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Dark Redeemer #1
Wanton
The love Ethan has for his wife, Jane is like a smooth, flowing river. His feelings for Callie, the girl who lives under their roof are like a fast moving creek, splashing over rocks and gullies. He hardly knows how to contain what he feels for her.
Jane is dying and the crone who supplies her herbs has had a vision--a dark tower, a foaming sea--and a terrible act. In a misguided attempt to alter the fate of her young husband, Jane makes a desperate request of Callie.
Callie of Wideopens is 18, the orphaned offspring of uncertain parentage and deemed unmarriageable. She consents to Jane's request and unwittingly sets in motion the crone's prophecy.
Ethan and Callie's joining is as passionate and dark as their beginning, but the act unconsummated. Spurned and ashamed, Callie leaves Jane and Ethan's care. Independent for the first time, Callie is abducted by a highwayman, restores a fallen monk and is bought by a rapacious lord. Arrested on charges of witchcraft and sentenced to hang, she recounts her story from a tower cell just as the crone predicted, and Ethan is haunted by a girl he believes dead and a love that sprang out of sin.
Jane is dying and the crone who supplies her herbs has had a vision--a dark tower, a foaming sea--and a terrible act. In a misguided attempt to alter the fate of her young husband, Jane makes a desperate request of Callie.
Callie of Wideopens is 18, the orphaned offspring of uncertain parentage and deemed unmarriageable. She consents to Jane's request and unwittingly sets in motion the crone's prophecy.
Ethan and Callie's joining is as passionate and dark as their beginning, but the act unconsummated. Spurned and ashamed, Callie leaves Jane and Ethan's care. Independent for the first time, Callie is abducted by a highwayman, restores a fallen monk and is bought by a rapacious lord. Arrested on charges of witchcraft and sentenced to hang, she recounts her story from a tower cell just as the crone predicted, and Ethan is haunted by a girl he believes dead and a love that sprang out of sin.
150 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 24, 2014
1 person is currently reading
16 people want to read
About the author
Catherine Lloyd
32 books8 followersLibrarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Catherine Lloyd is a pseudonym for mystery author, Nadine Doolittle, who wrote three romance novels before switching genres to psychological suspense. She was born in 1960 in Comox, British Columbia, the third daughter of an RCF mechanic and his Scottish wife. A graduate of Vancouver's prestigious Studio 58 Theatre Program, her career path has taken her from acting to casting film and television with Toronto's Alliance Films, to writing for a weekly newspaper and a city daily.
Nadine has two grown children, two stepdaughters, a cat, a dog and a grandson. She lives with her partner Tim in a beautiful house on 22 forested acres nestled in the Gatineau Hills where she writes full time. She is a member of The Writers' Union of Canada.
Catherine Lloyd is a pseudonym for mystery author, Nadine Doolittle, who wrote three romance novels before switching genres to psychological suspense. She was born in 1960 in Comox, British Columbia, the third daughter of an RCF mechanic and his Scottish wife. A graduate of Vancouver's prestigious Studio 58 Theatre Program, her career path has taken her from acting to casting film and television with Toronto's Alliance Films, to writing for a weekly newspaper and a city daily.
Nadine has two grown children, two stepdaughters, a cat, a dog and a grandson. She lives with her partner Tim in a beautiful house on 22 forested acres nestled in the Gatineau Hills where she writes full time. She is a member of The Writers' Union of Canada.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 13, 2020
Really, I'm very torn about whether I should actually tag this as a "romance". It's a bit odd, and I didn't quite buy the chemistry. I've enjoyed Lloyd's gothics previously (Victorian Villains Saga), but I'm less than thrilled with her foray into the medieval.
The book is first-person, although it changes towards the end, and then back again. It makes me wonder why the author didn't want to use third-person perspective all through, and the only reason I can come up with is that it would seem more intense (?) and the "wantonness" more fraught, when told from first-person viewpoint.
There were just so many issues with the story in general!
At several points in the story, it seemed like just possibly, Callie had a magic va-jay-jay. Lol!
And the hero wasn't exactly alluring, despite the way Callie gets all worked up over his sweaty chest-hairs. He seemed rather dim, frankly, and a bit more advanced in the whole "whore-madonna" complex than a simple peasant farmer would likely be. They'd all be pretty damn earthy, really -- remember, lots of the wealthy nobility were marrying their cousins or siblings at that point, and you can't tell me the lower class folks would be any different. So, his whole reticence with Callie is really weird, on the face of it, Jane or no Jane, "guardian" or not.
An unfolding of backstory can be done well and enhance the understanding of characters, but here it just muddied the story-line. Whoops, didn't tell you about that time in the cave! Oh yeah, there was this other time in the shack, when... (Anyone else getting flashbacks to "this one time, at band-camp..."?!?)
It started out feeling like this was supposed to be some epic tale of a girl who became a woman, and everything that she went through to get there. Then, you find out it's been several months, not years, and that kind of falls apart a bit. Tack on about 5-10 years in the process, and I'll buy it, but for the length of this book, it was forced and not terribly convincing. Is it a morality tale, of how men's lust warps their perspective of women, and the fear they have of a woman's sexual powers? Eh, if it is, it just didn't work for me.
I'll still enjoy going back and re-reading Lloyd's other works, because I'm a sucker for the ol' gothic melodrama, but in future, I'll steer clear of her medieval stuff.
The book is first-person, although it changes towards the end, and then back again. It makes me wonder why the author didn't want to use third-person perspective all through, and the only reason I can come up with is that it would seem more intense (?) and the "wantonness" more fraught, when told from first-person viewpoint.
There were just so many issues with the story in general!
At several points in the story, it seemed like just possibly, Callie had a magic va-jay-jay. Lol!
And the hero wasn't exactly alluring, despite the way Callie gets all worked up over his sweaty chest-hairs. He seemed rather dim, frankly, and a bit more advanced in the whole "whore-madonna" complex than a simple peasant farmer would likely be. They'd all be pretty damn earthy, really -- remember, lots of the wealthy nobility were marrying their cousins or siblings at that point, and you can't tell me the lower class folks would be any different. So, his whole reticence with Callie is really weird, on the face of it, Jane or no Jane, "guardian" or not.
An unfolding of backstory can be done well and enhance the understanding of characters, but here it just muddied the story-line. Whoops, didn't tell you about that time in the cave! Oh yeah, there was this other time in the shack, when... (Anyone else getting flashbacks to "this one time, at band-camp..."?!?)
It started out feeling like this was supposed to be some epic tale of a girl who became a woman, and everything that she went through to get there. Then, you find out it's been several months, not years, and that kind of falls apart a bit. Tack on about 5-10 years in the process, and I'll buy it, but for the length of this book, it was forced and not terribly convincing. Is it a morality tale, of how men's lust warps their perspective of women, and the fear they have of a woman's sexual powers? Eh, if it is, it just didn't work for me.
I'll still enjoy going back and re-reading Lloyd's other works, because I'm a sucker for the ol' gothic melodrama, but in future, I'll steer clear of her medieval stuff.
Displaying 1 of 1 review