Stranger
He wears a mask…and he is following her. Staring at her like no other man since Colin. But Colin is dead and Amelia believes she will never again shiver with pleasure, never again sigh his name.
Lover
Until her masked pursuer lures her into a moonlit garden and a single, reckless kiss. Now she is obsessed with discovering his identity. Perfectly attuned to his every desire, his every thought, she will not stop until she knows his every secret.
NetGalley
A PASSION FOR HIM
by Sylvia Day
Kensington/Brava
January 29, 2012
275 Pages, Paperback, E-Book, Audio
Sylvia Day's forthcoming A PASSION FOR HIM reissue, out from Kensington Brava at the end of this month, is dressed up in a cover that reminds me of the covers Kensington is using for all of Sylvia's books following the resounding success of her Crossfire Novels. But, this is not a Crossfire Novel. It's a sort of Georgian Romance filled with Pirates, Earls, Gypsies and the virginal daughter of a hanged pirate. That would be Amelia. Amelia's sister, Maria is also a piratish person and suspected of killing her first two husbands.
Amelia is attracted to a striking figure of a man at an event, at which event she is accompanied by and arranging a marriage to an Earl. An Earl who seems to be a friend to all these Pirates (perhaps they were the crown-sanctioned type of pirates known as Privateers). At one of the endless round of parties, balls, and masquerades (so exhausting) she sees a guy looking at her. He's well built and mysterious, but his face is mostly hidden from view. She is really drawn to him and eventually pursues him until,...
Turns out she had guarded childhood because her father was this evil man who kept her guarded all the time. Not so guarded she couldn't sneak around to tryst with this gypsy-stableboy-footman who dies. She thought. This is all mixed up in the kind of espionage-paid assassination that England and France were supposed to have been caught up in. Lot's of daggers and swirling capes. There's a lot going on in this novel.
Now the Earl, he wants to marry her. Even knowing she was in love with this other guy and hasn't forgotten him. Never mind that as the daughter-sister-sister in law to pirates, this Earl wants to marry her! They do not have a passionate love for each other but he assures her she will like sex with him. Then he runs off for a tryst with his current mistress. Oh well, the Georgians -- I guess those were wild times of drinking, loosened stays and rouged nipples.
In that way, the book breaks new ground. After all Goergian women were the currency of the nobility. So, if you want to ignore the whole "WTF" of the book it is, in general, okay. It is descriptive and non-expository. It is NOT, thank heavens, told from the first person POV. Sometimes Sylvia's writing is lovely, stunning even. And then, at others the prose is so over the top that at the height of passion for the couple engaged in, as Amelia calls it at one point, sexual congress, it made me laugh and read the passage to my husband who said, "That's terrible."
Sadly, I failed to mark the passage. But, I would be remiss if I didn't say how the book is uneven in this way. Having said that I must also say the book is completely unlike other books by Sylvia. It certainly demonstrates her versatility. If you enjoy steamy, unlikely Georgian romance then this may be something for you.
AMAZON
BARNES AND NOBLE
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