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Beth e o Bárbaro
Beth: Vítima da própria ganância, cobiça os cavalos de Uzziah e está disposta a arriscar o orgulho e o auto-respeito para obter um deles.
O Bárbaro: Rico e excêntrico, filho de um sheik árabe, lendário por sua experiência com os cavalos e as mulheres.
A oferta de Uzziah é simples: Uma corrida. "Se você vencer", ele explicou a Beth, "terá direito a dois cavalos e transporte imediato de volta ao Cairo. Se perder... passará o resto do final de semana comigo. E não me negará nada."
O Bárbaro: Rico e excêntrico, filho de um sheik árabe, lendário por sua experiência com os cavalos e as mulheres.
A oferta de Uzziah é simples: Uma corrida. "Se você vencer", ele explicou a Beth, "terá direito a dois cavalos e transporte imediato de volta ao Cairo. Se perder... passará o resto do final de semana comigo. E não me negará nada."
125 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
About the author
Miranda Lee
818 books237 followersMaureen Mary was born on 1945 at Port Macquarie, a popular seaside town on the Mid-North Coast of New South Wales, Australia, and is the youngest of four children. Her sister was the novelist Wendy Brennan (Emma Darcy). Her father was a country school teacher and brilliant sportsman. Her mother was a talented dressmaker. When Miranda was ten, her father was transferred to Gosford, another coastal town in the countryside, much closer to Sydney. After leaving her convent school, she briefly studied the cello before moving to Sydney, where she embraced the emerging world of computers. Her career as a programmer ended after she married, had three daughters and bought a small acreage in a semi-rural community. Following this, she attempted greyhound training, as well as horse and goat breeding, but was left dissatisfied.
Miranda yearned to find a creative career from which she could earn money. When her sister suggested writing romances, it seemed like a good idea. She could do it at home, and it might even be fun! It took a decade of trial and error before her first romance, After the Affair, was accepted and published. At that time, Miranda, her husband Tony, and her three daughters had moved back to the Central Coast, where they could enjoy the sun and the surf lifestyle once again. Not long into her writing career, Miranda committed herself to writing a six-book series entitled, The Hearts of Fire, with a deadline of just nine short months. Bravely, her husband left his executive position to stay home and support Miranda’s writing career. He learned to cook and to clean, two invaluable household skills. Numerous successful stories followed, each embodying Miranda’s trademark style: pacy and sexy rhythms; passionate, real-life characters; and enduring, memorable story lines. She has one credo when writing romances: Don’t bore the reader! Millions of fans world-wide agree she never does.
Miranda was the sister of the late author, Emma Darcy.
Miranda yearned to find a creative career from which she could earn money. When her sister suggested writing romances, it seemed like a good idea. She could do it at home, and it might even be fun! It took a decade of trial and error before her first romance, After the Affair, was accepted and published. At that time, Miranda, her husband Tony, and her three daughters had moved back to the Central Coast, where they could enjoy the sun and the surf lifestyle once again. Not long into her writing career, Miranda committed herself to writing a six-book series entitled, The Hearts of Fire, with a deadline of just nine short months. Bravely, her husband left his executive position to stay home and support Miranda’s writing career. He learned to cook and to clean, two invaluable household skills. Numerous successful stories followed, each embodying Miranda’s trademark style: pacy and sexy rhythms; passionate, real-life characters; and enduring, memorable story lines. She has one credo when writing romances: Don’t bore the reader! Millions of fans world-wide agree she never does.
Miranda was the sister of the late author, Emma Darcy.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 12, 2010
Beth, an Australian horsewoman, is in Cairo to buy an Arabian horse. She catches the eye of Uzziah, a half-Arab horse breeder who decides he wants to be a stud to her filly and arranges for his underling to bring her to his castle in Morroco. Beth agrees to go, thinking that Uzziah will give her a horse, or one at a drastic discount since she did him a sort of favor. When she finds out that Uzziah expects to sleep with her, she is outraged so he tricks her into a bet. If she loses, she agrees to be his mistress for the rest of the weekend. The period covered in the novel is about 11 days.
Okay, I find sheikh romances incredibly cheesy so I gotta take everything in stride. Overall, I liked it and would give it a recommend. I just found the H/H's name a little too . . . biblical for my taste. After a while, I started adding "-th" to practically every word for my own amusement. Example:
'You will dresseth to pleaseth me!' he'd pontificated.
Well, he couldeth go flyth a kite, she thought savagely. (Page 98)
I would also say as a Miranda Lee fan that if you read her later Sold To The Sheikh, you might want to pass on this since I found the books too similar with the bartering for sex and the "frigid" heroine. B&TB is the better story tho, if you can read only one.
Grade: B
Okay, I find sheikh romances incredibly cheesy so I gotta take everything in stride. Overall, I liked it and would give it a recommend. I just found the H/H's name a little too . . . biblical for my taste. After a while, I started adding "-th" to practically every word for my own amusement. Example:
'You will dresseth to pleaseth me!' he'd pontificated.
Well, he couldeth go flyth a kite, she thought savagely. (Page 98)
I would also say as a Miranda Lee fan that if you read her later Sold To The Sheikh, you might want to pass on this since I found the books too similar with the bartering for sex and the "frigid" heroine. B&TB is the better story tho, if you can read only one.
Grade: B
June 7, 2018
Re Beth and The Barbarian - Miranda Lee gets the first HP Plus spot of January 1995 in her HP pastiche of that long loved HP trope, a tribute to Edith Hull's The Sheik.
(Honestly, I don't think you can actually be a long time HP author without paying your dues to the HP Sheikhy Lurve trope. ML will visit this trope again, but this is her first go at it, with all the campiness and fluff you could want.)
So the h in this one is Beth, a six foot willowy Blonde Horse Goddess, 30 years old and convinced she is frigid. She owns a small riding school in Australia and her only try at the big lurve club event was with a womanizing neighbor who utterly failed to put her into the groove of physical love.
Beth finds herself in Egypt, looking to buy an Arabian horse she can train to show jump. Beth is a very modern lady in outlook, so she finds the underlying misogyny of the Middle Eastern Male mind to be a triffle unsettling.
Then she gets a look at a half Arabian colt whose young rider is having some problems controlling it. Hoping to be able to buy the colt herself, she usurps the colt's rider and takes the horse around the jumps herself. Beth manages to impress the Moroccan Potentate Hero, Uzziah, who is half Arabic and half English. (His mum was a kidnapped missionary lady and lived for a year in a desert Prince's harem.)
Uz is keen to invite Beth back to his Palace of Desert Lurve Deelites, and has his factotum extend a weekend invitation. Beth, thinking that maybe as a reward for her showing off the colt to it's best advantage and thus getting Uz a really high sale price will get her a bargain on a horse, accepts the invitation.
There is lots of Man Among Men commentary regarding Uz's build and Manly Mojo powers. Then Beth and Uz have a horse ride together and Uz makes the moves towards adding Beth to his Long Line Of Lady Buffet samples. Beth is horrified and smacks his face.
So Uz offers a bribe and a bargain, Beth can ride any horse in his stable against him in a race. If she wins, she gets transport back to Egypt and a mare and her colt. If Uz wins, Beth will be his sex toy for the weekend. Beth doesn't agree at first, but when Uz challenges her womanly pride, the bet is on.
It should be no shocker that Beth loses cause her mare is in season and Uz is ridding a desirable stallion. (The stud and stallion cliches and innuendos are rampant in this book.) So Beth resolves to endure the lurve club if she has to, she is an honourable woman and doesn't break her word.
The Big Purple Lurve Mojo Fest is ON! And Beth soon figures out she isn't frigid and there is lots and lots of boudoir moments, (with semi forced seduction and ropes no less,) and everybody seems to have lost their knickers under their flowing robes. There is also horse ridding and conversations and everybody is feeling the lurve.
When Beth thinks her stay, like fish, is starting to stink up the place after several days, Uz convinces her that the Lurve Club Smorgasboard of Varietal Positions shouldn't serve it's last dish quite yet. There are still dishes cookin' up in the kitchen.
So we get more lurve moves and then Uz's mum shows up when Uz is having his weekly dispute court. We find out Uz is a pretty enlightened guy with freedom of expression for all on his vast Moroccan Estate and that Uz's mum is kinda a hidebound Tartar.
There are strong words between Uz and Uz's Missionary Mum, until Beth steps in and calms everybody down and delivers tea and pithy lectures on how everybody can have their own opinions, especially on sex. But sex is natural and healthy and we all have to be tolerant of other's viewpoints and approaches to it - even if they aren't our own.
Uz's mum confesses she actually had a great time being in the harem for a year, but her strong Christian background made her deny it ever after and it alienated Uz and his father too, so Uz's childhood was fraught with parental drama.
Uz and his mum manage to be polite and Beth has long since fallen in love with Uz, but now it is time to return home and live out her life without the tingle of the Lurve Force Mojo Garden of Deelites and the solid Manly Presence of Uz.
Beth leaves on Uz's helicopter, but she knows Uz was seekritly watching her go and when his factotum implies that Uz is stuck on Beth too, Beth turns around and makes a dramatic reappearance at Uz's Desert Estate.
Beth confesses her love and claims she has now become an Uz stalker and Uz is deelited. Mostly cause he loves her back and was setting out his own campaign of Stalking Beth and Lurving Her Up Until She Got Whammied By His Manly Motilators and then would have to marry him because of the impending stork visit.
Since months and months of intensive stalking time has now been minimized to three minutes, the two shout their love from the rooftops and declare that they will figure out living arrangements later.
The Garden Of Purple Passion Lurve Mojo With Extra Special Transcendent Bliss on Golden Shores Option awaits them both and we leave the pair sprinting for the gate and the HEA in this more enlightened Sheikhy Lurve HP outing.
This is a pretty fun and fluffy book. The pastiche and the camp is obvious and rather funny and in 1995, getting your groove on and enjoying it and being tolerant of other's grooves wasn't a message that was widely tweeted.
(Not that there was tweeting, but aside from Cosmo magazine, you really did not get that message touted about a lot.)
Beth and Uz are cute together and really they are both extroverts, (tho srsly the Uzziah name probably needed some work.) So while there was quite a bit of OTT emphasis on the Typhoon of the Tacky at Uz's Vast Moroccan Estate, they both acknowledged that they were exaggerating the campiness of it all cause they liked it that way.
This book is surprisingly tongue in cheek about the whole Swept Up By a Desert Sheikh trope and overall it is a pretty entertaining day at the HP office. With a lot of Purple Lurve Mojo Passion, but also a fairly believable HEA.
(Honestly, I don't think you can actually be a long time HP author without paying your dues to the HP Sheikhy Lurve trope. ML will visit this trope again, but this is her first go at it, with all the campiness and fluff you could want.)
So the h in this one is Beth, a six foot willowy Blonde Horse Goddess, 30 years old and convinced she is frigid. She owns a small riding school in Australia and her only try at the big lurve club event was with a womanizing neighbor who utterly failed to put her into the groove of physical love.
Beth finds herself in Egypt, looking to buy an Arabian horse she can train to show jump. Beth is a very modern lady in outlook, so she finds the underlying misogyny of the Middle Eastern Male mind to be a triffle unsettling.
Then she gets a look at a half Arabian colt whose young rider is having some problems controlling it. Hoping to be able to buy the colt herself, she usurps the colt's rider and takes the horse around the jumps herself. Beth manages to impress the Moroccan Potentate Hero, Uzziah, who is half Arabic and half English. (His mum was a kidnapped missionary lady and lived for a year in a desert Prince's harem.)
Uz is keen to invite Beth back to his Palace of Desert Lurve Deelites, and has his factotum extend a weekend invitation. Beth, thinking that maybe as a reward for her showing off the colt to it's best advantage and thus getting Uz a really high sale price will get her a bargain on a horse, accepts the invitation.
There is lots of Man Among Men commentary regarding Uz's build and Manly Mojo powers. Then Beth and Uz have a horse ride together and Uz makes the moves towards adding Beth to his Long Line Of Lady Buffet samples. Beth is horrified and smacks his face.
So Uz offers a bribe and a bargain, Beth can ride any horse in his stable against him in a race. If she wins, she gets transport back to Egypt and a mare and her colt. If Uz wins, Beth will be his sex toy for the weekend. Beth doesn't agree at first, but when Uz challenges her womanly pride, the bet is on.
It should be no shocker that Beth loses cause her mare is in season and Uz is ridding a desirable stallion. (The stud and stallion cliches and innuendos are rampant in this book.) So Beth resolves to endure the lurve club if she has to, she is an honourable woman and doesn't break her word.
The Big Purple Lurve Mojo Fest is ON! And Beth soon figures out she isn't frigid and there is lots and lots of boudoir moments, (with semi forced seduction and ropes no less,) and everybody seems to have lost their knickers under their flowing robes. There is also horse ridding and conversations and everybody is feeling the lurve.
When Beth thinks her stay, like fish, is starting to stink up the place after several days, Uz convinces her that the Lurve Club Smorgasboard of Varietal Positions shouldn't serve it's last dish quite yet. There are still dishes cookin' up in the kitchen.
So we get more lurve moves and then Uz's mum shows up when Uz is having his weekly dispute court. We find out Uz is a pretty enlightened guy with freedom of expression for all on his vast Moroccan Estate and that Uz's mum is kinda a hidebound Tartar.
There are strong words between Uz and Uz's Missionary Mum, until Beth steps in and calms everybody down and delivers tea and pithy lectures on how everybody can have their own opinions, especially on sex. But sex is natural and healthy and we all have to be tolerant of other's viewpoints and approaches to it - even if they aren't our own.
Uz's mum confesses she actually had a great time being in the harem for a year, but her strong Christian background made her deny it ever after and it alienated Uz and his father too, so Uz's childhood was fraught with parental drama.
Uz and his mum manage to be polite and Beth has long since fallen in love with Uz, but now it is time to return home and live out her life without the tingle of the Lurve Force Mojo Garden of Deelites and the solid Manly Presence of Uz.
Beth leaves on Uz's helicopter, but she knows Uz was seekritly watching her go and when his factotum implies that Uz is stuck on Beth too, Beth turns around and makes a dramatic reappearance at Uz's Desert Estate.
Beth confesses her love and claims she has now become an Uz stalker and Uz is deelited. Mostly cause he loves her back and was setting out his own campaign of Stalking Beth and Lurving Her Up Until She Got Whammied By His Manly Motilators and then would have to marry him because of the impending stork visit.
Since months and months of intensive stalking time has now been minimized to three minutes, the two shout their love from the rooftops and declare that they will figure out living arrangements later.
The Garden Of Purple Passion Lurve Mojo With Extra Special Transcendent Bliss on Golden Shores Option awaits them both and we leave the pair sprinting for the gate and the HEA in this more enlightened Sheikhy Lurve HP outing.
This is a pretty fun and fluffy book. The pastiche and the camp is obvious and rather funny and in 1995, getting your groove on and enjoying it and being tolerant of other's grooves wasn't a message that was widely tweeted.
(Not that there was tweeting, but aside from Cosmo magazine, you really did not get that message touted about a lot.)
Beth and Uz are cute together and really they are both extroverts, (tho srsly the Uzziah name probably needed some work.) So while there was quite a bit of OTT emphasis on the Typhoon of the Tacky at Uz's Vast Moroccan Estate, they both acknowledged that they were exaggerating the campiness of it all cause they liked it that way.
This book is surprisingly tongue in cheek about the whole Swept Up By a Desert Sheikh trope and overall it is a pretty entertaining day at the HP office. With a lot of Purple Lurve Mojo Passion, but also a fairly believable HEA.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 25, 2019
This is a reread as I read this book a few times in my younger days. Its a nice change to have a book set in real countries such as Egypt and Morocco rather than made up ones where they can change religions and beliefs to suit the story.
What I have come to realise is that the book is pretty dated as it makes the h out to be rather narrow minded with a stereotypical mindset of "Middle Eastern" men. She is also a bit of a diva and a grasping one at that. I read it now and cringe at the fact she is prepared to use the H to get a very expensive horse at a discount price/free as a gift! Theres a name for that kind lady and it isn't pretty!
The H has committed no crime other than to sow his wild oats pretty indiscriminately all over the planet. But hey, he's single rich and I guess attractive if you like that sort of thing so to my mind he does nothing wrong to warrant her poor and bigotted opinion of him.
By the time she made the bet I was rooting for the H and was glad he won. She deserved to lose. Alas the poor guy is in love and stuck with this "madam" for all eternity.
What I have come to realise is that the book is pretty dated as it makes the h out to be rather narrow minded with a stereotypical mindset of "Middle Eastern" men. She is also a bit of a diva and a grasping one at that. I read it now and cringe at the fact she is prepared to use the H to get a very expensive horse at a discount price/free as a gift! Theres a name for that kind lady and it isn't pretty!
The H has committed no crime other than to sow his wild oats pretty indiscriminately all over the planet. But hey, he's single rich and I guess attractive if you like that sort of thing so to my mind he does nothing wrong to warrant her poor and bigotted opinion of him.
By the time she made the bet I was rooting for the H and was glad he won. She deserved to lose. Alas the poor guy is in love and stuck with this "madam" for all eternity.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 13, 2013
Rating 2.5 stars
I know a lot of people like Miranda Lee but somehow none of her books have done it for me but I don't why I keep beating my head on the wall but I think I should give up now. This book was like a bad porn/horror sheikh fantasy. The heroine is tall and thinks I am unattractive, she just loves horses. The hero is of course a womanzing handsome sheikh and he wins her on a bet, eew, eew and eew. She falls for him of course, instead of romantic I found it all demeaning.
I know a lot of people like Miranda Lee but somehow none of her books have done it for me but I don't why I keep beating my head on the wall but I think I should give up now. This book was like a bad porn/horror sheikh fantasy. The heroine is tall and thinks I am unattractive, she just loves horses. The hero is of course a womanzing handsome sheikh and he wins her on a bet, eew, eew and eew. She falls for him of course, instead of romantic I found it all demeaning.
February 13, 2017
Rating: 2.5 stars
Reading this book actually started off as sort of a joke. I always shop for books at the second hand store, and then re-donate them once I've read them. Of course, Mills & Boon novels practically fill most of the shelves of any second-hand store. I always wanted to read one, but sort of felt guilty and weird whenever I went to actually pick one up. My Cousin went shopping with me one day and I joked to her "I should totally get one of these to read." Immediately, she said "I'm getting you some for Christmas. I don't even care if you don't read them- it'll just be funny!" I told her I would read it before the new year ended. Success.
I didn't expect to love this book, and I didn't go into it with high expectations. I knew it was going to be a sappy, easy-to-read romance. But I was still annoyed.
I know in the time that this was written, it probably wouldn't have been a big deal to people and it was probably meant to be "sexy" instead of "rapeish", but no matter what you think a girl intentions are, NO MEANS NO! God, Uzziah is such is D!CK. those scenes and the whole bet situation made me so uncomfortable and I almost put the book down. Lucky this thing is under 200 pages.
Other than that; the book was okay. I think next time I might get a newer Mills & Boon book, not one written in 1992- like 5 years before I was born. Definitely will pick up another one, though, they're such an easy & quick read even if the writing isn't super intellectual.
Reading this book actually started off as sort of a joke. I always shop for books at the second hand store, and then re-donate them once I've read them. Of course, Mills & Boon novels practically fill most of the shelves of any second-hand store. I always wanted to read one, but sort of felt guilty and weird whenever I went to actually pick one up. My Cousin went shopping with me one day and I joked to her "I should totally get one of these to read." Immediately, she said "I'm getting you some for Christmas. I don't even care if you don't read them- it'll just be funny!" I told her I would read it before the new year ended. Success.
I didn't expect to love this book, and I didn't go into it with high expectations. I knew it was going to be a sappy, easy-to-read romance. But I was still annoyed.
I know in the time that this was written, it probably wouldn't have been a big deal to people and it was probably meant to be "sexy" instead of "rapeish", but no matter what you think a girl intentions are, NO MEANS NO! God, Uzziah is such is D!CK. those scenes and the whole bet situation made me so uncomfortable and I almost put the book down. Lucky this thing is under 200 pages.
Other than that; the book was okay. I think next time I might get a newer Mills & Boon book, not one written in 1992- like 5 years before I was born. Definitely will pick up another one, though, they're such an easy & quick read even if the writing isn't super intellectual.
February 15, 2014
Weird. Unrealistic and not what readers expect fro romance. A pity!
April 6, 2012
This book is full of WTFery. To try to overcome it's ridiculous characters I started reading it as if it was a space opera and this worked. It reached terrific heights when the bizarrely dressed hero wore a satanic black caftan with a hoodie and the heroine observed "that she as not the only person in the room without any underwear on". Read this book just to revel in it's weirdness.
July 20, 2015
Definitivamente, no me gustó. Le faltó algo -.-
Uzziah de lejos, ni ahí que fue un super prota. Y Beth, lo de mujer independiente que vendió al principio, se esfumó en dos plumazos.
Uzziah de lejos, ni ahí que fue un super prota. Y Beth, lo de mujer independiente que vendió al principio, se esfumó en dos plumazos.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews