This is a historical romance of the bodice ripper variety. It's pretty epically bad. I'd say something, but my brains leaked out of my ears due to all the "man's body" and the "flaccid man's rod hiding in the thick bush," so I'm probably going to have to wait on anything resembling coherent.---All right, so a real review of the book in question, now that it's been a night and the "badness" doesn't stick in my throat. When I checked this book out of the library I expected a historical fiction mystery with a bit of bad porn thrown in. The title, after all, is the name of a house which is held by the heroine's father under probably illicit circumstances and not discovered by the heroine until she's had time to "fall in love with" (i.e., have sex with) her husband. Hastings' father is dying, and in order to protect his land and titles from mysterious people who are practically waiting outside his front door—er, gates—to pillage his daughter, he marries her off to the friend of a friend. The eager bridegroom's name is Severin. They meet, two hours later they're married, and just as the priest finishes the ceremony her father dies. Severin, being the ultra sensitive man he is, tells Hastings that he will give her a whole night to mourn her father before he comes to her bed. Hastings doesn't have a particularly great relationship with her father, so this arrangement doesn't seem so bad to her. However, despite his promise, Severin comes to her room and they have sex. It's not enjoyable for her, but he's not a cad because he uses lube. [I wish that you could feel the sarcasm in my tone right now, I really do.] He then kindly gives her a four day reprieve because she's on her period and after one more night of humiliatingly bad and uncomfortable sex (again, he tells her that he's not an asshole because he used lube), Severin leaves. Hastings tells her maids/friends that he's a bad man because he humiliated her and forced himself on her, and they tell her that it's her fault because she should be nicer to him. She saved his life, how dare she, and she wounded his man's pride by nursing him back to health. The b*tch.When Severin comes back from his trip, after a healthy amount of "well, okay, maybe I'm a dick, but she should STILL bow to me," he finds a changed Hastings waiting for him. She kisses his lips and laughs and generally acts happy, and for some reason this solves all their problems. They spend a healthy amount of the book falling all over each other in inappropriate places. His mother, who is crazy and being cared for by what is basically a castellan (Severin didn't have a castle, just a home, until he married Hastings and inherited her crap), escapes and they go to find her. She's being mistreated by the castellan, which angers Severin and Hastings, and they put her in their bedroom to keep her comfortable. They then have sex with his mother in the room. Ew ew ew ew ew.There is, at this "honeymoon phase," a lot of gloating by Severin about how he managed to "break" Hastings. Nevermind the fact that her change in demeanor happened while he was gone. Nevermind the fact that all she really did was indicate an interest in sex with him and he did the changing. And then they get back to their home and one of Severin's old flames is there, Marjorie, who spends her time being a vicious harpy and trying to get Hastings killed so that she can marry Severin. Hastings gets jealous, because she's now in love with her husband, and he doesn't like her change in attitude so he decides he has to punish her. She says not to beat her because she's pregnant and he says she lies because Marjorie says she started her period. Hastings runs away, because she actually is pregnant and after he's thrown her over a horse and dragged her to a healer, he finally believes her. Still, he feels like he has to punish her—supposedly for defying his absolute authority, but really, it's because she's jealous and he doesn't like it—so he ties her to the dog and forces her to eat dinner there. I don't remember what ultimately happens to expose Marjorie as a giant homewrecker but finally that happens and Severin sends her away. [Oh wait, I remember. Hastings took her husband into the woods for some sexy time.]90% through the book and they finally head to Rosehaven, Hastings' father's mysterious holding that the ENTIRE NOVEL IS NAMED AFTER. Severin tells Hastings that she should probably expect her father's mistress to be there, but what they find is that Hastings' mother (who was beaten to death before the book started because she committed adultery) was never really beaten to death at all and her father just hid her there and still went to visit every now and then to ease his man's needs or whatever. Marjorie and some other low-level baddie named Richard show up and after Hastings is thrown off a cliff, Severin realizes he loves her and that he can probably deal with her shouting at him when he's an ass if it means she's okay.I'm just too cynical to enjoy romance novels, and I know this. But damn, it amused me. The title of the freaking book didn't show up until the end! I think what amused me the most was Severin, who was so unbelievably stupid it was unreal. "My seed is inside you, so nine months from now you will have a babe." And then when he finally believes she's pregnant he says "if you're pregnant then why is your belly still flat?" It's like he's a child. For the time period, I suppose I should be a little nicer, but on the other hand… he said he'd sired bastards, so surely he knows that it takes a few minutes?!And the sex? Don't even get me started on the sex. There was SO MUCH BLOOD the first night. And of course she felt like his "man's rod" was surely, surely too big and when it was over she felt "cleaved in half." Apparently he was SO LARGE that she was physically unable to close her legs for at least half an hour. There was very explicit detail about his pubic hair (and you thought I was kidding about the bush comment). That's all well and good, but WHY do I care about his bush?! I don't. Whether it's there or not honestly makes zero difference to me. Does anyone find all the pube talk outrageously sexy? This got three stars because if I had a "so bad it's good" shelf, this one would be on it. I actually did want to finish it, if only because I couldn't stop laughing at it.
Why was this book called Rosehaven? That is the eternal mystery that shrouds Catherine Coulter's novel and never is quite resolved. Why should the reader care about this elusive Rosehaven when clearly the characters themselves don't care? Do we ever actually travel to Rosehaven? Well, I don't know because I skipped so much of the last 3rd of the book, I couldn't tell you. But I know if Rosehaven appears, it does so for about 2 pages before fading back into the mist like a reformed whore that Coulter writes so often. Speaking of, this is the third or fourth Coulter book I've read where there is some cartoonishly evil women trying to seduce the hero and/or kill the heroine. Then magically, she has a change of heart, marries the hero's man-at-arms and goes happily on her way. Main gripe of the book is pretty much the gripe of every Coulter reader. The hero's bipolar behavior toward the heroine. One minute he's gentle, kind, protective...the next he's chaining her to a dog. Yes, that's right. Severin ties Hastings to a dog while they all eat dinner to humiliate her. Why? Reasons are never sufficiently explained. She is disrespectful of her husband. Hey listen I get it. This is medieval times. Wives are property. But if the hero is going to act like a d*ck, please give us a reason. Hastings. Yet another female who is terrified of sex. Why? Because she's an innocent! She's young! But she doth protest too much. Severin was hot (I think. More on that below). She should have been down on her knees thanking the Sun God or whatever they worshiped that she wasn't forced to sleep with the medieval version of John Wayne Gacy. I mean come on. Enough with the kicking and screaming. Marriages must be consummated. By the way, what do these characters look like? We get vivid descriptions of Marjorie (villain) and her silvery hair. But what on earth do Severin and Hastings look like? Very vague on the descriptions. The whole point of romance novels is to hear how the characters have "stormy black eyes", "sculpted cheekbones", and "delicate collarbone". WTH Catherine Coulter? These two could have been mannequins in a shop for all the descriptions we get.Best part of the book? The little mink (marten) named Trist. When he almost died, I was quite upset. That's how much more engaging he was than the hero and heroine.I think this is the last Coulter I'll be reading for awhile. Devil's Embrace stands alone as just hilariously over-the-top. But these medieval ones tend to get real tedious, real quick.
Do You like book Rosehaven (1997)?
I really liked the ending to this book which is why I gave it 4 stars. I hated the idea of women being overly submissive to their husbands even for the medieval time period. I did not really care for the writing style of this book, I thought it could have been better written and sometimes the sentences just didn't make sense. I really liked the main characters of this book although sometimes some of the things that Severin said were unnecessary. The ending of the book made the book bearable. I almost gave up reading it but I wanted to know what the mystery was and it was worth it. Severin and Hastings were much better characters when it was finished!!
—Erin H
I have enjoyed some of Coulter's Regency romance, and even some of her medieval romances. This book feels like it fell out of a time machine from the age of rapetastic romance novels. And yet...it was apparently published in the late 1990s.It starts out with marital rape, and not even the bodice-ripping kind where the heroine gets into it, just cold, degrading, painful marital rape (she does, technically, kind of consent at one point, but given that her consent is in no way free and was irrelevant to her husband, that doesn't mitigate anything in my mind).So far I'm not seeing any way the male character (I refuse to call him a hero) can redeem himself from that; and given that the heroine's 'uncle figure' himself starts out another book by coldly raping the heroine's friend in front of her, and then in the following book gets to be a 'very bad boy' hero himself, I must conclude that Coulter's 'very bad boy' is my 'abusive rapist,' and bow out.Coulter's writing is fairly good, and her research is not glaringly awful, although I think many historical novelists tend to vastly oversell the brutality and sexism of the past (not that it was all egalitarian roses, but I think there's still a lot of ramping it up to either give the heroine more to overcome or because inequality is the author's kink). But pretty much the only good part of this book is the unrealistic but adorable marten. However for me, unlike the heroine, the fact that the man has a cute pet doesn't really mitigate his abusive nature.So, you know, if rapist heroes are your kink, this is a fairly well-written novel! If they're not, I'd recommend giving it a pass.
—Oreotalpa
I didn't have a problem so much with the marital rape...it's not violent and the heroine is willing, just not eager. Okay, it was one of the issues in this book that bothered me the least. My biggest peeve about this book is how the heroine is expected to bend and bow her will to her husband's and he is not expected to bend at all. The hero believes that his wife should be subjugated to his will and apparently all the women in the castle giving the heroine advice believe this too. So, after he h
—Maura
