The King & I", you'll have a pretty good idea of how their interplay is going to go. Wynter is very Yul Brenner, right down to the hands-on-his-hips stance. On the other side is Charlotte, who tries to remain at all times the picture of British gentility when what she'd really like to do sometimes is hit him upside the head with a frying pan. Sparks fly when Wynter gets it into his head that Charlotte would make a convenient wife. The sparring between these two characters is entertaining, at times what we all wished had happened betweeen Deborah Kerr and the King of Siam. Unlike their counterparts in so many other works, the children's antics here ring true and are hilarious enough to endear them to readers. However, after having so enjoyed Adorna in the previous novel, I wished we could have seen more of her "I'll pretend I'm stupid to get what I want" act. I love Christina Dodd stories, and was especially awaiting this one. What I usually appreciate about Ms. Dodd are her strong, no-nonsense heroines. This book left me a little disappointed in the last couple of chapters, in that I really didn't understand what Charlotte wanted or how it could be resolved. All in all, I thought Jane Higgenbothem (from Scandalous) was a stronger character. However, this book is clearly the first of a trilogy, and I'm awaiting the stories of Charlotte's two partners in the governess business.
Rating:
Summary: Rules of Surrender
Review: They should have called the book "Miss Manners and the Barbarian." This book was a battle of wits. Charlotte and Wynter fought all the way through but it wasn't silly. They had to learn about each other and all the time they were disagreeing there was this incredible sexual tension. Warning -- the love scenes are *hot!*
Rating:
Summary: The woman always wins in a Dodd book...
Review: Oh, this book was so much fun. Charlotte is one of the sharpest, quickest-thinking characters I've met in a long time, and she's well matched with a viscount whose bag of sexual tricks includes...well, wait. Read the book yourself and find out. Fantastic repartee and hilariously true kid-antics make this book so special.
Rating:
Summary: Witty, entertaining early Victorian romance
Review: Lady Charlotte Dalrumple, Miss Pamela Lockhart, and Miss Hannah Setterington manage the Distinguished Academy of Governesses, as a venture to place governesses, companions, and specialized instructors. The elderly, but desperate Lady Adorna Ruskin turns to the trio for help with her "barbaric" grandchildren who grew up with Bedouins. Adorna hires Charlotte, who is known throughout the land as the nation's leading governess. Adorna wants Charlotte to teach her upstart grandchildren proper English behavior so that they do not embarrass her at a special reception in three months time. Very early on, Charlotte realizes she will have no problems with ten-year-old Robbie and eight-year-old Leila, who she finds delightful, fresh, and intelligent. However, their father Wynter, thought to be dead, is at his mother's home causing havoc because he behaves more like his desert companions than his children do. Wynter gets special pleasure teasing the prim and proper Charlotte, but soon finds he is very attracted to her even though his desert father taught him that men are incapable of loving a woman. RULES OF SURRENDER, the first installment of the Distinguished Academy of Governesses series, is a witty, entertaining early Victorian romance. The story line is fun as the era comes brightly alive through the abundant talent of Christina Dodd. The lead couple is an engaging duo, whose battle between the sexes is rewarding to the reader. The children and their grandmother provide depth that helps explain the period as well as Wynter's motivations. If this tale is any indication, the novels starring Misses Pamela Lockhart, and Hannah Setterington will make this trilogy one of the more precious sub-genre collections in several years.
Rating:
Summary: Rules of Surrender
Review: Read this book! But don't start it if you have to work the next day because you'll be up all night. I liked Charlotte a lot, she was feisty and very proper. The children were good, especially Leila who made trouble without meaning to. Wynter was the best. He thought men were better than women, and it was funny watching Charlotte teach him differently. Also, it was good to see Adorna from THAT SCANDALOUS EVENING get her own romance. Great stuff!
Rating: 
Summary: All my life, I¿ve loved governess stories.
Review: When I was a teenager, I saw "The Sound of Music" over and over. I read JANE EYRE, and wanted to be just like Jane - proud, independent, and clever. I thrilled to see Yul Brenner and Deborah Kerr dance in "The King and I," and yes, I was also first in line to see "Anna and the King." So here's an excerpt from RULES OF SURRENDER, my tribute to "The King and I." Charlotte stepped foot on the veranda, and as smoothly as some great-maned predator, Wynter switched his attention to her. He had grown tall in his sojourn away from England. He filled her gaze, but she kept her vision properly affixed to his countenance. He might have been a geometry proof, for angles of every kind made up his face. His forehead was a handsome rectangle, his cheeks jutted out from the point of his chin, his nose formed a beaked triangle. A long scar bisected his right cheek. The sun had tanned him and lightened his hair. He still sported those unusually dark eyelashes and brows, and through them he looked at the world with such direct and avid interest some lesser beings might find themselves discomfited. But not her. She stood still as he closed in behind her and proceeded to circle, examining her with the open curiosity he might show a zoo animal. She did not lower herself to do the same, but neither did she turn her eyes away in a pretense of cowardice. Nothing intimidated Charlotte; the sooner he learned that fact, the better.
Rating: 
Summary: Ugh! A truly terrible hero.
Review: Charlotte is a very interesting heroine: intelligent, strong, principled, and exceptionally proper because of past hurt. Her responses to Wynter's high-handedness and loveless "care" are heart-wrenching. Her only real flaw is that she ventually loves him for some unfathomable reason, so the book says, although there is little evidence of it. She also sometimes seems to act out of character with the children in her role as governness. Wynter, however, is an a_s. He's an arrogant, chauvinistic jerk who believes men rightly rule the world and women are little better than possessions. His end-of-book declaration of love is too little, too late, especially considering that his behavior does not change. It's as though he says the words to appease her and so get what he wants. Too much time is spent on his outrageousness and too little on his redemption. It's totally unbelieveable. I hated him. The secondary characters are caricatures or shadow-people with little substance. The "ghost" is too obvious. There are too many flaws here to even decide which to mention. The only things that makes this book at all worth reading is the intro to the series and Charlotte. Get it from the library; don't bother buying it. I'm selling my copy.
Rating:
Summary: Good read.
Review: This book was on the lighter side. Different too. With Wynter coming back from India, it definetly adds a differnt flavor. The way of life in India is abisouly not like life in England. Wynter adopted that life style for himself and his children. The differences with those two ways of life is why Adorna wants Charlotte to tutor Wynter. Only, Wynter does not need all this training. Some but not all. He plays his own game with his own reasons. I liked his unorthodoxed ways most of the time. Usually until he started going on about his "desert father" and his views on love and how they are suppose to treat their women. I would smack somebody for saying anything like that to me. He does realise his mistake, almost too late, and fixes it. Thanks to his mother.
I really liked Charlotte. She was a great character. Strong and indipendent. Stood up for herself and did not take Wynters crap. She was a great character. Watching their battle of wills was highly entertaining. This book is highly recommended. Enjoy this great story.
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