Review: My Forbidden Desire by Carolyn Jewel

Posted August 17, 2010 by Casee in Reviews | 0 Comments

Genres: Paranormal Romance

Casee‘s review of My Forbidden Desire (My Series, Book 2) by Carolyn Jewel.

Alexandrine Marit is a witch in mortal danager. An evil mage craves the powerful, mysterious talisman that supplies her magic, and the only person who can keep her alive is a dark and dangerous fiend called Xia. With his fierce animosity toward witches, he’s hardly the ideal bodyguard. Yet as days turn into nights, she can’t deny the white-hot passion between them.

Xia hates witches. They enslave and mercilessly kill his kind. But he’s been ordered to protect Alexandrine, who, to his surprise, has a spirit he admires and a body he longs to possess. With the mage and his henchmen closing in, Alexandrine and her protector must trust the passion that can unite them . . . or risk losing everything to the enemies who can destroy them both.

In all the hoopla about Carolyn Jewel’s historical novels, I forgot how much I enjoyed her paranormals. Or paranormal. Singular. For some reason, after I read My Wicked Enemy (which I really liked), I didn’t pick up My Forbidden Desire. I had an ARC of it and everything. In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t b/c good lord, it’s been a long wait between books in this series. This book was released in mid-2009. The next book is set to be released early 2011. Like I said; a long wait, yo.

As I started reading this book, everything started coming back to me. It’s actually the first time I actually read the glossary that’s at the front of the book. It helped that said glossary was only two short pages. So I started remembering magekind and mageheld. Mageheld bad. Lots of kin don’t like witches which brings us to our current situi-mation. Alexandrine opened up a huge can of worms when she decided to go looking for her father in Turkey. She picked up an amulet that her loving psycho father wants. Now the brother she thought was dead is back in the picture and he has a bodyguard for her. A bodyguard that hates witches. Translated: hates her.

Once mageheld, Xia has now sworn fealty to Nikodemus. That means that he can’t kill the witch that he’s supposed to protect. What Xia finds out after he shows up at Alexandrine’s house is that he has more reason to hate her; her father is the mage that held him captive for so many years. The fact that Xia is now sworn to protect the offspring of the mage he has sworn to protect is so out there that even Xia fails to see the irony. He just wants to kill Alexandrine.

Alexandrine is a witch, but not a powerful one. The most power she has is the power of premonition. She understands why Xia is taking his hatred of witches out on her, even why he would take his hatred of her father out on her. It’s still hard for Alexandrine to take since she has been nothing but “good” for her entire life.

After a few days spent in Alexandrine’s company, Xia grudgingly admits to himself that she’s doesn’t seem to be evil like the witches he’s know from the past. Which turns into a good thing since weird things start happening when they’re together. Now it’s Xia and Alexandrine against the world and it’s not nearly as horrible as Xia thought it would be. Alexandrine is still is a witch, something that Xia can’t easily get past.

When Alexandrine’s father gets his hands on Xia again, she knows that she can not let him make Xia mageheld. Going into the lion’s den with nothing but her wits and a warlord that hates her, Alexandrine is prepared to die for the man she loves; the man she knows will never love her. Alexandrine makes the ultimate sacrifice knowing absolutely that she will not be getting anything in the end. It was freaking amazing.

As for Xia, he wanted to kill her at the beginning at the book. At the end, he would have died for her.

4.5 out of 5.

This book is available from Forever. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

The series:

Book CoverBook Cover


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