Reviewer: Holly The Spaniard's Defiant Virgin by Jennie Lucas
Publisher: Harlequin
Publication Date: May 1st 2008
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 192
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In his Spanish castillo Marcos Ramirez has been planning his retribution for the Winter family…. And now it's time.
Marcos will take Tamsin and destroy her family. But Tamsin isn't the hedonistic society girl he expected. She's beautiful and courageous—bedding her will be sweet. And it's then that Marcos realizes Tamsin's a virgin, and innocent of all she's been accused of!
I’ve been a fan of Harlequin Presents novels for years, but here’s the thing with them: 95% of the time you have to suspend all disbelief in order to believe in the stories and the HEA’s. I’m more than willing (and totally able) to do that when reading these. Sometimes the stories work better for me than others, and this one definitely worked, as long as I went ahead and suspended all disbelief right from the beginning.
Tamsin is all set to marry the wealthy nephew of a desert Sheik to save her younger sister from her half-brother and his evil wife. Though she doesn’t want the marriage – and is in fact terrified of her future husband because of rumors that he killed his first wife by beating her to death – she’s determined to go through with it for the sake of her sister. When Marcos kidnaps her on her wedding day, she’s determined to find a way to escape and go forward with the wedding.
20 years ago Tamsin’s family ruined Marcos’, and he’s been planning his revenge ever since. By keeping her from marrying her fiance, Marcos is effectively ruining any chance of their nearly bankrupt company becoming solvent again, plus he’ll have the added bonus of bedding her archenemy’s wild, party-girl sister. But Tamsin keeps surprising him at every turn, and it isn’t long before he’s more concerned with keeping her in his bed than exacting revenge on his long time enemy. But even the lure of Tamsin can’t distract him from his plans and they both realize there will be no life for them together with Marcos’ secrets and vengeance between them.
Like I said above, I really had to suspend disbelief to buy that Tamsin and Marcos fell for each other (or into each other, anyway) so quickly after he kidnaps her, but once I was able to move on from that I really liked this story.
Tamsin started out somewhat weak, but by the end of the story she’d really grown into her own and her inner strength really shown through. I like that she didn’t shy from telling Marcos how she really felt and wasn’t afraid to stand up for what she knew to be right.
Marcos’ was an interesting character. When the story first started out, he seemed cold and dark, but as the story progressed we came to see that he was actually rather vulnerable and his internal struggle really touched me. I did find myself getting rather annoyed with him towards the end of the novel when he still refused to see what was right in front of him, but I think the author did a credible job of explaining why he was the way he was, so I was able to forgive him.
I especially liked that the villain’s of the piece get what they deserve in the end. But then, I’m bloodthirsty like that.
Overall the storyline was kind of unbelievable, but the characters made up for it.
4.0 out of 5
This book is available from Harlequin Presents. You can buy it here or here in e-format.