As Old Skool romances go, this one wasn't all that bad. On the other hand it never reached the exalted So Bad It's Good level I was so hoping for.This is the third book in a series I hadn't read before. Thankfully the first few chapters give an adequate outline of who is who and what is what so I had a basic idea of the story so far. Anything I didn't get wasn't important enough to worry about. What is boils down to is we're following the adventures of squeally Wren van der Rhys. The story starts in England where Wren has been kicked out of finishing school because she mistakenly believes she's in love with, and is loved back by, Malcolm Weatherly. At this point I'll be generous and not label Wren as TSTL and instead chalk it up to her being extremely young and inexperienced.Wren's adoptive parents see Malcolm for the gold digger he is and they attempt to break the pair up. This backfires on them and starts the ball rolling that will eventually lead to The Really Bad Thing happening to Wren. After The Really Bad Thing, Wren begins to show signs of toughening up and taking matters into her own hands. I thought good, we're going to see Wren maturing and growing into a woman. Unfortunately my expectations were premature.Thinking she needs to get out of the country fast because of The Really Bad Thing, Wren sneaks aboard the ship of her non-biological brother, Caleb van der Rhys. He's taking a load of Puritans over to the New World. Caleb is your typical Old Skool hero. He sleeps with any woman within spitting distance (with nary a STD to worry about picking up), spends very little time with the heroine, and yet even when he says himself he hardly knows Wren it's just a few pages later before Caleb realizes she is his "destiny" and he's totally, devotedly in love with her. A good chunk of the book takes place aboard the ship and this is when the story just drags. I admit I skimmed through a bunch of this. Wren is back into squeally mode. Eventually they make it back to dry land and the story picks back up. I didn't say it got better, I just said it picks back up. I was almost ready to like the minor character of Lydia when she began going on about her pies. Nevermind she just saved a crazy pregnant slutty pilgrim from a religious fanatic. Nevermind there's trouble brewing with the colonial villagers and our gang have to beat a hasty retreat back to the ship. Lydia wants her damn pies! I want to punch you, Lydia. I want to punch you so bad.There's a brief skirmish onboard the ship and Wren proves her mettle by killing a bunch of men. Almost immediately after this Caleb carries his love off to his cabin for some purple prose lovin'. Cuz nothing sets the mood like dead bodies littering the deck.
DireSkim read only. Heroine Wren decides she loves a total creep. She goes out of her way to meet with him and engages in compromising situations with him. He is also sleeping with her alleged best friend, who is ( in name only) a puritan. After about 100 pages of this, she goes to meet him secretly But he rapes her violently and then loses her in a card game to a group of rough sea men who then gang rape her. Description of these events is almost prosaic and suggests that it's nothing much to worry about and she'll get over it. She maims the creep and kills one of the other rapists. She then runs away and for some reason instead of going home, ends up on a ship heading for the colonies captained by her cousin Caleb. The alleged friend is on board with her perverted brother who acts as a mad minister who terrorises the people in the hold. The hero also gets it on with the friend who is now pregnant to the creep. There was some level of romance between Wren and Caleb but it was hard to tell. The crazy perverted minister story line seemed to go on until near the end. I can't begin to describe what I didn't like about this novel but it would be fair to say that this includes the writing, the heroine, the hero, the side characters, the stereotypical mad minister, the gang rape from which she seems to recover pretty quickly and the whole general plot. This came across as a cold book ( a bit like Rosemary Rodgers in that respect) . It never engaged from the start and I skim read it only before I gave up. Definitely not a keeper.
