Reviewer: Tracy The Dark Affair by Maire Claremont
Series: Mad Passions #3
Also in this series: The Dark Lady (Mad Passions, #1)
Publisher: Signet
Publication Date: February 2nd 2013
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Series Rating:
Lady Margaret Cassidy left a life of nobility behind in Ireland, forsaking her grieving homeland to aid war-ravaged men in England. Still, she never expected a cruel turn of fate to lock her into an unwanted betrothal with one of her English patients—much less one as broken and dangerous as Viscount Powers.
Wrecked by his tragic past, Powers’ opiate-addled sanity hangs precariously in the balance, leaving him poised to destroy anyone who dares to utter the names of the wife and child he still so deeply mourns. So when he is forced to marry Margaret in exchange for freedom, he is shocked by the desire to earn her trust, her body, and—most alarming of all—her heart….
Tracy’s review of The Dark Affair (Mad Passions #3) by Maire Claremont
Margaret is a woman who has spent most of her adult life helping people rehab from drug addiction. She’s now been hired by an earl to help his son get off of the opiates he’s addicted to. When the earl makes a deal with Margaret to marry his son so that he can take him out of the asylum but still have him under her care, she agrees but only because she wants to help her brother who is a wanted man.
Margaret helps people detox and then deal with the underlying reasons that they were taking the drugs in the first place. With James it’s because he is grieving over the deaths of his wife and two year old daughter. It’s been years but he still blames himself as well as his father. Margaret must make him see that he can deal with the pain without the drugs. Margaret herself has never dealt with the pain of her childhood living in a famine stricken Ireland and she soon realizes that she can’t really heal James until she heals herself as well.
This was a very dark and different kind of romance. It was highly emotional and dealt with subjects such as the Potato Famine in Ireland as well as the poverty ridden streets of the East End of London. Nothing was taboo and it was stark and kind of in the readers face. The drug addiction issue was also highly volatile and made for a strange romance. I wasn’t all that happy that it seemed that James amazingly detoxed faster than anyone Margaret had worked with. I realize the book was only so long but it didn’t seem to mesh with the reality that the story was attempting to relay.
The romance in the book was touching but seemed sudden and I couldn’t quite feel the emotion between the two MC’s. I felt the lust – there was no lack of that – but I’m not sure I fully believed the pair was falling in love. I almost felt that James had fallen in love with his savior and that felt a little wrong to me.
Despite that I liked the writing in the book and enjoyed reading the entirety of the story.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
This title is available from Signet. You can buy it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
