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Lark
Trapped in a loveless marriage, Lark Elliot longed to lead a normal life like the pretty women she saw in town, to wear new clothes and be courted by young suitors. But she had married Cletus Gibb, a man twice her age, so her elderly aunt and uncle could stay through the long Colorado winter in the mountain cabin he owned. Resigned to backbreaking labor on Gibb’s ranch, Lark found one person who made the days Ace Brandon. But when her husband paid the rugged cowhand to father him an heir, at first Lark thought she had been wrong about Ace’s kindness. It wasn’t long, however, before she was looking forward to the warmth of his tender kiss, to the feel of his strong body. And as the heat of their desire melted away the cold winter nights, Lark knew she’d found the haven she’d always dreamed of in the circle of his loving arms.
398 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 1999
46 people are currently reading
119 people want to read
About the author
Norah Hess
52 books94 followersAlways a daydreamer, and often scolded for it by the grandmother who raised her, Norah Hess always wanted to be a writer. At eighteen, she was sent to Chicago to live with an aunt after her grandmother's death. It was there that she met her husband. After raising three children, Norah decided to write her first novel, and since then has had fifteen published romances. After her husband passed away, she and her two cats moved to Palm Springs, where the desert and mountains inspire her to write her Western romances.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 22, 2016
I tried, everyone. I really did. But I just couldn't do it. I couldn't even get to the halfway point because, like I said in my status update, I just kept putting this book down, sometimes without even reading one whole page. And that was both the fault of the writing, the characters, and the plot.
Now, just to get this out of the way (if it's not already obvious from the synopsis), technically speaking, there is cheating in this book. I've said before that cheating, barring extenuating circumstances, is a no-go for me. This book, however, qualifies as one of those situations for me. Lark is in an abusive relationship, which would be good enough for me when it comes to cheating. (idgaf about abusive POS, so go cheat your heart out!) On top of that, her husband, Cletus, is impotent, which is why he ropes in Ace to sire an heir for him.
Lark is married to Cletus Gibb, who abuses her regularly. The reason why she even agreed to marry him was because her Aunt and Uncle needed a place to stay. A decade ago, when Lark was ten years old, her parents died, leaving her an orphan. She was going to be sent to an orphanage, but her relatives showed up in the nick of time and took her in. Now, years later, they're elderly and rather frail, her aunt just coming off of sickness, and they're vagrants, going from one place to another with no real home. Lark feels beholden to them, wanting to give them security, which is why she agrees to marry Cletus when he asks.
Then you have Ace. Ace was married, but his wife, Michelle, died three months ago from a rattlesnake bite. They hadn't been married very long--only three months--and he says in the three months he's had while he's gone from place to place since her death, he realized that he never really loved her. During that time, he says his horse, Sam, has been his only company, so I assume he hasn't been with other women. However, he is experienced. He smugly (smug, because he says so himself he "smil[s] smugly" while he remembers this) recounts at one point that he's never had any complaints from the women he's been with about his "performance." So, unless it decisively says later on if he is or isn't a manwhore, I'll leave it to you to decide based on that.
Lark, on the other hand, despite being married...is a virgin! Yaaaaaaaay...not. Because of course she couldn't have been anything but. I really dislike the virgin trope, but what I dislike even more is when authors go out of their way to keep a heroine a virgin, regardless of whether they're single, married, or widowed! Look, it's not that I wanted her to have been raped by Cletus (he tries at one point, but fails because he can't get it up), but I think it's rather misleading to give a reader a married or widowed heroine, which all but states that she's non-virginal, who then turns out to be a virgin. I went into this book wanting to read about a non-virginal heroine, only to find out that she's a virgin. It pisses me off that authors will go to ridiculous and insane hoops just to keep a heroine a virgin for the hero, who is, 99% of the time, not a virgin. I've complained many times about the sexism of it, so I won't get into it again here. Anyway, so that was my first strike against this book.
Next, the abuse. I didn't know, going into this book, that there was going to be on-page physical and sexual abuse. The synopsis states she's in a "loveless marriage" but that could imply anything. I wrongly assumed that it was simply an indifferent, loveless marriage, not an abusive one. However, right after Lark and Cletus are married, he sexually assaults her. He tries to rape her, but because he can't get it up, he gets angry and starts beating her, leaving her with cuts and bruises. And that was just the first chapter. He doesn't try to sexually assault her again after the first time, but there are at least two more (though I believe there may have been between three to five) scenes of him physically abusing her, from not as brutal ones, to outright beatings. (And that's just from the less than half I read.) He also abuses her in other ways, like making her ride to town without a raincoat while it's pouring (he made her take hers off), and also verbally, shouting various misogynistic slurs and hateful words at her.
And you know...I didn't like it. I didn't like the abuse not because I felt uncomfortable at the horribleness of it, wanting to close my eyes and ears, turning a blind-eye to abuses like these that do happen, it's that I felt the author went overboard and the abuse of a woman was being unnecessarily exploited. A lot of the abuse depicted in this book felt forced, like the author was putting it in for the sake of including it, not because it added anything to the book itself. It felt gratuitous and exploitative to me. I already knew Cletus was very abusive because the author had shown me that, time and again, in his words and actions. I didn't need the author to give me scene after scene of a woman being beat down. It felt to me like the author was insensitively putting the abuse of a woman on display, while also adding nothing to the narrative in the process.
I also didn't like the reasons behind the arrangement. I was hoping it'd be a case of maybe Ace being in love with (or even just fond of) Lark, which is the reason he agrees to it. That's not it, though. Cletus offers Ace money, promising him enough to own his own spread. Ace goes back and forth on whether to agree to this, but he eventually decides on it. I would've also liked if there had been something, other than money, that pushed him into accepting it, like Cletus threatening to take it to another man if Ace refuses. This isn't the case either. Cletus never mentions any other men. He only ever hires Ace at his ranch in the first place because he spots him in town and decides Ace'll be the one to impregnate his wife. And the first time Ace and Lark are going to be together-together, Ace's thoughts consists of him wanting to make it clear to Lark that this isn't love for him. So...yeah. Ace's only incentive in this entire arrangement was money, not a tenderness or soft-spot for Lark, which I found to be another disappointment.
The biggest hindrance in this novel for me was the writing. I really didn't like the writing. Sometimes the author spends line after line giving the reader a rundown of the character doing something, but then she skips this when it comes to emotions. Most of the feelings the characters exhibit are expressed through their eyes, which you'll hear about a lot-A LOT because the author loves to do that. () I started to get annoyed with it pretty early on, with the author expressing most, if not all, the emotions through a character's eyes, telling the readers how a character was feeling rather than putting in the work to show it.
On the other hand, she'll go on and on, dedicating entire passages to the most mundane and unnecessary things:
So the author can spend five paragraphs giving me the tour of a house that I didn't even need for the first half of the book that I read, but emotions, one of the most important parts of a novel, are reduced to a bystander telling the reader "his professional eyes [saw] how drawn her delicate features were, how haunted her gray eyes" about the heroine.
I felt the writing was a bit simplistic in that way. The author spends sentences and sentences giving descriptions, like recapping unnecessary events (like Ace building a fire, making himself a pot of coffee, and then taking it to the river to clean it out...because WHY NOT, right?), but then skipping on important things. The author also did what I mentioned above, using a side-character to tell us what they see in another character's expression. She did this A LOT, even switching in the middle of a main character's POV, in order to include this random passage from characters who show up for that one scene and then never again. I can't speak for others, but I generally find that it's a cheap and lazy trick to employ. I felt deferring to side characters and having them tell the reader the emotions was cheating, honestly. It shows me that the author couldn't write or express emotion, so they just tell us how the character is feeling rather than show us.
And while I don't have an issue if an author does this sometimes, I felt the author in this book did it over and over again. See, there's a difference in telling me so-and-so is feeling such-and-such a way, and then there's showing me. I'll use an example to address what I mean (and put it under spoiler tags, so you can skip over it if you want because I'm going off on a writing tangent).
And that's why I ended up throwing in the towel before I even got to the halfway point. The writing was such a turn-off for me, and not just with the emotions. I'm sure Hess has her fans who do enjoy her writing, so I know that, clearly, this author isn't for me.
Now, just to get this out of the way (if it's not already obvious from the synopsis), technically speaking, there is cheating in this book. I've said before that cheating, barring extenuating circumstances, is a no-go for me. This book, however, qualifies as one of those situations for me. Lark is in an abusive relationship, which would be good enough for me when it comes to cheating. (idgaf about abusive POS, so go cheat your heart out!) On top of that, her husband, Cletus, is impotent, which is why he ropes in Ace to sire an heir for him.
Lark is married to Cletus Gibb, who abuses her regularly. The reason why she even agreed to marry him was because her Aunt and Uncle needed a place to stay. A decade ago, when Lark was ten years old, her parents died, leaving her an orphan. She was going to be sent to an orphanage, but her relatives showed up in the nick of time and took her in. Now, years later, they're elderly and rather frail, her aunt just coming off of sickness, and they're vagrants, going from one place to another with no real home. Lark feels beholden to them, wanting to give them security, which is why she agrees to marry Cletus when he asks.
Then you have Ace. Ace was married, but his wife, Michelle, died three months ago from a rattlesnake bite. They hadn't been married very long--only three months--and he says in the three months he's had while he's gone from place to place since her death, he realized that he never really loved her. During that time, he says his horse, Sam, has been his only company, so I assume he hasn't been with other women. However, he is experienced. He smugly (smug, because he says so himself he "smil[s] smugly" while he remembers this) recounts at one point that he's never had any complaints from the women he's been with about his "performance." So, unless it decisively says later on if he is or isn't a manwhore, I'll leave it to you to decide based on that.
Lark, on the other hand, despite being married...is a virgin! Yaaaaaaaay...not. Because of course she couldn't have been anything but. I really dislike the virgin trope, but what I dislike even more is when authors go out of their way to keep a heroine a virgin, regardless of whether they're single, married, or widowed! Look, it's not that I wanted her to have been raped by Cletus (he tries at one point, but fails because he can't get it up), but I think it's rather misleading to give a reader a married or widowed heroine, which all but states that she's non-virginal, who then turns out to be a virgin. I went into this book wanting to read about a non-virginal heroine, only to find out that she's a virgin. It pisses me off that authors will go to ridiculous and insane hoops just to keep a heroine a virgin for the hero, who is, 99% of the time, not a virgin. I've complained many times about the sexism of it, so I won't get into it again here. Anyway, so that was my first strike against this book.
Next, the abuse. I didn't know, going into this book, that there was going to be on-page physical and sexual abuse. The synopsis states she's in a "loveless marriage" but that could imply anything. I wrongly assumed that it was simply an indifferent, loveless marriage, not an abusive one. However, right after Lark and Cletus are married, he sexually assaults her. He tries to rape her, but because he can't get it up, he gets angry and starts beating her, leaving her with cuts and bruises. And that was just the first chapter. He doesn't try to sexually assault her again after the first time, but there are at least two more (though I believe there may have been between three to five) scenes of him physically abusing her, from not as brutal ones, to outright beatings. (And that's just from the less than half I read.) He also abuses her in other ways, like making her ride to town without a raincoat while it's pouring (he made her take hers off), and also verbally, shouting various misogynistic slurs and hateful words at her.
And you know...I didn't like it. I didn't like the abuse not because I felt uncomfortable at the horribleness of it, wanting to close my eyes and ears, turning a blind-eye to abuses like these that do happen, it's that I felt the author went overboard and the abuse of a woman was being unnecessarily exploited. A lot of the abuse depicted in this book felt forced, like the author was putting it in for the sake of including it, not because it added anything to the book itself. It felt gratuitous and exploitative to me. I already knew Cletus was very abusive because the author had shown me that, time and again, in his words and actions. I didn't need the author to give me scene after scene of a woman being beat down. It felt to me like the author was insensitively putting the abuse of a woman on display, while also adding nothing to the narrative in the process.
I also didn't like the reasons behind the arrangement. I was hoping it'd be a case of maybe Ace being in love with (or even just fond of) Lark, which is the reason he agrees to it. That's not it, though. Cletus offers Ace money, promising him enough to own his own spread. Ace goes back and forth on whether to agree to this, but he eventually decides on it. I would've also liked if there had been something, other than money, that pushed him into accepting it, like Cletus threatening to take it to another man if Ace refuses. This isn't the case either. Cletus never mentions any other men. He only ever hires Ace at his ranch in the first place because he spots him in town and decides Ace'll be the one to impregnate his wife. And the first time Ace and Lark are going to be together-together, Ace's thoughts consists of him wanting to make it clear to Lark that this isn't love for him. So...yeah. Ace's only incentive in this entire arrangement was money, not a tenderness or soft-spot for Lark, which I found to be another disappointment.
The biggest hindrance in this novel for me was the writing. I really didn't like the writing. Sometimes the author spends line after line giving the reader a rundown of the character doing something, but then she skips this when it comes to emotions. Most of the feelings the characters exhibit are expressed through their eyes, which you'll hear about a lot-A LOT because the author loves to do that. () I started to get annoyed with it pretty early on, with the author expressing most, if not all, the emotions through a character's eyes, telling the readers how a character was feeling rather than putting in the work to show it.
On the other hand, she'll go on and on, dedicating entire passages to the most mundane and unnecessary things:
Lark opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the long hall. She stood a moment, listening for sounds of Cletus moving about. When she heard nothing but the ticking of a clock, she went in search of the kitchen.
When she found it she could only gape in awe. Her gaze swung from a big black cookstove that she was sure had never been used, to a table sitting in the middle of the room, and four matching chairs grouped around it. There was a cupboard full of dishes, and finally her gaze rested on a sink with a small pump attached to it. She hurried across the floor and worked the handle of the pump until cold water rushed out of its spout into a basin beneath it. ...
Patting her face dry with the bottom of her petticoat, Lark looked out the window, and when she didn't see Cletus around, she decided to make a tour of her prison. Off the kitchen was a large dining room with a long, shiny table in its center and eight chairs around it. There was a large glass-doored cabinet against one wall. It held glassware and a beautiful set of dishes. For company, she guessed, but couldn't imagine anyone coming to eat dinner with Cletus Gibb.
She stepped next into a parlor that took her breath away. There was furniture there that she never knew existed. Was it possible that her crude husband had chosen the sofa and chairs, the gleaming tables, the rich-looking window hangings? One big chair held the imprint of his fat body, but other than that it looked as if none of the other furniture had ever been used.
Lark walked down the long hall then, peering into the bedrooms that opened off it. There were four. Only the bed at the end of the hall had linens on it. This was her husband's room, she knew. She could smell the sweaty scent of him. As she turned to go back to her room, she saw next to Cletus's door a tall, narrow piece of furniture with double doors. Upon opening it she found shelves of bed linens. She lifted out two sheets, a blanket and two pillowcases and returned to her room.
So the author can spend five paragraphs giving me the tour of a house that I didn't even need for the first half of the book that I read, but emotions, one of the most important parts of a novel, are reduced to a bystander telling the reader "his professional eyes [saw] how drawn her delicate features were, how haunted her gray eyes" about the heroine.
I felt the writing was a bit simplistic in that way. The author spends sentences and sentences giving descriptions, like recapping unnecessary events (like Ace building a fire, making himself a pot of coffee, and then taking it to the river to clean it out...because WHY NOT, right?), but then skipping on important things. The author also did what I mentioned above, using a side-character to tell us what they see in another character's expression. She did this A LOT, even switching in the middle of a main character's POV, in order to include this random passage from characters who show up for that one scene and then never again. I can't speak for others, but I generally find that it's a cheap and lazy trick to employ. I felt deferring to side characters and having them tell the reader the emotions was cheating, honestly. It shows me that the author couldn't write or express emotion, so they just tell us how the character is feeling rather than show us.
And while I don't have an issue if an author does this sometimes, I felt the author in this book did it over and over again. See, there's a difference in telling me so-and-so is feeling such-and-such a way, and then there's showing me. I'll use an example to address what I mean (and put it under spoiler tags, so you can skip over it if you want because I'm going off on a writing tangent).
And that's why I ended up throwing in the towel before I even got to the halfway point. The writing was such a turn-off for me, and not just with the emotions. I'm sure Hess has her fans who do enjoy her writing, so I know that, clearly, this author isn't for me.
October 26, 2024
The two leads barely spent enough time together for me to even care about their (practically non existent) relationship. Especially considering the page count! They hardly interacted at all
January 2, 2025
3.5
I couldn't care less for the H. And the villain should get a horrible death.
Thad, the 15year boy should be made more older and be the H instead this sorry excuse of Hero.
He could care less for the Lark. He did nothing to stop the abusing and hitting blows that the villain gave the heroine. He just watched and was baarely angry. If it were his deceased wife or family he would have beaten the villain. The only thing that he did was warning the villain, that is it.
He fell easily with the OW and married her because she played hard to get and in his mind she was a cut above other women while he did not care a fig for the heroine, I guess a batered suffering punch bag and hard working heroine is not worth deep feelings.
Why they always made the heroines have feelings for the unworthy H?
When the villain made the proposition, he wasn't interested and asked him to find another to have sex with the heroine. He didn't really care the way that the villain treated her or other man would if they have sex.
He wasn't even attracted to the heroine and never saw her as a desirable woman. The first time that they pretend to have sex, he wasn't even remotely attracted for the heroine, it took the second or third time and after the heroine washed her hair, so he just got interested in her because a shiny hair and good fragrance. Right, the was that she was abused and working non-stoping how could be with a good appearance, different from his shallow and sluty OWs that don't have a care in the world.
After he got the money and left her behind he was so excited because of the money and the freedom to pursue other women. He didn't even blink to leave her like she was nothing.
The only thing that he missed her later is about sex and decided that he loved her after he try to have sex with a whore and his junk didn't work. Right, he didn't deserve her and he didn't care a fig for her.
I couldn't care less for the H. And the villain should get a horrible death.
Thad, the 15year boy should be made more older and be the H instead this sorry excuse of Hero.
He could care less for the Lark. He did nothing to stop the abusing and hitting blows that the villain gave the heroine. He just watched and was baarely angry. If it were his deceased wife or family he would have beaten the villain. The only thing that he did was warning the villain, that is it.
He fell easily with the OW and married her because she played hard to get and in his mind she was a cut above other women while he did not care a fig for the heroine, I guess a batered suffering punch bag and hard working heroine is not worth deep feelings.
Why they always made the heroines have feelings for the unworthy H?
When the villain made the proposition, he wasn't interested and asked him to find another to have sex with the heroine. He didn't really care the way that the villain treated her or other man would if they have sex.
He wasn't even attracted to the heroine and never saw her as a desirable woman. The first time that they pretend to have sex, he wasn't even remotely attracted for the heroine, it took the second or third time and after the heroine washed her hair, so he just got interested in her because a shiny hair and good fragrance. Right, the was that she was abused and working non-stoping how could be with a good appearance, different from his shallow and sluty OWs that don't have a care in the world.
After he got the money and left her behind he was so excited because of the money and the freedom to pursue other women. He didn't even blink to leave her like she was nothing.
The only thing that he missed her later is about sex and decided that he loved her after he try to have sex with a whore and his junk didn't work. Right, he didn't deserve her and he didn't care a fig for her.
April 25, 2019
Lark
I loved this story, I recommend every one to read her books, I look forward to reading more of her books. KATTIE.
I loved this story, I recommend every one to read her books, I look forward to reading more of her books. KATTIE.
January 20, 2020
Good book. There were many parts that were unnecessary that in my opinion distracted from a very good story.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 27, 2020
Sad Beginning Happy Ending
This story started out as very sad but eventually picked up. I wish it had an Epilogue to finish the story.
This story started out as very sad but eventually picked up. I wish it had an Epilogue to finish the story.
July 18, 2020
Another great book....
Another great book by Nora Hess... This one kept me interested from start to finish. I would recommend this book to anyone...
Another great book by Nora Hess... This one kept me interested from start to finish. I would recommend this book to anyone...
dnf
January 30, 2025DNF @ 104 pages.
This book should’ve been named Domestic Abuse.
This book should’ve been named Domestic Abuse.
March 22, 2017
Good read.
I would have enjoyed for it to have been more historically authentic when talking about people of the time. I liked the heroin
I would have enjoyed for it to have been more historically authentic when talking about people of the time. I liked the heroin
January 17, 2010
This was an okay book , it was just predictable . I bought it from a used book store for like 50 cents , so if you find it like that it might be worth buying and reading . (:
July 10, 2013
Excellent
September 19, 2016
loved it
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews