SYNOPSIS:Sarah fell in love with Rome, but before he noticed her and reciprocated, he was tumbled into love with her best friend. Instead of Sarah, Rome married Diane and went on to be a perfectly happy couple. Sarah felt like she was a one man only kind of gal, but loyal and moral, as was Rome, she avoided him and continued being a best friend to Rome’s wife and a surrogate aunt to his children. Rome even assumed she was an ice queen and probably disliked him, because she took great pains to quietly extract herself anytime he arrived unexpectedly and avoided him in general. When the novel opens, Rome’s wife & 2 kids have been dead for a couple of years, courtesy of a drunk driver. Sarah has been leading a sterile existence. She’s thinks she’s the ‘only one guy for me’ kind, so she’s lonely, and missing out on life pining for a man she can never have.Rome invites her over to look through a box of stuff before disposal, one thing leads to another, and his libido comes roaring back. Knowing Sarah is not a one night stand kind, Rome proposes a marriage of convenience. It is a business arrangement. Rome is up front that he expects only companionship, sex, convenience, but no no no children. He does not love her, but because Sara loves him, she stupidly agrees to his idiotic proposal.The name of the novel ought to clue you in that Sarah accidentally gets pregnant. Then Rome turns into a 24 carat butt-wipe. After years of Rome using her sexually, and returning only scraps of emotional interest for her investment of time and love, his response to her truly unplanned pregnancy is spout out his love for her and to emotionally blackmail her by demanding to that she choose him or the baby. What a jerk. I tolerated Rome until this scene, but it was so unexpected that he have such evil in his character and would even in anger and grief lash out so monstrously at the one person who gave him his life back.Sarah is one of the strongest woman I have read about in a while. She firmly and gently tells Mr. Selfish “NO”, and proceeds to live her life with the largest part of it a giant aching open wound, hoping he’ll come around to loving his own child.SPOILER:Stupid Rome (can ya tell I’m angry at him?) decides Sarah is more important than living without her, but he doesn’t mind inflicting more emotional torture. He tells her he’ll not be involved with the baby, that he wants all her attention and time, and acts like a 2 year old about sharing his wife with his own flesh and blood. I’m not sure why she stayed with him other than out of hope for the future.It has a good ending, but it was quite painful for Sarah to get to it.PROS:It was an absorbing story. I’m reading all of L. Howard’s stuff, and this is one of her older strictly romance novels.I found Max’s story and wondered about Rome and Sarah, so it was important to find their story and discover more of Max’s background, (whom I also dislike!).CONS:Rome using emotional blackmail. Treating his wife maliciously, and being so self absorbed that he can’t get past his own grief. Rome obviously, doesn’t believe in an afterlife, so of course he’s never going to be anything more than an emotional cripple.Sarah shouldn’t have accepted his proposal. She shouldn’t have pined after him, but should have shaken off the doldrums, and even her love and gotten on with her life after her best friend married Rome. There’s a lot of truth to the saying “there’s a lot of fish in the sea”. There’s no such thing as a soul mate, and staying around convincing herself she was in love with her best friend’s husband, is just torturing herself. That was uncharacteristically stupid. And Sarah isn’t a stupid person.ttttttIMO:I’m used to reading the suspense genre. So, when there were no bullets, or space ships, or people trying to blow up the couple, it feels like something vital is missing from the story. This is a romance, and nothing more. It’s not the novel’s fault, but I guess I was a bit harsh on the characters. When Rome wanted his wife - his “wife” to kill their child, it was so unexpected and so wrong, that my hands shook reading the book. That means retrospectively good story telling right? Howard delivers bang for your buck in any genre, and this is no exception.
Sarah's been in love with Rome Matthews for over a decade. There was just one problem: He married her best friend. For all those years she pretended to be the ice queen, never showing the feelings that would betray her friend. Then Rome's wife and two sons die in a tragic accident, and Rome dies inside. Two years later, he begins to accept love again, with Sarah.There were a few things to like about this book. Rome's grief was real and powerful, and it stayed with him throughout the book. He never fell out of love with his first wife, which often seems to happen in romance novels. (I can't tell you how UNromantic I find that. If he could so easily dismiss her, then IMO, he could so easily dismiss the new "love" in his life.) That first love does fade into memory, which is good. The trouble with this book was Sarah. I thought she was pathetic. I know I'm supposed to buy into that "one true love" thing that romance often brings to the table, and think highly of her for holding out and waiting for the only man she could ever possibly love to become available and notice her, but..gah! His becoming available required the tragic death of her best friend, which was always in the back of my mind. Not that she wished for it, or even came close...she was the perfect little martyr the entire book...Martyr. That's what she was. In the most annoying sense of the word. She sacrifices her whole life because the one guy she thinks she can ever love is unavailable. But worse, when he starts noticing her, she continues to play the martyr, sacrificing all her dreams and desires so she can have any part of him that he might be willing to give her....like tossing a dog the scraps from the dinner table. He won't have more children because of the grief he felt for his first sons. She always wanted children, but if he doesn't want them, then she'll be the martyr. The book spent wayyyyy too much time in bed. If you want endless sex scenes with a lot of angst to glue them together, then definitely check this book out. But I thought it went overboard. They didn't have anything else keeping them together, and frankly, the sex scenes got boring. I started skimming through them, heavily. I could also never let go of the idea that Sarah had known Rome before her best friend. She was his second choice. I would never want to be a man's second choice. The title of the book led me to believe that Sarah would get pregnant early on and that this would be the heart of the conflict between them. It made sense, given what he said about not wanting children. He said it less than 24 hours after having unprotected sex, though, so I figure the main conflict is signed and sealed. It wasn't, though. She didn't get pregnant until much closer to the end of the book, by which time I was so bored with the endless sex and angst it was too little too late. The book needed the turning point much sooner.By the time the baby conflict happened, too, I was hoping that it wouldn't be an accident. I wanted Sarah to stand up for herself, share her dreams with him (which she'd never bothered to do before because she was busy being a martyr), and have the love between them help him heal enough that he could accept another baby into his life -- not to replace the two that he'd lost, but because he had more love to offer a new one.Rome lost my sympathy, completely and utterly, when he demanded that Sarah get an abortion, and in the way he treated her during her pregnancy. I stopped caring that he was grieving. He was selfish, taking and never giving. That Sarah let him made her weak, and that he took advantage of it made him a jerk. I was also completely unconvinced by the ending.Like I said, this book was not without redeeming qualities, and it may suit the romance reader looking for this kind of dynamic. Linda Howard is good at writing sex scenes, and there are a lot of them here, so if you're in the mood for some of that, you may also enjoy this. www.christineamsden.com
What do You think about Sarah's Child (2006)?
Its very easy to hate Rome Matthews and love Sarah. But even though Rome behaves like an ass through the book, one has cant forget the loss that he has endured as well. Yes its not an excuse to behave the way he does but lets not forget the time and the setting of the story as well. Sarah. her resilience and a never ending pot of love for Rome is evident through out the story. I love her. Her ability to give and give and give - WOW! some might think she is being a martyr but i dont think so. i think she's bound by love for a man she has loved for all her life. and when you love someone all your lives and get them there is nothing you will not do to keep them in your life. i loved this book not because of anything else but because of Sarah. I just loved her.
—Megha
3 stars – Contemporary RomanceI knew going into this that readers tend to have a love or hate reaction to this book and that many consider Rome to be a jackass. I didn’t really love or hate it, and yes, Rome definitely acted like a Grade A asshat for most of the book. What especially turned me off about his character was that he admitted (view spoiler)[lusting after his deceased wife’s best friend, Sarah, from the beginning, and even got a hard-on for her at his freaking wedding. WTF? What kind of man fantasizes about shagging his best friend’s wife at his f*ng wedding?!?! And if he was so damn attracted to Sarah from the start when they first worked together, before he met his wife, why didn’t he ever act on it? It makes no sense that Rome never asked Sarah out, especially considering that he’s the kind of man who goes after what he wants ruthlessly and doesn’t take no for an answer. And the fact that she was attracted to him in return and in love with him just makes it harder to understand why he never took action and that it took so damn long for them to get together. (hide spoiler)]
—Shawna
3-4 stars on this one. Rounding down to 3 because I really shouldn't enjoy this one as much as I do.Sarah (I'm not sure if we ever learned her maiden name) has been in love with Rome Matthews since the day she met him. Unfortunately, she introduced him to her best friend Diane, and ended up being in love with her best friend's husband. In a tragic set of circumstances, Diane and their two boys were killed in a car accident and Rome has been pretty much broken-hearted ever since (and really, who could blame him for that). Fast-forward to present day, Sarah's still got the jones for Rome and Rome thinks Sarah's just swell, the two of them hook up, and upon doing the nooky (view spoiler)[and finding out Sarah is a 33 year old virgin (hide spoiler)]
—Aarann
