Prim and proper Victoria Cardiff does not believe in love. This is shocking because Victoria is, as one would guess, a woman, and women are obsessed with "true love." Her mother remarried some loser, and ever since then Victoria has been hell-bent on becoming an up-tight governess, entirely removed from anything that could tarnish her virginal reputation. Exotically handsome Raul Lawrence, aka "Saber" (guess what his signature weapon is), also doesn't believe in love because of his unhappy childhood. This is not shocking because Raul is a man. But when Victoria finds herself in the made-up country of Moricadia (isn't this the country that Anne Hathaway became princess of?) somewhere in the Pyrenees, where everyone's name is familiar, just spelled strangely or with a letter missing (Danel, Zakarie) in the midst of a revolution Raul is leading to regain his family's royal rule, sparks fly and the two find themselves, of all the crazy things, falling in love. Guess who admits it first. Hint: it's not the man.The all-important doing-it scenes were frequent enough but somewhat creepy in character. Raul was bent on "seducing" Victoria to the point that she would come to his bed of her own accord. I find it distasteful to refer to sex as "seduction," as in the following passage:"As night fell, he had seduced her. Then he fed her bread and cheese and wine, and seduced her once again."The bathtub scene was enjoyable, and overall I found their banter not completely repulsive, which is more than I can say for most banter (e.g., Fifty Shades). Raul was a character of many personas: saber, wolf, dragon. I liked the dragon the best, and more could have been done with this under-utilized image. One of the best moments was this, which I will end with:"Kissing Raul was like kissing a dragon, the warm brush of flame in Victoria's mouth, in her veins, in her womb."And if that's not love, I don't know what is. For me, this book really is a 4.5 star book. I probably will not re-read it (I have too many new books on my TBR pile) and that is the only thing that keeps this from being a 5 star book. I loved all the characters in the book. There were some EXTREMELY funny parts between, Hero, SHero, and a character called Danel. The author managed to surprise me with an unexpected villianous character. I'm very glad I purchased this book-it was a wonderful read!
What do You think about Taken By The Prince (2011)?
The romance was great but the story was weak and some of the dialog was unreal.
—LyiLy
not yet available at bpl as of Oct 15, 2012
—johanmani
