im not sure i can finish this book, im half way through and i find it just ewwww! this could be the very first book i start and dont finish! its a shame because i like tiffany claire... ok i finished this book.... im simi happy i did as it would has stayed on my mind until i did. it turned out ok, def not one of my favs.. wont pick it up again and wont search it out for my own collection but different from what i read on a regular basis.. i know a lot of people loved this but in all honesty i just thought it was horrible.The starting premise works well and the horrors of the slave trade are brought home in spades. My real problem was that I could not stand Amir. He was just vile. And yet, we are told time and again how much the heroine must learn to respect and adore him; how wonderful he is; how grateful she is to him; how well he looks after her son; how she must do what ever he wants; how she is desperate to return to him;how she grovels at his feet; how he tells her that her upset upon return can only be dealt with by giving herself on the auction block, how she is so overwhelmed by his generosity when he frees her yada yada ya....i wanted to vomit.Lets be honest, this is a man who has her bought at a slave market; locks her up in his harem as his latest slave sex toy; has sex with her despite her distress; makes it clear to her from the outset that he will sell her to other men; he grooms her for this process by exposing her to public sex and allowing other men to touch her intimately and then tops it all with having her publicly stripped naked and auctioned to a different man once a year for periods at a time; he holds her son over her; and kidnaps her back indicating that he is going to sell her at the auction immediately (all for her own good). UGH!!This man is a slave owning manipulative pimp who trades in women who have no choice and no way out. The lack of insight into the reality of the character was just disturbing. Also Elena's refusal to accept her first rescue and her insistence that she was Jinan the harem slave girl was simply incomprehensible. I could understand that she may have experienced problems with the transition but she behaved as if she had never had another life and had no point of reference to which to return. quite frankly she was just TSTL. she is so emersed that even at the epilogue she is known as Jinan and not Elena. This was just nonsensical. She is married to a marquise, has a titled son of her own and if she wanted them to have any quality of life she would have taken her proper name back. we are told repeatedly that she is doing this for her son but Jonathon was the son of an English Baron and it was hard to believe it was in his best interests to grow up in a harem where his mother was a sex slave. It wasn't exactly going to help him get to school, retrieve his estate and take his title etc. Also he was a totally absent figure in the book as although we have the stupid h crying for him all over the place, he is never an actual presence in the book and appears in only passing reference.The romance between the h & h rang hollow. They have a brief history together which just comes across as superficial and they make no real attempt to actually talk to each other. the hero is a opium dealing a hole, although i found my sympathies lay more with him in the second part of the book as I just wanted to wack the heroine.The whole thing was generally based on sex (a lot of it) and not much else. even the language bugged me. i really hated this.
What do You think about The Surrender Of A Lady (2010)?
I really loved this book. I couldn't put it down and spent the last two chapters in tears.
—Nav
Kept me hooked and was quite different than the usual historicals. Adored the cover!
—allykristine14
A gently-reared Englishwoman serving as a harem girl? Love it!
—MaryR
I've always enjoyed stories in this setting :)
—calcih
