Claiming the Courtesan

From humble beginnings and desperate circumstances, Verity Ashton, a young woman sacrifices her innocence for the good of her younger siblings and rises to become Soraya the most celebrated courtesan in London. Obsessions are inspired by her, duels are fought for her, and all she wants is to earn enough to escape back to propriety and anonymity. The day comes when she can leave this glittering debauched life for a quiet one in Yorkshire, safe in the knowledge that her brother, sister and she will be able to start fresh. However, she has not taken into account the protector she is leaving behind and his fixation with her more seductive persona.

Justin Kinmurrie, Duke of Kylemore was fascinated with the mysterious beauty from his first glimpse of her. It took five years and a small fortune before she consented to be his mistress. The contracted year has been all that he has wished.

Under pressure from his mother to marry and staunchly refusing to accept her protégé to be his bride, he is ready to spite his family name and all of society by taking Soraya as his wife. But his plans are upset with the unannounced leave taking of the woman he has assumed to be his and his alone.

One applauds Ms. Campbell as an author who is willing to take chances. Her heroine is a sexually experienced woman who has survived and taken care of loved ones by using her charms, her hero is an extremely angry man who exacts revenge against the heroine for having left him. His method of choice is to kidnap the heroine at gunpoint, take her to a remote area in Scotland, and then repeatedly force his physical attentions upon her.

We slowly learn the circumstances of both main characters and how they came to have their personal demons. Both have survived dark times. Kylemore, however, is painted to be such a ruthless man who indulges in such beastly behavior towards Soraya that one is curious about how he could possibly be redeemed. Therein lay the difficulty. In the end, one is not convinced that he is suitably redeemed to carry the mantle of hero.

Forced seduction is highly controversial in the romance genre. Some will be able to look past the situation to underlying emotion and reasons, but other readers will not be able to press past the difficulty. Strangely, as a reader who has been able to accept this scenario in a few other books, this one was a challenge.

Our heroine fares better in that she is a far more sympathetic character. She has little ability to fight her abductor and yet one does not doubt her strength in what she has carried off in her attempt to save herself and her family.

The writing is wonderful in the usage of language but the story itself is stronger in the first half. The culmination at the end has a somewhat contrived feel that does not match the tone of the rest of the book.

Frankly, this is a clearly talented writer whose future works this reader will look forward to; it was merely the hero in this story that did not resonate. Still, those who enjoy capture romances and extremely alpha heroes should give Claiming THE Courtesan a whirl.

September 2007