Rating: 
Summary: Not tempting at all....
Review: I've read many a romance novel. When I say many, I mean hundreds. It's one of my hobbies. Having read so many, I'd like to think that I am a good judge of them. This was a horrid one. I could barely get through it. While it tries to tackle child abuse, it does it haphazardly. The author spends most of the book focusing on the main character's period, God and prayer. While I'm all for God and prayer, this novel has page after page of medievil theology coupled with mensutration. Yah! I'm all for romance novels that try to go beyond the tried and true story lines of boy meets girl, etc., but I'm afraid that Ms. Dain does not succeed in her efforts to expand the genre. A romance novel with the heroine on the rag is not my idea of a good time. Please, please, please save your precious reading time for something more worthy. Pick up a Jo Beverley romance or Julia Quinn. Or give Karen Marie Moning a chance. She's an excellent read. Please skip this one.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly objectionable
Review: Intelligent and sensitive readers will definitely want to give this book a miss. There is nothing the least bit romantic about it, and everything to disgust.
We start with an extremely graphic and revolting portrayal of Elsbeth's mother dying in childbirth. She makes her daughter promise she will not be deceived by a glib tongued blond devil, but give herself over to the Church and keep at her prayers night and day.
Then we come to Elsbeth as a grown up and what happens? She is given in marriage to a glib tongued blond devil thanks to her father.
Hugh of Jerusalem is gorgeous, and she is immediately tempted by him. So much so she knows she will never be able to keep her chastity, and so prays for a miracle to befall her to stop the marriage from being consummated.
Miracle she gets-there follow a graphic portrayal of all five days of a seemingly endless menses which even Hugh says seems to last a week when it is only one day. The details are endlessly and tastelessly provided. Think of a waterfall or wide open faucet and you will get the idea. It is all over, absolutely everywhere all the time no matter what.
Even more objectionable, if such a thing is possible, is Hugh, who is determined to invade every aspect of his new wife's life. As if shaming and groping and ogling her and her linens isn't bad enough, we know that he is not even the least bit interested in her as a wife.
His hidden agenda is hidden from everyone except the poor girl, who only agrees to the marriage because he promises her that once she does her duty he will let her live out the rest of her days in a convent.
Hugh of Jeruslaem is a shallow ladies' man with the scruples of a snake. He has only married her to get her fortune, but more importantly, the knights that her estate provides. He has come at the behest of his King Baldwin in the Holy Land, and cares only for Baldwin and Jerusalem.
For such a supposedly devout Christian he is extremely slimy, and even worse is her own father, who insists in the most crude terms imaginable considering he is referring to his own daughter that Hugh cannot have the knights until he has Elsbeth.
This is a huge clue as to her father's true nature, that and the hysterical young girl Denise who Elsbeth takes under her wing when the child is frightened in the night. There follows an extremely objectionable fantasy in Hugh's head of both women servicing him in bed, which give us an even bigger and more disgusting hint, as if we needed any more, of exactly what Elsbeth's father is up to with his own girls, and any other unsuspecting little girls being fostered in his care.
When Elsbeth's stepmother dies painfully and horribly in childbirth as well, the old buzzard could not care less. Even Hugh only cares because he thinks it will be that much harder to persuade his wife to let him have his conjugal rights. Ugh.
Then her father continues with his slurs against the Jerusalem knights and accuses Hugh of being a sodomite with King Baldwin and his own page Raymond. Elsbeth is horrified but immediately uses that as an excuse for ending the marriage. Hugh defends himself against the charge, and begins to suspect, at last that he can't trust Elsbeth's father and there is a lot more going on that meets the eye. He actually tries to have Hugh murdered o he will not have to give up the land and knights to Elsbeth's husband.
Hugh at last confesses all to her, because he can't really avoid it. She is furious, then the next thing we know they are rolling around in the woods together. She still fights him at every turn, but more because she know s what a creep he is and yet still wants him, and hates herself for responding to someone who has betrayed her at every turn.
Then they quarrel because the one time she is supposed to bleed and there is no blood. He is furious that she is not a virgin, but she tell s him not to be so silly, she id devout. They flee from her castle to avoid assassins, leaving Denise behind then she gets a flashback of her prayers in the church when she was young and find out that her father used to debauch her there. As if that isn't bad enough, we get full details from her deranged dad in the confrontation and he proudly tells her he gave her a husband exactly like him in every way. Which he did.
They are all disgusted, as are we. Then Hugh sets about trying to prove he is nothing like him by disemboweling the old man in the chapel. Then everyone on the estate says, "Well, done, we all knew he was a pervert but did nothing because we were afraid." The ending? Elsbeth's demand that her worthless lying husband take her to bed and futter her silly. And he says he doesn't care about Baldwin or Jerusalem after all and they supposedly live happily ever after.
Then we get yet another child birth, Elsbeth's, some graphic side descriptions of more rolls in the woods, and we are supposed to believe that this wooden woman and lyng selfish disloyal knight live happily ever after.
They never fall in love and the horrible details are even too much for my strong stomach. The only thing that can remotely be described as a love scene is on page 312 or so of about 350 pages, making this long tedious and just plain gruesome for all the graphic reasons I have mentioned above.
For anyone who loves romance, this book is not it. A romance is an interesting hero and heroine falling in love and making a commitment which we can believe in. This is not even erotica or porn. They are meant to rouse; this revolts. I would give this negative five stars if I could.
Rating:
Summary: Some Books Aren't Worth Finishing
Review: It's not that I expect literature from my romance. God knows truely wonderful writers are few and far between. And I appreciate charecter developement, however, I do not want to read a romance where one of the major plot points is a women's period. I do NOT find it romantic or chiverous of a man to insist that his wife does not have the privacy to change her medieval pad. These scenes were GREAT charecter developement scenes; however, they revealed charecters that I do not care to know.
Rating:
Summary: Barely Readable
Review: It's not that I'm a prude or overly modest. But you know what? I don't want to read the intimate overly detailed explanation of anyone's period. And that is the glue that holds the story together. The heroine doesn't want to be married or consumate her marriage so she prays for divine intervention, which god gives her with a gush of blood. -- I'm not kidding or exagerating. It goes downhill from there.
Rating:
Summary: What was she thinking????
Review: Normally, I love claudia dain's books. but i'm just not sure what she was thinkin' when she plotted out this one. First of all, the woman was a very sheltered virgin - yet from the get go, the hero carries on continuous conversations about her menstrual periods. and she discusses it back with him - BOING! knocked me out of the story. and between the GRAPHIC childbirthing scenes littering the book - BOING! just freaked me out of the book. the "blood" imagery throughout the book made me feel like a well used blood donor. And for some reason, the heroine (the very sheltered one) seems to know that if the man she married is a sodomite, under church law she can get out of this marriage. of course, there is absolutely no inkling that he might even be of that persuasion so i don't understand how she leapt to that conclusion.further, i find it hard to believe she would even know about that stuff, being such a sheltered girl. Now, just to be fair, there is some very clever dialogue between the hero and heroine and he is PERSISTENT, to say the least. but i am not sure - perhaps, like jo beverly, ms. dain suffered from a case of anemia (due to loss of blood, i'm sure) thereby creating a book that is anemic at best. I shall not give up on the author, but, wow, sorry, this book was a bloody disappointment
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Medieval
Review: This book is a battle of wills between the Elsbeth and Hugh and will keep you cheering for both up until the end. The 12th century is vividly recaptured in The Temptation and a must read.
Rating:
Summary: UGH!
Review: This book portrays itself as romance but there is precious little of that in this book. Instead we're presented with endless contemplation on the heroine's menstrual cycle, child molestation, murder, and constant gore. I read romance for exactly that - ROMANCE, and this book left me feeling like I needed a bath. Extreme disappointment from an otherwise talented author.
Rating:
Summary: Mentrual fetish 5, Love 0
Review: This book should be required reading for every preteen before she gets her period. After reading it she'll know exactly what to expect. The writer has a definite gift for making the reader feel a part of the action...her colorful, in depth hundreds of pages description puts you right there in the room with the heroine. Except that this is supposed to be a love novel. Lacking the writer's gift for colorful adjectives I can only say...ugh.
Rating:
Summary: oh MY GOD!
Review: This had to be the strangest romance novel I ever read (and I've read quite a few). I never read anything by Claudia Dain and I liked the look of the cover & the plot digest on the back sounded intriguing...stupid me! Don't buy a book by its cover!! I agree with all the other reviews, except Harriet K.'s (she must be doing something "funny" to give this book 4 stars). It's not that it's badly written, but the heroine having her period throughout the book (just about)...what a plot device! And then when the father reveals his true nature...in somewhat graphic detail...Ewww! My one-star is for a moving passage about 10 pages from the end of the book, when the heroine questions why God didn't save her from her father's attentions, and the hero responds about Christ having suffered horribly, why should his servants suffer less? I've just messed up the quote, but I think that's what the author wanted to convey all along but she couldn't get that across until the end (maybe). Anyway this book was really kind of gross. Avoid at all costs.
Rating:
Summary: Well-developed characters and a fabulous sense of the period
Review: This highly emotional and evocative read is romance at its best, with a keen picture of Olde England as it truly was, and a wonderful battle between the hero and the heroine.
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