Guest Review: Promise of Pleasure by Cheryl Holt

He is Jordan Winthrop, scoundrel, viscount, and desperately bankrupt heir to the Earl of Sunderland. He’s also meant for Mary’s half sister. Thrilled by his advances, intoxicated by their secret affair, Mary finds herself falling for a man who’s already unmistakably engaged—to her sister’s dowry. As for Jordan, he can’t help but wonder if Mary is the woman to change his roguish ways—when he is spellbound in a sensual destiny spiraling beyond his control.

Wicked stepmother? Two selfish, self-centered, probably wicked stepsisters? Sounds strangely familiar, doesn’t it? So I thought when I began this book and I am still convinced that Holt has taken the framework, or at least the beginnings of the framework of the Cinderella story and turned it into a very good historical romance. Jordan is a true rake!! He is just about as decadent as they come. He cares little for anyone but his own self and lives to make his father as angry and miserable and disappointed in him as possible. He even brings his reprobate friend and his mistress to the country estate where he is supposedly getting to know Mary’s half sister, Felicity, with the express purpose of marrying her, making her a viscountess, and depositing Felicity’s very large dowry in the bank He doesn’t like the Barnes family, he really despises Victoria, Mary’s stepmother, is bored nearly to death by the people and ways of the country and has brought his mistress along to “entertain” him during the boring month that lay ahead. Nice guy!! But so it went in the ton of that day. Victoria wants a title for her daughter, cares absolutely nothing for Mary, has used her as a servant and “whipping boy” for most of Mary’s life, and cheated Mary out of her inheritance in favor of her spoiled and vaccuous daughters. Not nice people!!

Mary has always dreamed of, or at least hoped for a home of her own, children, a comfortable life with a comfortable husband. She has had a quiet, if not secret “understanding” with a neighbor gentleman who refuses to marry her until his mother dies. She is well and truly stuck. Jordan is attracted to her because he has enough sense to recognize that all is not as it should be with this older sister and he is also seeking some diversion with persons of the female persuasion. The relationship with his mistress is wearing a little thin; Mary is unknown, uncharted territory. Mary’s life has been difficult at best, but her heart was safe. With Jordan that is no longer true, and I have to own up to being quite emotionally involved with these characters before the end is in sight.

This is a somewhat complicated novel and is not going to be one of those stories that can be gobbled up in short order. The characters are complicated, the story line is complicated, the conflicts are many and multi-layered. But Holt seems to have the writing ability to keep this story moving forward and there are twists and turns enough that the reader is surprised and the interest level maintained. There is redemption here and it is rather nice to see not only Jordan maturing but watching Mary deal with life’s blows and her family’s cruelty without losing a sense of herself. There is romance aplenty in these pages—Jordan has made a career of bedding women—but there is genuine caring and, might I say, justice to be seen here. There is a sense of “what goes around comes around” before it is all over.