Smoke in the Wind

Rating:
Summary: Hero is a bit dim
Review: This story is packed with passion. Venetia, the heroine's, relationship with the hero, Ryan, is steamy, emotive and highly charged. You read it with a kind of fascination as the hero gives an excellent demonstration of how to screw up his own and the heroine's life. The book could be read as an example of what should happen in traditional romances where the red-blooded hero gets the sort of wife he professes to want; virginal, lacey feminine type who will look after his every need and who has him as her sole reason for being, living her life vicariously through his. If he IS a true red-blooded hero, he will naturally find this awfully dull after a while and be damn sorry he was ever taken in by ye-olde 1950s propaganda. While this is all true, the reader has to feel for Venetia, who, a red-blooded woman herself, has to suffer too much while the hero works out for himself that a woman who is an equal is damn better than one who is just his little wife (and all this based on the fact that Ryan's mum worked and thus didn't give him, poor lamb, her full attention). Feel free to go along for the ride but don't complain if you too feel a bit bruised at the end of it all.