ashwednesday

Relationship wasn’t a dirty word. Nothing to be afraid of.

Not like it was monogamy.

Finally a 4!

So the mystery of who beat up Lady Natasha was resolved, rather disappointingly I might add, but then this series really didn’t pose itself as a romantic-suspense novella. This of course effectively dissolves Lance’s role as Nora’s bodyguard, along with the stipulations Kingsley made which expectedly translates to a lot of kinky banging. Nora and Lance's Sunday afternoon of bliss however gets the requisite interruption from their polar realities: Soren and Lance’s daughter.

In all of Reisz one hundred eighty-seven novellas from this series, my standing favourite has been The Gift but then it was also the first novella I read of hers right around the time I finished reading The Prince. Daniel was an intriguing character, not necessarily in the same league as Kingsley and Soren but one who I can believe Eleanor to foster fond feelings for. It takes a lot for me now to be convinced of Nora’s chemistry with anyone else from Soren and Lance suffers from that syndrome unfortunately. I do wonder often if Nora’s fascination of him is more akin to someone visiting the circus for the first time. 

Most of the novellas written by Reisz between The White and Red Years depicts Nora’s discontented heart, finding shelter with someone that offers something completely different from the lure of Soren’s. And it was presented in a chronological spectrum that goes closer and closer to what is full-blown vanilla: from Daniel, to Lance, to finally, Wesley (there are other men in between of course, but those are the ones I only read of). If it’s purely her adventurous spirit or her version of selfless love freeing herself from Soren out of her love for him, perhaps I’ll never know. But here, I’m glad she was more fully-formed as the latter than the former.

”That was just sex.”
“Say that again, I might believe you.”
“It. Was.Just. Sex.”
He raised his chin and looked down at her. With his eyes narrowed, he said softly, “No… still don’t believe you.”

It’s the kind of love that hurts and heals in endless permutations. The kind that makes me regret the long wait for the next book after The Saint.