Good erotic historicals are illusive finds. Too often they’re bogged down in a non-stop sex-a-thon. Charlotte Featherstone’s novel however is anythingGood erotic historicals are illusive finds. Too often they’re bogged down in a non-stop sex-a-thon. Charlotte Featherstone’s novel however is anything but and there’s even a story! And it’s good! And I’m in shock because it’s an erotic historical 8-). After having bought “Addicted” I buried it waaay down Mt TBR wondering why in the world I picked it up to begin with given the nature of the story. Well good thing I did because it packed the kind of well-written emotional wallop that isn’t often found in books and especially in erotica. Mind you, this book isn’t exactly “erotica”, but it’s an extra spiced up version of a good historical that’s typical of Spice books. No raunch-o-rama just a good dose of borderline explicit sex that’s well-placed and not just chucked in pell mell here there and everywhere.
So, the story: it’s starts out with Lindsay who happens to be a serious opium addict and delves into his feelings for his best friend Anais. Both come from aristocratic families so certain things are expected of them. They’ve been friends since they were kids and over the years they’ve fallen in love but neither really wants to tell the other until “one fateful night” that sets the love story in motion. Anais has a nasty b—for a friend who throws their world into a squalid corner of hell and it’s the road out of this hell that the story is centered around. Before all that the reader is introduced to Lindsay as an opium smoker reveling in his addiction and it’s here that the author’s talent just shines.
My initial problem prior to reading this book was that the hero was a drug addict and for me a drug addict has no control so he couldn’t possibly be a strong alpha hero and I don’t like betas or namby pamby victim heroes for that matter. Soooo, I mistakenly thought that this book would be about the heroine having to save the wishy washy druggie hero. Well not quite. The author brilliantly describes how the hero becomes addicted by making the drug seem so enticing and inviting but all the while you think (like the hero) that it’s more of a recreational use than anything else. His drug addiction is woven into the love story and mirrors the different stages of the relationship, something that must be very very hard to do as an author because it’s like fitting the pieces of a jagged puzzle together to paint a clear picture that you’ll never actually see. This picture smacks you in the face though time and time again.
Now you might be thinking, I still don’t want to read a book about a drug addict, well the addiction is a backdrop for the most part and the rollercoaster ride of the relationship between the h/h is what’s at the forefront. Some horrible, horrible things happen to these two that will just stain your soul and leave you feeling OMG drained beyond belief because what you think will happen doesn’t and my hat’s off to the author for going against the grain here and not making everything picture perfect. It’s also a good lesson in the importance of communication because so many bad things can happen when no one says anything. What could’ve turned into the dreaded “big misunderstanding” morphs into something that just makes your skin crawl and it’s done surprisingly well. That’s not to say that there’s no HEA for those of you who freak out if the romance novel is HEA-less ;-) but not everything gets fixed up and prettied which is what makes it so emotionally challenging to get through. As Lindsay spirals into his addiction and desperately tries to get clean you just can’t help but scream out “why is the author doing this to him! Fix it dammit!” because that’s what authors are supposed to do in romance books right ;-) Very refreshing to get a different twist on that angle let me tell you. There are parts that will likely make you cry for their bittersweet beauty and others because they’re just so flippin’ heartbreaking. If you like Megan Hart’s contemporaries that suck the life right of you making you want to drown yourself in scads of Katie MacAlister/Sandra Hill/Julia Quinn-the-world-is-a-bright-and beautiful-place novels right after to find some “balance” again (lol!), then you’ll love Charlotte Featherstone’s historical version. You feel so spent when you’re done and every once in a while, I for one, need a good book like that.
The writing style is very good. It’s vivid (I can still “see” what happened), haunting and at times breathtakingly sensual. The steam scenes are well-done especially towards the end where you could nearly feel the sticky, sweaty humidity in the room as the two of them take a whirl at the horizontal mambo. The tragedies that happen to the h/h are disturbing and will bleed you dry emotionally leaving the reader completely exhausted –but in a good way :D
So why not 5 stars when everything seems really good? Well..... Is Lindsay more of an alpha than a beta? I don't know, it's hard to say --and that certainly speaks volumes. Was Anais an idiot? Yes, um wait, no. Are the secrets predictable? I don't know but I certainly went bug-eyed when they were revealed! It's the story as a whole that's well-told here making things that appear typical on the surface really quite difficult to categorize and treat as black and white ---oh those nasty shades of grey that make you pull out your hair and frustrate the reader (again in a good way--lol!) !!! 4.5 stars for me only because I still need my shot of the black and white take charge alpha hero somewhere in the end ;-) ...more
Why do erotic historicals more often than not have to be seeped in a dark and depressing misery? It seems to be that they all have something sordid abWhy do erotic historicals more often than not have to be seeped in a dark and depressing misery? It seems to be that they all have something sordid about them and this one is no different. What is different is that while the others have a non-stop sex-athon with various “what the ** ?!?” acrobatics and a modicum of story, this one stays stuck in the same place for over 300 pages. The plot just doesn’t move.
I had so much hope for this novel, thinking that I’d like it even better than Featherstone’s Addicted. Matthew, the Earl of Wallingford, is a jaded rake who cares for no one except himself, but he has a secret past that made him into the man he has become. Emotionally he's horefrost and your basic use-‘em-and-lose-‘em mean sobofabitch kinda guy towards women in general. That’s the teaser you pretty much get from “Addicted” making you itch to read his story in “Sinful”. The novel starts out well enough with Matthew meeting Jane the plain spinster heroine at the hospital where he ends up after being beaten. Unfortunately it started to nosedive from there on in with this left-field lust-fest between the two. There’s no tension building at all so you can’t really appreciate this “need” that the two have for each other. If the author had tried to pull it off as just a physical thing then I probably could’ve bought it, but because she was trying to aim for some emotional plane it wasn’t believable because they had only just met and barely spoke to each other. Sure she nursed him for a day or so but she was hardly being nurse-like what with wanting to check out and play with his weenie and all which of course didn’t match her proper character either.
As the pages go by you realize that nothing is happening and everything is just being repeated. He’s a jaded rake, he wants her, she’s a spinster, she wants him, he is bad, she is good, it's intense (!), fondle here, fondle there, he tells her to get away because he is so bad, she tells him he is a good soul deep down, cue fondle/intense moment. That’s it. Nothing else happens. They’re stuck, so for me this book needed some major editing. There are some parts that are sad, like when he sees Jane for the first time or when he talks about his life, there are also a few OMG surprises but all this isn’t sustained and it’s gets to be a case of too little too late.
I was surprised with how the author handled the end and even without an epilogue I thought it was fine. Frankly the epilogue (which you have to read on the author’s website because there was no more room to stick it in the book apparently) killed the book even more for me because everything was peachy pretty and la-di-da nice –you could practically see the lovely butterflies flitting about –gag, gag, gag! Sure you want the HEA but there’s no need to go overboard already. It was like the author was saying “yes it was such a depressing read I know so here’s the sweetest sugar and stickiest syrup to make up for it —dig in!” The writing style didn’t seem to match the book and it felt forced or shoved onto the reader, it was also too long with more of that sex for sex.
Featherstone paints a good picture but the problem here was the lack of development in story and the repetition. It was as if she didn’t know what to do with the characters apart from saying how miserably depressed (and depressing) they were, how sexually proficient he was but she wasn’t and how not so attractive she was. Yeah, and? Usually the author makes the heroine attractive somehow even if she is plain but Jane seemed like a scarecrow to me from start to finish. Some parts of the story didn’t make sense like Matthew’s mentally handicapped sister who a few years later seems "well-enough" to have someone court her. What the?!? Everybody had to get their HEA I guess. Also having the heroine call this bear of a man “Matty” in the throes of sex just didn’t work for me. Sounded like what you’d call a child. The only thing sexy about Matthew was the artist’s depiction of him on the cover (the book gets a 5 star keeper shelf spot for that alone :D ) . He does nothing in life, doesn’t want any kind of power and is a borderline loser. The author could’ve played up his painting side a bit more to give him some kind of grounding. There’s nothing appealing about him especially since he’s just like a grey cloud over everything. The sexy alpha Earl of Wallingford from “Addicted” just never cut it in his own story.
The first hundred pages are just almost-sex without story, the next two hundred are a repetition of the first one hundred with more focus on the misery that’s also repeated 12 000 times. The characters are intriguing, even the secondary ones, but some of the things they do/say are outright stupid and there are just too many extremes all the time making the reader roll their eyes at the absurdity of the situation. 2.5 stars is about the best I can give this read. On to the keeper shelf it goes though right beside Dawn Thompson’s Lord of the Deep–another dud of a read but a mighty fine piece of exceptional eye candy nonetheless ;p ...more