Judith’s review of Reckless Night by Lisa Marie Rice.
What do you give your beautiful wife when you have all the money in the world and can’t spend any of it?
Victor ‘Drake’ Drakovitch used to run a criminal empire, but he gave it all up for the woman he loves. Grace, an accomplished artist, abandoned the life she knew in order to be with the one man she could never live without.
Exiled to an island far from their former lives, the stay safe from the watchful eye of Drake’s many enemies. This Christmas, Drake wants to show Grace how much her sacrifice means. But what can he give a woman who shuns gold jewelry and diamonds, furs and expensive cars? Grace doesn’t want fancy things; she wants what Drake can give her—unquestioning devotion, fierce protection… and the best sex a woman has ever had. Until danger strikes and Grace realizes that the best gift of all is a dangerous husband.
Novellas are not my “thing” and I don’t think I noticed that this was a novella when I got the advanced copy from Net Galleys. That being said, the author is one whose work I had not previously read and now I am glad I got this short work. I have even gone back and purchased the preceding book in order to get the original story of Drake and Grace.
Grace is an artist, one who takes notice of the seemingly insignificant things we all take for granted: the look of a hand on a table, the droop of a flower, the contrast between animate and inanimate objects. Living secluded and private lives as they do, these two people know that their very lives rest on keeping “under the radar” of Drake’s old enemies. And the love that binds these two is so strong that Drake has essentially given up his lucrative criminal livelihood in order to protect the woman who has come to mean everything to him.
Now we could all get hung up on the fact that this guy is one of the bad ones, or we can look beyond what he was to what he is now–a careful, caring, loving, protective husband whose wife is the center of his world. The home and environment they have created together is marked indelibly with Grace’s flare for art and beauty, and is an expression of their love for one another. She has accepted that rather than live in a “normal” world with its hustle and bustle, she has chosen to love and live with the man who has stolen her heart.
This love story is just that . . . set in a small and private world that few of us can even imagine. Yet this is a man who wants to give freely to express his love but knows that even if he could give Grace her weight in precious gems, it would mean almost nothing to her. It seems to me that the gist of this very short tale is the spirit of giving, the expression of love that is most telling, the fact that spending time together rather than material “stuff” can well be the most wonderful gift. There’s lots to learn from these two–the author doesn’t take a whole lot of time developing the characters since that has been done in their original story, Dangerous Passion. Rather, the bulk of the story is about the gift exchange between these two and what lies behind it.
I found the story fascinating and felt as if I had a glimpse of this man and woman’s souls, of the passion that never seemed to grow old, and the fearless protectiveness that they felt for each other. And while I seldom give novellas a very high rating–they are just so short–I am going to hopefully reflect my conviction that the writing and the intensity of this short work are worthy of a better rating than I would normally give: 4 out of 5.
You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.
This book is available from Avon Impulse. You can buy it here and here in e-format.
Dangerous Passion is one of my fave books. Looking forward to this one. Thanks for the peak.