Love's Desperate Deceit

by Kay McMahon

Wanting to escape from the rich old lord her father insists she wed, Shauna Radborne agrees to marriage--in name only--to Brad Remington, who only wants Shauna's family estate, but Shauna never anticipates the love and passion that develops

Genres: Romance, Historical Romance

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1988

Reviews

[Lauren]

6/4/23
Dnf
The h is just an unlikable b***h! The book has 500 pgs and @page 122, I simply can't continue

[Blue Falcon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review is of “Love’s Desperate Deceit” by Kay McMahon. (The book is #5 of five related books, although not technically called a series. The other books are: 1. “Passion’s Slave”; #2. “Defiant Spitfire”; #3. “Virginia Vixen”; and #4. “Ecstasy’s Conquest”. The books are not published in chronological order).

The book begins with a man being killed by robbers. We will discover later what that means to the main story.

The main story begins with an introduction to the heroine of the book, Shauna Radborne. Shauna lives in England with her father Pierce, a businessman, her mother Roanna, who stays at home and is unfaithful to Pierce, whom she doesn’t truly love, and her slightly older brother, Tyler. Shauna is at sixes and sevens because Pierce and Roanna are pushing her to marry a man, Nelson Thorndyke-Pierce’s business partner-whom she doesn’t love.. Shauna decides to find a man who is interested in a marriage in name only, and she thinks she’s found him in Brad Remington, the hero of the book. (Brad was a supporting character in one of Ms. McMahon’s earlier books, “Defiant Spitfire”). Brad was living in the colonies-now the United States-and has returned to England to try to regain his family’s estate, Wrenhaven. The problem: he doesn’t have the money to buy the estated. Shauna approaches Brad with an offer: if he agrees to marry her, she will give him Wrenhaven (which Pierce currently owns).

Although they fight frequently, Shauna and Brad become lovers, and later become engaged. However, not everyone in their circle is happy with the engagement. An attempt is made on Brad’s life, and an innocent woman is killed in the process.

Shauna and Brad marry, but their marriage is not happy, in part because Shauna is realizing that a marriage-in-name-only-which is what she demanded before they married-isn’t what she really wants. Shauna is also keeping secrets from Brad. What Shauna doesn’t know is: Brad is keeping secrets from her, too.

In the end, the secrets Shauna and Brad are keeping from each other come out, the mystery of who tried to kill Brad is revealed-but not before the man kills three other people, including Tyler-and Brad kills the man. Shauna and Brad confess to each other and have their Happily Ever After.

Upside: The best part of “Love’s Desperate Deceit” is the final 20 pages. Here, Brad and the killer engage in a fight to the death-of the killer, although Brad doesn’t come out unscathed (He gets beat up pretty badly).

Downside: Unfortunately, the rest of the book is problematic. I grew as the book went on to like Shauna, but at the beginning, she is an egotistical, histrionic drama queen, qualities I don’t like in book characters or in real life. Ms. McMahon doesn’t provide either Shauna or Brad-or any other character-with much depth. Ms. McMahon’s pacing of her writing is glacially slow (which is how all of her books are). There really isn’t a storyline in the book, just a bunch of fragmented things that occur. None of the pieces really fit together.

Sex: The love scenes between Shauna and Brad are barely lukewarm, like the rest of the book. Although I can say one good thing: Brad doesn’t rape Shauna. (In two other books related to this one that feature Remington males as heroes, both Beau and Dane Remington rape the heroines of those books). Is Ms. McMahon turning over a new leaf? We’ll see.

Violence: Assault and battery, shootings and killings occur in “Love’s Desperate Deceit”. The violence is only mildly graphic at the end of the book, when the villain is killed.

Bottom Line: It’s one thing for a book to be bad. It’s another thing for a book to be boring as hell. “Love’s Desperate Deceit” falls into the latter category.

[Becky (romantic_pursuing_feels) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Note: Some of my goodreads shelves can be spoilers

Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖 (Even though this book is really long, it was an easier read than I was expecting)
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔 (I felt I didn’t know much about the hero)
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡ (Not much tension for me!)
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋 (The scenes are very short and vague – more euphemistic and not explicit)
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑 (a paragraph to a few paragraphs without much detail)
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥 (There’s a number of scenes but they aren’t very explicit or long so I settled at a 2 flame feel)
Humor: A bit
Perspective: Mostly third person from the heroine but some from the hero (and maybe a touch from a side character here and there)
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? slow to medium
When mains are first on page together: Pretty soon in – I have it at pg 34 of 512 or about 6% in
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after for the mains
Epilogue: No
Format: read a paperback borrowed from my library (MelCat State Lending Library)
Why I chose this book: Her name came up in our Vintage Romance book and I was curious if my library had any of hers because many of her releases are out of print
Mains: This is a M/F relationship between a cishet hero and heroine
(Descriptions found at end of my review)

Should I read in order?
This is a stand alone romance I believe but I did see in this review by Blue Falcon that Brad was in Defiant Spitfire as a character if you want to read that first!

Basic plot:
Shauna is determined to never marry unless it’s on her own terms – to avoid an undesirable marriage, she offers her family estate as a dowry to a man that will agree to her terms...

Give this a try if you want:
- historical romance – the hero fought in the American Revolutionary War so I’d say late 1780s, possibly 1790s
- old school romance – published 1988
- enemies to lovers feel – the heroine fights the hero every step of the way
- former soldier hero
- hero is English but has lived in America for a number of years and fought for the Colonies in the Revolutionary War
- bargain – heroine offers her estate (Brad’s former home) as part of her dowry if she can have a marriage in name only
- secret identity
- secret keeping
- marriage of convenience
- lower steam – there’s quite a few sex scenes but they are mostly short, vague and filled with euphemisms

Ages:
- Didn’t catch them – the heroine I think is around 20? Hero I’m not sure...I would guess around 30

My thoughts:
My expectations for this one were SO low – the other one I read by this author I really despised because it was rape heavy and there was nothing redeemable about the hero. So I was kind of worried it would be similar but I was glad it wasn’t!

In this one – our heroine is the hard to love one. She is young. She is spoiled. She is manipulative and a bit sullen and basically a brat. And I really disliked her in the beginning. She was so painful to read, she made the dumbest mistakes. While people close to her tried to help her, she just kept self sabotaging. But...there were some scenes later in the book where we get some self reflection and vulnerability from her that melted by negative feelings a bit.

The hero in this one was rather fun! He was steadfast – he saw Shauna’s problems and stayed strong with her throughout and gave her so many chances to better herself. I liked the little...tricks he played on her to see what she would do while knowing the whole time what was going on. He was actually WAY nicer than I would have been.

Overall though I didn’t love this one – it isn’t one I would come back to though I did like it more than the other title

Few random reading stats for this author
# of books read: 2
Average rating from me: 2.5 stars
Favorite book: This one?

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

- dubious consent kisses elements/drunken sex
- poisoning death of someone on page
- domestic violence – the heroine does slap the hero
- there’s a few death scenes on page
Author content warnings? Nothing listed


Locations of kisses/intimate scenes, safe sex aspects, consent, pregnancy/child in the story: Some of them are noted by page number and some by chapter number...I returned the book before consolidating on a category choice sorry 😆

Safe sex: No
How’s the consent? It’s….old school. I wouldn’t read this if you want strong consent. There’s some elements of dubious kisses. There’s a sex scene where the heroine is drunk...the hero resists and doesn’t push the heroine doesn’t even remember it the next day...no rape though, like the other book I read from her!
Pregnancy/children in story? Not on page but discussion of possibility of pregnancy
Pg 89 – she slaps him and he kisses her
Chapter 8 – dream sex scene
Chapter 10ish – the heroine is drunk and is the aggressor for sex but doesn’t recall it the next day
Chapter 12 – sex
Chapter 13 – brief scene
Chapter 25 - sex
Total pages: 512


Extra stuff like what my review breakdown means, where to find me, and book clubs


Full break down on what my ratings above mean here:
Overall: How I felt about it everything considered!
Readability: How ‘readable’ was the book? Did I fly through it? Did I have to tell myself to pick it back up repeatedly? Were any passages confusing? (I will probably score like (1) is literally unreadable due to formatting/typing errors, etc (2) There were lots of errors that made it difficult to read OR It was extremely confusing and I had to reread passages to make sense of it OR I disliked it so much I had to bribe myself to keep reading (3) I didn’t really want to keep reading and would have preferred to abandon the read and start something else OR some minor continuity issues/confusion (4) I liked it fine, maybe a minor error or 2. I was happy to pick it up when I had time. (5) I never wanted to put this down. I thought about it when I wasn’t reading it. I hid in the bathroom from my kids to read. I threw inappropriate food at my children for dinner so I could read instead.)
Feels: Totally subjective to each person but did the book give me any tingles? Any butterflies? Did it rip my heart out (in a good way?)
Emotional depth: How well do I feel I know the characters at the end? How much did I feel their emotions throughout the story?
Sexual tension: Again, subjective, but how strong was the wanting and longing to me between the characters? A book might have strong sexual tension without a single touch.
Romance: Was there romance? Did romantic things happen? This can be actions/words/thoughts of the characters and again is subjective.
Sensuality: This is how the intimate scenes are written. Kisses and sexual scenes – how sensual were they? Were they on the mechanical side? Was there emotional pull tied in? Were the details explicit or flowery? These are subjective but generally (1) too short to get a good judgement (2) not all what I'm looking for - very vague or flowery prose (3) either not explicit enough or not enough emotional pull (too mechanical/physically descriptive without the emotions) (4) what I love in a scene (5) absolute perfection - perfect balance of emotional longing and explicit descriptions
Sex Scene Length: How long the bedroom scenes are (generally (1) is 1-3 sentences (2) is a few paragraphs to a page-ish (3) is about average, a few pages (4) more well developed scenes, quite a few pages with descriptions (5) the majority of the book takes place in the bedroom. This is always hard to tell for me on audio!
Steam Scale: Generally, each flame is a scene. If scenes are super close together I sometimes combine them. If a scene is super short or so vague I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t count it. There’s some levels of grey but generally the number of flames is how many sex scenes there are (I max out at 5 so I’ll put a + after if there’s more than that)


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Book Clubs
The Ton and the Tartans (Historical Romance)
Upturned Petticoats and Undone Cravats (Historical Romance with Steam Requirements)
A Love Less Ordinary (Science Fiction, Paranormal, Monster, Fantasy)
Modern Manuscripts (Contemporary Romance)
Words for the Wicked (Contemporary Romance with Steam Requirements)
Vintage Romance (Old School Romance – published 2000 and prior)

[Cat The Curious · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started great and list its spark. DNF