Helpful Score: 8
A very unusual romance novel with atypical characters and situation. The hero is scarred and married to someone else and the heroine is a prostitute (sort of) and an accused murderer. If these ingredients don't sound very romantic, they aren't. However you have to read the story to find out why you should root for them and why nothing is as it seems.
The Secret Pearl is romantic and drawn out with carefully paced moments of tenderness and angst. It is a slow burning story. This is one of those books that sticks with you. The characters are two people who are really ruined in so many ways. They are victims of circumstance and perhaps their own desire to be upstanding (an adulterer doesn't sound upstanding, but read the story and it will all make sense).
As for steaminess, not so much. Balogh is more interested in telling the story of the falling in love not the making love.
The reviewer who said the hero rapes the heroine at the start of the book is exaggerating. This is NOT one of those books where the hero is a rapist and we're supposed to root for him. I'm not saying the heroine liked the situation, but she was there voluntarily and he certainly wasn't using force. Don't let that review mislead you.
The Secret Pearl is romantic and drawn out with carefully paced moments of tenderness and angst. It is a slow burning story. This is one of those books that sticks with you. The characters are two people who are really ruined in so many ways. They are victims of circumstance and perhaps their own desire to be upstanding (an adulterer doesn't sound upstanding, but read the story and it will all make sense).
As for steaminess, not so much. Balogh is more interested in telling the story of the falling in love not the making love.
The reviewer who said the hero rapes the heroine at the start of the book is exaggerating. This is NOT one of those books where the hero is a rapist and we're supposed to root for him. I'm not saying the heroine liked the situation, but she was there voluntarily and he certainly wasn't using force. Don't let that review mislead you.
This is the last book I needed to read to complete my Summer Reading Challenge. I AVOIDED this book and left if for last because it has adultery in it. I don't enjoy reading about adultery at all, but somehow, Mary Balogh makes it work. This book is very intense, it is a story about a hero and heroine that, have yet to catch a break, that is until an encounter with each other one night. The story starts off with a bang, and then moves a little slow. The story soon picks up and the writer does an excellent job of showing the spirit of the main characters. The journey for Adam and Fleur's love was a HARD road to go down, and I wondered how on earth Mary Balogh was going to give this story a Happy Ending. Despite that hard road, each brief encounter between the two proves to build up tension, and the realization that they were soulmates. As Jerry Maguire put it, They completed each other. I highly recommend this book. It's deep, but very well worth the time invested reading about this forbidden love.
Helpful Score: 6
Mary Balogh's The Secret Pearl starts off with an emotional wallop with the "brutal deflowering" of the destitute and starving heroine by the "hero." This is a book where the hero basically rapes the heroine and yet is NOT the villian of the story-- the villian is described as being worse. I could not fathom how these two could ever have anything like a HEA ending and it was that curiousity that kept me reading, but Balogh managed to pull it off, just barely. I think it's a testimony to her writing chops that I didn't throw the book even once, though there were countless in the plot where a lesser writer would have blown the whole thing to smithereens. This was not a happy book, despite the happy ending.
Helpful Score: 3
What a beautiful story. My heart ached for Adam who is so noble and always trys to do the right thing.He is so often handed lemons in his life and still makes lemonade. The characters are well fleshed out and there is humor in this often heart-wrenching story. I esp liked the relationship between the duke and his valet. The irreverent retorts that only a long time employee/friend could get away with are very funny.
Helpful Score: 1
Oh so lovely!!! Hated to read the last page. Delicious, indeed!
