Another Classic: Captive Bride by Johanna Lindsey

I don't know exactly how I feel about Johanna Lindsey. I find that it takes her characters too long to get it on and when they finally do, it's limited to only a couple of instances or she resorts to the 'fade to black' device. I believe the goal of romance is to give it all. While as a writer you do have to tickle the imagination of the reader, people these days are just too tired to conjure up what happens after the curtains have been drawn, the door closed,etc. I like my romance given. I want specific instructions. And I want plenty of passion, sex and fire between the romantic leads. Entertain me!

I have more than a couple of Johanna Lindseys and frankly, if someone wants them, I won't hesitate to give them all away. But my friends aren't huge fans of Lindsey either, so it's gonna be a while before someone takes these books. The first Lindsey sheikh romance I read wasn't from my bookshelf as well, but my sister's.

 

Captive Bride is Lindsey's first book, if I'm not mistaken. I won't be nitpicking the writing for the moment. What makes this quite different from her subsequent books is that there's a good number of sex scenes by comparison. That's one plus because frankly, this book bats negative all the way. 

Characters

Christina Wakefield and Philip Caxton a.k.a. Sheik Abu

Plot
Christina Wakefield is a goddess come to earth. Philip Caxton wants her. She rebuffs him. So he hatches this plan that  brings her to Egypt to be abducted and to be brought into his desert encampment. In his robes and around horses, he's not Philip Caxton but Sheik Abu, barbarian and thief.

Gripes
Phillip is no Alpha male but actually comes off as a sociopath. The man's got no guilt, no conscience. Here's a list of his transgressions:

abduction

beatings

rape
if he isn't saying bullshit like "your body was made for love" he threatens her.

he's alive (and thank God, only in this book)

Christina is no good either. How can she stand being around this dick?  You know it's a bad romance when you go, "Man! Oh, yeah!" when Christina stabs Philip. She should've aimed lower.

Philip cements his top spot in the Dick Hall of Fame by insisting that it won't be rape between them. I don't care how you say it, package and wrap it in shit but when a woman says, yells, shouts, No, it sure as hell ain't yes. Rape is rape. 

EVERYONE SCREAMS! EVERYONE! AAAH! 

Goes into the Kasbah or Cast Out?

Out. Out. Out.

Here's A Golden Oldie: The Sheik's Captive by Violet Winspear

Much has been said about the popularity of sheikh and desert romances. It's a genre in which opinion doesn't swing to great extremes, alternating between revulsion and plain confusion. People often forget that one of the aims of romance is to provide escape from reality. And there's nothing wrong with hopping on the dream plane every now and then. We need to entertain ourselves, and if it involves some two hundred pages about swarthy desert Alpha males, then why not?

I have to say that this Violet Winspear-helmed romance (uh-huh, she of the writing her males as "capable of rape") will always be special (though I think she's nuts). She gave me my first swarthy desert Alpha male, after all.

Characters
Sheikh Khasim ben Haran and Diane Ronay

Plot

Our heroine gets thrown off her horse and ends up crawling her way to the Sahara until our desert hero comes her way. She's given water, is rescued, plunked on the divan. Standard hospitality, so far so good. Then the big reveal: Diane is the granddaughter of the man who massacred Khasim's tribe, his mother among the victims. Khasim then thinks to keep her and terrorize her grandfather about all the unthinkables he'd be doing to her.

And did he?

*SPOILER ALERT*
Except for two instances that had them horizontal and him "wandering the soft hollows and curves" (i.e., boobs) and when he was "at the very gates of her innocence," this Harlequin romance is pretty GP.

Best Line

"I should hope I've more sense than to behave like a frustrated nitwit out of a novelette!"

I Like Her and I Also Don't Like Her

Diane really fights Khasim. Among the women of the many sheikh romances I've read, she's pretty up there when it comes to keeping her head on her shoulders and absolutely refuses to be swept away. But then she does an about-face. Ah, love. The extremes we're driven to.

Goes into the Kasbah or Cast Out:
I'm keeping this one. Flowery language aside, this book is pretty decent.