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The Fire of Spring
LOGAN GARRETT DIDN'T BELIEVE IN LOVE
He believed in revenge. Dawn Sheridan's beautiful, calculating mother had destroyed Logan's older brother, and Logan had sworn vengeance. When he won the Sheridan ranch in a poker game he should have been satisfied -- but he wasn't. Dawn, who resembled her beautiful mother so closely, was the perfect target for his anger. Yet Logan found that in hurting her, he came away wounded.
Dawn understood what Logan was afraid to admit -- that what he wanted from her was love, not hatred. She gave him that love, risking everything to reach the gentle, caring man beneath his pain, knowing that if she lost, Logan would finally have the vengeance he sought.
He believed in revenge. Dawn Sheridan's beautiful, calculating mother had destroyed Logan's older brother, and Logan had sworn vengeance. When he won the Sheridan ranch in a poker game he should have been satisfied -- but he wasn't. Dawn, who resembled her beautiful mother so closely, was the perfect target for his anger. Yet Logan found that in hurting her, he came away wounded.
Dawn understood what Logan was afraid to admit -- that what he wanted from her was love, not hatred. She gave him that love, risking everything to reach the gentle, caring man beneath his pain, knowing that if she lost, Logan would finally have the vengeance he sought.
189 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 1, 1986
About the author
Elizabeth Lowell
212 books1,942 followersIndividually and with co-author/husband Evan, Ann Maxwell has written over 60 novels and one work of non-fiction. There are 30 million copies of these books in print, as well as reprints in 30 foreign languages. Her novels range from science fiction to historical fiction, from romance to mystery. After working in contemporary and historical romance, she became an innovator in the genre of romantic suspense.
In 1982, Ann began publishing as Elizabeth Lowell. Under that name she has received numerous professional awards in the romance field, including a Lifetime Achievement award from the Romance Writers of America (1994).
Since July of 1992, she has had over 30 novels on the New York Times bestseller list. In 1998 she began writing suspense with a passionate twist, capturing a new audience and generation of readers. Her new romance novel Perfect Touch will be available in July of 2015.
To get a full list of titles as well as read excerpts from her novels, visit www.elizabethlowell.com.
In 1982, Ann began publishing as Elizabeth Lowell. Under that name she has received numerous professional awards in the romance field, including a Lifetime Achievement award from the Romance Writers of America (1994).
Since July of 1992, she has had over 30 novels on the New York Times bestseller list. In 1998 she began writing suspense with a passionate twist, capturing a new audience and generation of readers. Her new romance novel Perfect Touch will be available in July of 2015.
To get a full list of titles as well as read excerpts from her novels, visit www.elizabethlowell.com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
August 13, 2018
Old skool revenge story that shows just what an author can pack into a category. This story is intense, emotional, a trainwreck, and skillfully written. The author's choice of the heroine's name (Dawn), her career (weaving), the time of year (Spring), the plot progression (from sickness to health), the images of light and dark, fire and snow, death and birth all serve the story of a hero who can't let go of his bitterness over his older's brother's death.
Hero blames the heroine's mother* for his alcoholic brother's sad excuse for a life/death. She jilted the brother to marry the richest rancher in the district. Hero got his revenge by winning the ranch in a poker game. He wanted to further his revenge by making the 18 year-old heroine his mistress. Heroine fled, her virtue intact. Hero realizes, on some level, that he has destroyed the heroine's life, so he gave his sister $5,000 to give to the heroine to get an education or whatever.
Heroine bought a loom and began making items for the craft stores in Aspen. She is saving to pay back her friend's "loan."
The story opens three years later when the hero's sister asks the heroine to discharge her debt by taking care of the hero for two months. He has pneumonia and won't let anyone help him. Heroine agrees - even though she knows he doesn't love her, moth to flame, etc. .. .
The rest of the story is the heroine slaving away for the hero in her old home, creating a tapestry on her grandmother's loom, and the hero treating her like crap. In between the seduction, the humiliations, the almost rape - the H/h have interesting conversations about letting go of the past, how to learn the lessons life is teaching you, and how to love people even if they're not perfect. There's some real wisdom buried in this nightmare of a scenario.
And it is a nightmare. Heroine is saintly in that burned-at-the-stake kind of martyrdom. Girlfriend *endures* and it's not a good role model for real life. But she has a passive power in the story that is strangely compelling.
Hero is in deep emotional pain and is as dangerous as a wounded animal. He needed laying out with a skillet - every day and twice on Sundays. He's truly horrible, he doesn't grovel enough at the end, but there is a sick satisfaction for the reader when he realizes he has become the heroine's mother and the heroine is his slowly dying brother in their present day reenactment of the past. He's become the monster that he has always hated.
The heroine burning all of her weaving and then taking a knife to the tapestry was the black moment that destroyed and cleansed all of what had gone before. And it was entirely in character. And it was a catharsis that is not often seen in a category.
This is powerful -and in a way - dangerous writing. Hurt/comfort stories always are. That the heroine has to suffer so the hero can heal is fine within the pages of a book. But this kind of emotional abuse is toxic in real life - and can perhaps be toxic to readers as well. So trigger warnings for cruelty and slut shaming and emotional abuse. Open this one with caution.
*Her name was Mary Sue and the fandom connotation of that name pulled me out of the story every time. Too bad Elizabeth Lowell had no way of knowing . . .
Hero blames the heroine's mother* for his alcoholic brother's sad excuse for a life/death. She jilted the brother to marry the richest rancher in the district. Hero got his revenge by winning the ranch in a poker game. He wanted to further his revenge by making the 18 year-old heroine his mistress. Heroine fled, her virtue intact. Hero realizes, on some level, that he has destroyed the heroine's life, so he gave his sister $5,000 to give to the heroine to get an education or whatever.
Heroine bought a loom and began making items for the craft stores in Aspen. She is saving to pay back her friend's "loan."
The story opens three years later when the hero's sister asks the heroine to discharge her debt by taking care of the hero for two months. He has pneumonia and won't let anyone help him. Heroine agrees - even though she knows he doesn't love her, moth to flame, etc. .. .
The rest of the story is the heroine slaving away for the hero in her old home, creating a tapestry on her grandmother's loom, and the hero treating her like crap. In between the seduction, the humiliations, the almost rape - the H/h have interesting conversations about letting go of the past, how to learn the lessons life is teaching you, and how to love people even if they're not perfect. There's some real wisdom buried in this nightmare of a scenario.
And it is a nightmare. Heroine is saintly in that burned-at-the-stake kind of martyrdom. Girlfriend *endures* and it's not a good role model for real life. But she has a passive power in the story that is strangely compelling.
Hero is in deep emotional pain and is as dangerous as a wounded animal. He needed laying out with a skillet - every day and twice on Sundays. He's truly horrible, he doesn't grovel enough at the end, but there is a sick satisfaction for the reader when he realizes he has become the heroine's mother and the heroine is his slowly dying brother in their present day reenactment of the past. He's become the monster that he has always hated.
The heroine burning all of her weaving and then taking a knife to the tapestry was the black moment that destroyed and cleansed all of what had gone before. And it was entirely in character. And it was a catharsis that is not often seen in a category.
This is powerful -and in a way - dangerous writing. Hurt/comfort stories always are. That the heroine has to suffer so the hero can heal is fine within the pages of a book. But this kind of emotional abuse is toxic in real life - and can perhaps be toxic to readers as well. So trigger warnings for cruelty and slut shaming and emotional abuse. Open this one with caution.
*Her name was Mary Sue and the fandom connotation of that name pulled me out of the story every time. Too bad Elizabeth Lowell had no way of knowing . . .
August 16, 2018
What St. Margarets said.
This is super effective in imagery and writing, but not a how-to for real life relationships, ladies. Well, maybe, but only if you are aiming for the perfect manual for masochists in training. The hero was such a mean bastard. There isn't a skillet large enough.
Don't recall when 'Mary Sue' became shorthand for an absurdly perfect heroine. Kind of fun to think Lowell was playing with flipping that trope by making the horrible mother, Mary Sue, be anything but perfect. It was a bit jarring.
This is super effective in imagery and writing, but not a how-to for real life relationships, ladies. Well, maybe, but only if you are aiming for the perfect manual for masochists in training. The hero was such a mean bastard. There isn't a skillet large enough.
Don't recall when 'Mary Sue' became shorthand for an absurdly perfect heroine. Kind of fun to think Lowell was playing with flipping that trope by making the horrible mother, Mary Sue, be anything but perfect. It was a bit jarring.
November 17, 2009
Fire of Spring has some beautiful, descriptive writing, and it hooked me emotionally. The imagery was very vivid, with the descriptions of the Colorado landscape under the grip of a cold spring in which snow is still on the group, and the promise of a warm Spring lurks around the corner. The title of this book really ties into the storyline in a number of ways, relating to the weather, the emotional intensity between the characters, and the tapestry that Dawn is working on that reflects her hopes for her relationship with Logan. Additionally, anyone who has read Elizabeth Lowell’s romances knows how well she writes sensuality. She never gets too explicit, but there is a fire and a power in her descriptions of the attraction between her characters, and their eventual lovemaking.
Both Dawn and Logan have suffered in their lives, and the cause of their suffering is in part due to the same woman. However, Dawn chose to put that pain behind her and get on with her life. In contrast, Logan hangs onto the hurt of seeing his brother kill himself with alcohol, and after years of feeding him full of nonsense about how bad women are and how they will destroy you, because his brother fell for the wrong woman---Dawn’s mother.
Logan hurt Dawn very badly by taking her young love and turning it into something dirty, offering her the position as his mistress until he tired of her. Instead of taking him up on that, she left and moved on with her life. Three years later, Dawn’s friend Kathy, Logan’s sister begs her to come and take care of Logan, who is sick with walking pneumonia. Dawn doesn’t want to go back down that painful path, but she owes Logan a debt, and she intends to pay him back. She hopes that she can keep herself from loving him again, knowing that he will only break her heart.
This is definitely a well-written story, and I zoomed through it. However, Logan is a mean bastard. He is deliberately cruel to Dawn, and I think most women would probably have beaten him to death with a frying pan. Dawn takes a lot off this guy, probably too much, out of her love for him. She tries to break down the corrosive wall of anger and bitterness that Logan has around his heart so that he can be free, even if she won’t be able to claim his love for her own. Part of me wondered that he was even worth the effort. But deep down, Dawn knows that Logan does love her. He just has to overcome that bad programming that his brother entrenched into his mind and spirit. She tries her best to help him, even though she weeps from the wounds that Logan’s ugly words inflict on her vulnerable heart, and she stays until he tells her to leave. She was a strong woman to put up with that. Strong in that yielding and standing sort of way that is underappreciated. I really liked Dawn. Logan, not so much, especially after he humiliates Dawn in front of the ranch hands. He comes around, realizing how much he loves Dawn, but I would have preferred some extended groveling and an epilogue in which Logan shows how much he adores Dawn. Because these essential elements weren’t on offer, this couldn’t be a five star read for me. However, this is a very good book, if you can tolerate a jerky, cruel hero who needs some remedial lessons in love and groveling.
Both Dawn and Logan have suffered in their lives, and the cause of their suffering is in part due to the same woman. However, Dawn chose to put that pain behind her and get on with her life. In contrast, Logan hangs onto the hurt of seeing his brother kill himself with alcohol, and after years of feeding him full of nonsense about how bad women are and how they will destroy you, because his brother fell for the wrong woman---Dawn’s mother.
Logan hurt Dawn very badly by taking her young love and turning it into something dirty, offering her the position as his mistress until he tired of her. Instead of taking him up on that, she left and moved on with her life. Three years later, Dawn’s friend Kathy, Logan’s sister begs her to come and take care of Logan, who is sick with walking pneumonia. Dawn doesn’t want to go back down that painful path, but she owes Logan a debt, and she intends to pay him back. She hopes that she can keep herself from loving him again, knowing that he will only break her heart.
This is definitely a well-written story, and I zoomed through it. However, Logan is a mean bastard. He is deliberately cruel to Dawn, and I think most women would probably have beaten him to death with a frying pan. Dawn takes a lot off this guy, probably too much, out of her love for him. She tries to break down the corrosive wall of anger and bitterness that Logan has around his heart so that he can be free, even if she won’t be able to claim his love for her own. Part of me wondered that he was even worth the effort. But deep down, Dawn knows that Logan does love her. He just has to overcome that bad programming that his brother entrenched into his mind and spirit. She tries her best to help him, even though she weeps from the wounds that Logan’s ugly words inflict on her vulnerable heart, and she stays until he tells her to leave. She was a strong woman to put up with that. Strong in that yielding and standing sort of way that is underappreciated. I really liked Dawn. Logan, not so much, especially after he humiliates Dawn in front of the ranch hands. He comes around, realizing how much he loves Dawn, but I would have preferred some extended groveling and an epilogue in which Logan shows how much he adores Dawn. Because these essential elements weren’t on offer, this couldn’t be a five star read for me. However, this is a very good book, if you can tolerate a jerky, cruel hero who needs some remedial lessons in love and groveling.
November 23, 2020
Ladies, this is a real tear jerker trainwreck with an avalanche of emotional abuse. And never ever try the heroine's recipe at home!
February 7, 2022
Recently I attended a seminar on psychopathic personality tracts. There was the story of a young serial killer who at 24 had already killed 14 people, after torturing and abusing them for pleasure.
He had been raised by his young uncle, a veteran in Vietnam, who basically explained all about torture and killing people. His uncle was the only person who cared for him, never mind he was severely traumatized by a cruel and non human war and unable to tell right from wrong. His uncle became his idol, and he became a serial killer to be just like he though his uncle had been.
This is what happen when a child is warped and twisted by parents/ caregivers during his childhood.
The hero was ruined by his older and more fragile brother, a man who was a alcoholic, and who basically died alcoholic because the heroine’s mother jilted him.
The brother basically was always talking about the heroine’s mother, about how all women are gold diggers and want to exploit poor defenseless men.
The hero hates the heroine because she’s like her mother.
Of course she is the opposite, but she’s been deprived enough of parents love that she’s unable to know what is love and what is toxic behavior.
She thinks she loves the hero and that she can wipe the past and make him love her.
Beware of women who has the savior complex! They think they can save the world and they always catch the worst men around like viruses because they think they can heal them.
Nothing is less true.
You can’t save a mentally and emotionally disturbed man with love, you can save it with counseling.
That’s a fact.
The poor heroine accepts to become the hero’s mistress because she thinks this will get even with her mother’s betrayal.
Of course it doesn’t work.
The hero abuses and debases the heroine because he’s the mean and coward type, that since he’s angry because he feels that the heroine has power on his emotions, he hurts her instead.
Very macho.
And the heroine is not the hard type as her mother so she’s almost broken in the end, when he basically throws her out of his ranch.
Only in the last two pages he realizes he’s just like her mother and he goes back to her to tell her he loves her.
Hea.
No! Not for meeeeee!
The ending is not believable, and too abrupt.
187 pages of abuse and two pages of partial redemption???
This ruined all the book.
No apologies, no explanations for his contemptible behavior, not at all.
Really, this should have been better dealt.
The writing is quite good, the parallelism between pattern of curtains and pattern of behavior and mother/ daughter brother/ brother are really interesting.
Sex scenes are hot.
Unfortunately both characters are warped and twisted and an happy ending is not believable.
The hero is stupid and dumb because honestly, a girl who at 21 is still a virgin and lives alone taking care of herself hardly categorizes herself as a cold gold digger, and the man is unable to handle this simple truth.
The heroine is stupid too because she didn’t understand he needs a therapy and a very long and thorough one, not sex from his worst enemy’s daughter…
Whatever.
Not a bad book if you can handle triggers as almost rape, verbal abuse, sexual slavery.
He had been raised by his young uncle, a veteran in Vietnam, who basically explained all about torture and killing people. His uncle was the only person who cared for him, never mind he was severely traumatized by a cruel and non human war and unable to tell right from wrong. His uncle became his idol, and he became a serial killer to be just like he though his uncle had been.
This is what happen when a child is warped and twisted by parents/ caregivers during his childhood.
The hero was ruined by his older and more fragile brother, a man who was a alcoholic, and who basically died alcoholic because the heroine’s mother jilted him.
The brother basically was always talking about the heroine’s mother, about how all women are gold diggers and want to exploit poor defenseless men.
The hero hates the heroine because she’s like her mother.
Of course she is the opposite, but she’s been deprived enough of parents love that she’s unable to know what is love and what is toxic behavior.
She thinks she loves the hero and that she can wipe the past and make him love her.
Beware of women who has the savior complex! They think they can save the world and they always catch the worst men around like viruses because they think they can heal them.
Nothing is less true.
You can’t save a mentally and emotionally disturbed man with love, you can save it with counseling.
That’s a fact.
The poor heroine accepts to become the hero’s mistress because she thinks this will get even with her mother’s betrayal.
Of course it doesn’t work.
The hero abuses and debases the heroine because he’s the mean and coward type, that since he’s angry because he feels that the heroine has power on his emotions, he hurts her instead.
Very macho.
And the heroine is not the hard type as her mother so she’s almost broken in the end, when he basically throws her out of his ranch.
Only in the last two pages he realizes he’s just like her mother and he goes back to her to tell her he loves her.
Hea.
No! Not for meeeeee!
The ending is not believable, and too abrupt.
187 pages of abuse and two pages of partial redemption???
This ruined all the book.
No apologies, no explanations for his contemptible behavior, not at all.
Really, this should have been better dealt.
The writing is quite good, the parallelism between pattern of curtains and pattern of behavior and mother/ daughter brother/ brother are really interesting.
Sex scenes are hot.
Unfortunately both characters are warped and twisted and an happy ending is not believable.
The hero is stupid and dumb because honestly, a girl who at 21 is still a virgin and lives alone taking care of herself hardly categorizes herself as a cold gold digger, and the man is unable to handle this simple truth.
The heroine is stupid too because she didn’t understand he needs a therapy and a very long and thorough one, not sex from his worst enemy’s daughter…
Whatever.
Not a bad book if you can handle triggers as almost rape, verbal abuse, sexual slavery.
November 1, 2017
"The Fire of Spring" is the story of Dawn and Logan.
When Logan's brother Joe kills himself inebriated after getting jilted by Mary-Sue, Dawn's mother, he tries to take his revenge after winning all of Dawn's lands by seducing her. Dawn runs away and three years later, is asked by Kathy, Logan's sister and her best friend to take care of Logan for two weeks to pay of the loan "Kathy" had given her in the past.
Basically our great hero is a PIG and douchebag. Being creepy and mean is not enough, he has to be verbally abusive too. Calling the heroine all wonderful names from bitch to a whore, he refuses to listen to reason and still wants to seduce her despite knowing he's hurting her for "revenge". WTF was with him wanting to weave her hair in the art she making?
The heroine started out as sweet and kind, but allowing that ass to almost rape her (TWICE) and then listening to his excuses was infuriating to read.
The cherry on top was the hero remembering his brother and her mother during sex many times.
If you like hero being an angry rapist and your heroine having NO SELF RESPECT, this one is for you. Ending was stupid and there was NO GROVELING.
I dont even care about safety
.5/5
When Logan's brother Joe kills himself inebriated after getting jilted by Mary-Sue, Dawn's mother, he tries to take his revenge after winning all of Dawn's lands by seducing her. Dawn runs away and three years later, is asked by Kathy, Logan's sister and her best friend to take care of Logan for two weeks to pay of the loan "Kathy" had given her in the past.
Basically our great hero is a PIG and douchebag. Being creepy and mean is not enough, he has to be verbally abusive too. Calling the heroine all wonderful names from bitch to a whore, he refuses to listen to reason and still wants to seduce her despite knowing he's hurting her for "revenge". WTF was with him wanting to weave her hair in the art she making?
The heroine started out as sweet and kind, but allowing that ass to almost rape her (TWICE) and then listening to his excuses was infuriating to read.
The cherry on top was the hero remembering his brother and her mother during sex many times.
If you like hero being an angry rapist and your heroine having NO SELF RESPECT, this one is for you. Ending was stupid and there was NO GROVELING.
I dont even care about safety
.5/5
October 31, 2016
I just read this again and it is still heartbreaking. I wanted the heroine to say no and walk out on him and never come back. He didn't deserve her and I don't there life will be any better in the future. The man is crazy.
He asked her to be his mistress three years ago and she left. His sister makes her come back and take care of him for repayment of a debt. She cleaned his place up, tended to him for months to get him back in shape and he repays her by basically treating her like crap. And she took it. I was so angry at at her and wanted her to just leave but no she stayed and took the abuse. And he was more than cruel. When he almost raped her in the bunkhouse I hated him with a passion and he never redeemed himself to me.
The scene where she tries to save the calf and finds it dead just reminded me of her love for the hero. She couldn't save him either. She was never going to save him from the road of hate and revenge he was on. She should have left that night and never returned. Her love was hopeless. He might have came back in and stopped her form destroying the tapestry but he didn't redeem himself to me. I hated him and as I said, he will never change.
I hated this book and yet I read it again. What is the definition of insanity? Reading the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome? I misquote but that is what I am doing. I keep thinking I will find some different ending or something I missed but no, it still stunk. I cried several times in it and I hope I never read it again. But I probably will. Insanity....
He asked her to be his mistress three years ago and she left. His sister makes her come back and take care of him for repayment of a debt. She cleaned his place up, tended to him for months to get him back in shape and he repays her by basically treating her like crap. And she took it. I was so angry at at her and wanted her to just leave but no she stayed and took the abuse. And he was more than cruel. When he almost raped her in the bunkhouse I hated him with a passion and he never redeemed himself to me.
The scene where she tries to save the calf and finds it dead just reminded me of her love for the hero. She couldn't save him either. She was never going to save him from the road of hate and revenge he was on. She should have left that night and never returned. Her love was hopeless. He might have came back in and stopped her form destroying the tapestry but he didn't redeem himself to me. I hated him and as I said, he will never change.
I hated this book and yet I read it again. What is the definition of insanity? Reading the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome? I misquote but that is what I am doing. I keep thinking I will find some different ending or something I missed but no, it still stunk. I cried several times in it and I hope I never read it again. But I probably will. Insanity....
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 26, 2016
I liked this better when I read it years ago. I just wanted the heroine to stand up and throw a check in his face. His misplaced hatred for her ran rampant through 99% of the book and the resolution took a measly few pages with no grovelling other than a frantic run from the barn to the house.
Read
August 16, 2016Abandoned and author to avoid because the writing was so tiring! I wont rate this cause i couldnt even read it! Endless monologues, descriptions, zero dialogue!
December 22, 2018
This is a one-star/five-star. The H is stupendously awful, the h ridiculously self-sacrificing, and it's hard to stop reading despite that.
September 4, 2020
Dreamy and lyrical writing elevates FoS beyond the typical category romance, but the darkness that flows throughout the story makes it a hard read. The motifs of the seasons, light and darkness, fire and ice, the heroine's weaving are beautifully rendered—Lowell is as much a master weaver as her heroine, even in this early work.
But I had mixed reactions to this story. I enjoy wrecky revenge tropes and wasn’t sure why I found this one so unsettling until I realized that it’s the degree of the hero’s bitterness and how unfounded it is. Usually, in my experience, the hero’s drive for vengeance is the result of a misunderstanding—the heroine is usually either innocent of whatever misdeed the hero has laid at her door or an action or event has been twisted and misread in some way. And regardless of whether she did the deed or didn’t, she’s not a proxy for someone else, as the heroine in this story is. But this (anti)hero, Logan, is fully aware that the heroine has done nothing; she simply has the misfortune to have been born to a woman he blames for his own family's tragedies.
Heroine Dawn is expected to pay for the actions of her beautiful, fickle mother, whom the hero blames for his brother’s decline into alcoholism and death. The fact that the hero is attracted to, even in love with, the heroine from the very start is only more fuel for his bitter fire. He wants vengeance on behalf of another, and he is seeking it FROM another, not the offender, and maybe that’s what bothers me about this story. The level of misogyny runs too deep in the hero; I don’t trust in a happy ending that relies so heavily on the heroine’s ability to “heal”: an outer transformative power. The hero doesn’t change, we are told, so much as he IS changed and redeemed by magical heroine healing powers.
The theme of love as a healing forces is hardly new to romance, but in this case, it felt like too high a price to be paid by an innocent who was as hurt by the actions of her parents as the hero and his brother were. The whole Madonna-whore aspect turned me off too, as did the big bully manbaby hero’s insistence that all of his brother’s woes (and by association his woes) were caused by Woman (conceptually) who needed to be punished for it, as opposed to the particular woman who he believes actually caused the hurt. While he does, by the end, somewhat admit his brother’s culpability for his own problems and have a dawning realization that he has become the very person he loathed, the hero’s long-held belief that everything that happened was someone else’s fault seems like a pattern that will repeat. I just don’t buy the HEA here.
I don’t know that I really enjoyed this book, but it definitely had deep currents that are engrossing even having closed the cover. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while. And that, in itself, is a testament to EL’s skill.
But I had mixed reactions to this story. I enjoy wrecky revenge tropes and wasn’t sure why I found this one so unsettling until I realized that it’s the degree of the hero’s bitterness and how unfounded it is. Usually, in my experience, the hero’s drive for vengeance is the result of a misunderstanding—the heroine is usually either innocent of whatever misdeed the hero has laid at her door or an action or event has been twisted and misread in some way. And regardless of whether she did the deed or didn’t, she’s not a proxy for someone else, as the heroine in this story is. But this (anti)hero, Logan, is fully aware that the heroine has done nothing; she simply has the misfortune to have been born to a woman he blames for his own family's tragedies.
Heroine Dawn is expected to pay for the actions of her beautiful, fickle mother, whom the hero blames for his brother’s decline into alcoholism and death. The fact that the hero is attracted to, even in love with, the heroine from the very start is only more fuel for his bitter fire. He wants vengeance on behalf of another, and he is seeking it FROM another, not the offender, and maybe that’s what bothers me about this story. The level of misogyny runs too deep in the hero; I don’t trust in a happy ending that relies so heavily on the heroine’s ability to “heal”: an outer transformative power. The hero doesn’t change, we are told, so much as he IS changed and redeemed by magical heroine healing powers.
The theme of love as a healing forces is hardly new to romance, but in this case, it felt like too high a price to be paid by an innocent who was as hurt by the actions of her parents as the hero and his brother were. The whole Madonna-whore aspect turned me off too, as did the big bully manbaby hero’s insistence that all of his brother’s woes (and by association his woes) were caused by Woman (conceptually) who needed to be punished for it, as opposed to the particular woman who he believes actually caused the hurt. While he does, by the end, somewhat admit his brother’s culpability for his own problems and have a dawning realization that he has become the very person he loathed, the hero’s long-held belief that everything that happened was someone else’s fault seems like a pattern that will repeat. I just don’t buy the HEA here.
I don’t know that I really enjoyed this book, but it definitely had deep currents that are engrossing even having closed the cover. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while. And that, in itself, is a testament to EL’s skill.
October 26, 2018
This took me ages to finish for a simple reason. It was kind of boring and tedious to read. I just couldn't connect to the story and I have good reasons for it. The h was too timid, too willing to pay for the mistakes of her parents and ended up playing carpet to the H in the process. The H was super cruel, bitter and had no qualms taking his frustrations and his need for 'revenge' out on the helpless and hapless h. Together they made a very dysfunctional couple and I didn't believe in the HEA or even the fact that they should be with each other at all. Also, I could have done with fewer descriptions of ranch life in general. Not my cup of tea at all.
July 4, 2022
I thought I would like this, but I didn’t. The plot has a cruel H and a virgin h and it has vengeance. That I like.
But I didn’t feel his love for her. I want that strange mix of cruelty, passion, desire, love from a H. Like in a vintage Charlotte Lamb or in a vintage Helen Bianchin. The steamy scenes were steamy, but the love was missing.
And she was too much of a martyr. The morning after their first night together, when he ordered her to get out of his bed, she should not have only walked out of his bed, but also out of his life.
Anyway, it dragged with their stories about her mother and his brother and him again and again calling her a wh*re because her mother was a whore (according to him). I scrolled through a lot of their bla bla.
But I didn’t feel his love for her. I want that strange mix of cruelty, passion, desire, love from a H. Like in a vintage Charlotte Lamb or in a vintage Helen Bianchin. The steamy scenes were steamy, but the love was missing.
And she was too much of a martyr. The morning after their first night together, when he ordered her to get out of his bed, she should not have only walked out of his bed, but also out of his life.
Anyway, it dragged with their stories about her mother and his brother and him again and again calling her a wh*re because her mother was a whore (according to him). I scrolled through a lot of their bla bla.
August 27, 2023
I typically don't enjoy second-chance romance stories, but this one is quite enjoyable. However, I find the ending to be rather abrupt. I'm yearning for more. I've lost count of how often Logan referred to Dawn as the daughter of Mary Sue. Logan didn't even grovel.😫😫
August 16, 2012
I can't believe how much of a jerk this Hero was or for how long it lasted. Or how long she stayed and kept taking his crap, I kept hollering "just leave!" during the book but she didn't. But that being said I really, really liked this book and ended up liking the H too. (probably 3.5 stars for me :))
So she gets the TSTL tag- she has the money to pay him back, that first day when he smarted off she should have just wrote him that check and walked out the door.. It ended a little too soon for me because I really wanted to see them together and happy for once.
So she gets the TSTL tag- she has the money to pay him back, that first day when he smarted off she should have just wrote him that check and walked out the door.. It ended a little too soon for me because I really wanted to see them together and happy for once.
March 16, 2010
Typical early Elizabeth Lowell her novels can bring you into the depth of despair and out of it in a few short pages. She is also always very descriptive although sometimes you wonder if there is anybody really like her characters in real life.
May 26, 2011
This made my heart hurt, and I almost wished Dawn had gone away before Logan made it back to the house at the climax...
Lady Danielle wrote an awesome review to which I could add nothing of substance so I won't say more, even though it was my first EL (no comment).
Lady Danielle wrote an awesome review to which I could add nothing of substance so I won't say more, even though it was my first EL (no comment).
December 1, 2022
i regret reading this book 👎👎👎👎 Dawn our stupid heroine has no self-respect , i can't express my feeling of disgust right now,but if u want a book where the man can do everything and still be forgiven then this is for u 🌝
October 15, 2015
I hated his guts; more and more, with every page until the end. And I, usually, don't mind jerk heroes...
April 21, 2021
There are some authors I keep around and revisit not in spite of their shortcomings, but because their particular shortcomings are ones that I enjoy when in certain moods. Lowell is one of those authors. Her romances are bad. So very bad. But some of them push just the right emotional buttons and are perfect in specific moments.
Pulled Fires of Spring out and flipped through it tonight. It is *not* one of those books. It's flat out horrible using basically every possible metric, without any saving graces at all.
Pulled Fires of Spring out and flipped through it tonight. It is *not* one of those books. It's flat out horrible using basically every possible metric, without any saving graces at all.
August 6, 2026
3.9 stars
The Fire of Spring is very hard to rate because, in many ways, it contains exactly the sort of emotional journey I love. The writing is strong, the pacing is excellent, the chemistry is powerful, and the romantic conflict remains high throughout. Had the hero's emotional wound been built on almost anything other than the premise Elizabeth Lowell chose, this could easily have been a five-star read.
Instead, I spent much of the novel fighting against what I saw as its deeply misogynistic foundation.
The story revolves around Logan's desire for revenge against Dawn because of who her mother, Mary Sue, was.
Years earlier, Logan's much older brother Joe fell in love with Mary Sue. She left him for a wealthy rancher, after which Joe spent the next decade drinking himself to death while blaming Mary Sue for destroying his life. Throughout those years he repeatedly called her a whore and taught Logan, and seemingly much of the town, to despise her as the woman who had ruined a good man.
I found this entire premise repellent.
Joe destroyed his own life, yet the novel asks us to accept that Mary Sue deserves the blame because she rejected him. Logan inherits exactly the same attitude and decides that Mary Sue's innocent daughter must be just like her mother simply because she inherited her beauty.
He knows Dawn is a virgin. He still decides to seduce her, make her his mistress and use her as revenge for what her mother supposedly did to Joe.
The hypocrisy only became worse the more the backstory unfolded.
We later learn that Mary Sue began sleeping with men at fourteen and gave birth to Dawn at sixteen. Any reasonable person should have known Mary-Sue was no manipulative temptress who destroyed men, but a child who had almost certainly been exploited long before she ever had any real agency. Later we discover that her husband (the heroine's father) regularly gambled Mary-Sue away in card games whenever he ran out of money. She was clearly another victim. The hero knows this but calls Mary-Sue a man-eating whire never-the-less. Wth!
Plus the entire town continues treating her as the villain while excusing the men around her.
If Dawn was born when Mary Sue was only sixteen, then Joe was apparently pursuing marriage with a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old girl despite being around twenty-four himself.
Instead of recognising how disturbing that is, the novel expects us to sympathise with Joe's lifelong bitterness after being rejected by a child. I simply couldn't.
If anything, Logan's attitudes seemed even worse than Joe's. Joe at least experienced personal heartbreak. Logan builds his entire identity around hating women because of stories his brother told him. It made him extremely difficult to admire.
The timelines also seem inconsistent.
At one point Dawn recalls being twelve while Logan was twenty and Joe was thirty-eight, suggesting an eighteen-year age gap between the brothers. Elsewhere Logan remembers himself as five or six while Joe was about seventeen, reducing the difference to roughly twelve years. These inconsistencies became quite distracting and difficult to piece together the exact backstory.
The opening section nevertheless contains exactly the kind of tortured emotional setup I usually love.
Three years earlier Logan won Dawn's parents' ranch in a gambling game and forced her parents to leave. His younger sister, who is Dawn's closest friend, persuades him to let the eighteen-year-old Dawn stay temporarily because she has nowhere else to go.
Hiwever, the moment Logan sees that she's a beauty, the image of her mother, his lust kicks in and he decides that she will become part of his revenge.
He deliberately sets out to seduce her.
Reading those early chapters felt uncomfortably close to watching an older, experienced man groom a vulnerable eighteen-year-old who trusts him completely.
Dawn falls deeply in love with him, believing his growing tenderness is genuine.
Instead, one night Logan seduces her into almost-sex intimacies, then informs her that she is going to become his mistress.
He tells her he will keep her until he grows tired of her and even threatens that if she so much as looks at another man he will strip her naked and leave her in the middle of town. He acts like he is doing her a favour to let her stay at the ranch for a few years until she is done with college and he is done using her body and turning her into his whore.
Dawn is horrified.
She has spent her entire life being judged for her mother's reputation, and now the one man she trusted intends to turn her into exactly what everyone already believes she is.
She leaves immediately.
One thing I did appreciate is that Logan recognises he has left her with nothing. Through his sister he secretly provides the money that allows Dawn to build a new life for herself in Aspen, where she earns a living selling the beautiful woven textiles she learned to create with her grandmother.
Three years later Logan develops pneumonia.
His heavily pregnant sister, carrying high-risk twins, begs Dawn to return temporarily because Logan refuses to care for himself and may literally work himself into the grave.
Dawn initially refuses but eventually agrees out of loyalty to her friend, especially after discovering that the loan which enabled her new life had actually come from Logan.
The next section of the novel was wonderful. The caretaking trope is exceptionally well done.
Dawn transforms Logan's neglected ranch house back into a home. She cooks for him and the ranch hands, cleans the house, hangs her beautiful weavings throughout the rooms and patiently nurses him back to health despite his resentment.
Logan is furious that she has returned but far too ill to resist her fully.
Eventually she persuades him to obey the doctor's orders by reminding him that his sister's pregnancy is dangerously fragile and that she cannot bear the strain of losing him.
Watching Dawn quietly restore warmth and comfort to both the house and Logan himself became one of my favourite parts of the novel.
Unfortunately she finds that Logan's obsession with revenge never disappears.
He is determined that Dawn must pay for her mother's "crimes" against Joe by becoming his mistress.
His internal reasoning never worked for me because the wound driving it remained so fundamentally flawed.
I loved that Dawn was wide enough and brave enough to repeatedly tell him exactly what I was thinking. That he is allowing Joe's tragedy to destroy his own life and that he is becoming just like his brother. He refuses to hear it.
Seeing his festering hatred destroying the man she still loves, eventually Dawn concludes that perhaps the only way to end his obsession is to surrender herself to him. Let him have his vengeance and get it over and done with and then maybe he can love again.
I feared this would make her a doormat that I'd despise, but luckily it didn't. She still fights for his tenderness and against his rage.
Their physical relationship is thus surprisingly tender. The love scenes are open-door without being especially explicit, and I appreciated seeing these emotionally important moments on the page.
The problem comes afterwards. Each time Logan reminds himself this is revenge and immediately follows their intimacy with cruel words designed to hurt her.
He insists she belongs to him until he decides otherwise. That he will use her whenever he likes. And he does. Then rejects her cruelly afterwards.
Dawn continues caring for him while slowly losing what remains of her emotional strength.
This sustained emotional punishment is exactly the kind of angst I normally enjoy, even though I loathed his motivations behind it.
Logan's redemption ultimately worked better than I expected.
The turning point comes when he believes Dawn is flirting with another man.
Consumed by jealousy, he almost forces himself on her before suddenly realising how terrified she has become.
The moment he recognises her fear he immediately stops. Instead of satisfying his own desire, he holds her and soothes her until she calms down.
That scene demonstrated that even at his worst, there was still a line he could not cross because he must care for her more than he hated her. She realises this too.
But afterwards he goes completely cold on her and ignores her for days, leaving her lonely.
Then they face a blizzard while trying to save calves being born during the storm.
Working together allows Logan to see Dawn's strength, competence and determination. He repeatedly tries to send her back for safety, but ultimately respects her decision to stay and help. The storm becomes another convincing step in his redemption.
Afterwards, they finally make love again, during which Dawn inadvertently tells Logan she loves him. In the morning, she lets him get some much needed sleep (as he is still recovering from illness) while she gives the ranch hands urgent instructions following the storm because she knows exactly what needs doing.
Logan overhears and harshly turns on her, accusing her of manipulating him in order to regain control of the ranch. He throws her out. Tells her to wipe all traces of herself away.
Completely broken, Dawn begins burning all of the beautiful weavings she has created during Logan's recovery, including the large tapestry that had gradually become a symbol of both her love and their rebuilding relationship.
Outdoors, Logan finally reflects on her actions in the storm, her despair at the dyung calves, the empiness in her eyes. Just like the emptiness when her ordered her to leave. Only then does Logan finally understand what he has become.
He realises he has spent years destroying the one person who has offered him nothing except warmth, loyalty and love. His revenge has left both of them empty.
His race back to the house, his despair at the burned art, and his reaching her in time to stop Dawn before she destroys the final tapestry, is genuinely moving.
His final declaration of love was moving and feels earned because his emotional realisation is convincing and several precious scenes supported this. Thus the ending was cathartic enough for me to feel satisfied.
Despite my enormous reservations about the novel's foundation, Elizabeth Lowell wrote emotional conflict extremely well. The chemistry between Logan and Dawn is intense, the pacing rarely falters, the caretaking storyline is excellent, and Dawn herself is a wonderfully strong, compassionate and intelligent heroine.
Unfortunately, I could never fully accept Logan's emotional wound because it rests on misogyny, sexual double standards and relentless slut-shaming of women who were themselves clearly victims. I spent too much of the novel trying to ignore the reasoning behind his behaviour in order to appreciate the romance itself.
For that reason I'm settling on 3.9 stars. Had Logan's need for revenge been grounded in something genuinely understandable rather than such deeply unpleasant attitudes towards women, this would easily have been a 5 star read for me.
The Fire of Spring is very hard to rate because, in many ways, it contains exactly the sort of emotional journey I love. The writing is strong, the pacing is excellent, the chemistry is powerful, and the romantic conflict remains high throughout. Had the hero's emotional wound been built on almost anything other than the premise Elizabeth Lowell chose, this could easily have been a five-star read.
Instead, I spent much of the novel fighting against what I saw as its deeply misogynistic foundation.
The story revolves around Logan's desire for revenge against Dawn because of who her mother, Mary Sue, was.
Years earlier, Logan's much older brother Joe fell in love with Mary Sue. She left him for a wealthy rancher, after which Joe spent the next decade drinking himself to death while blaming Mary Sue for destroying his life. Throughout those years he repeatedly called her a whore and taught Logan, and seemingly much of the town, to despise her as the woman who had ruined a good man.
I found this entire premise repellent.
Joe destroyed his own life, yet the novel asks us to accept that Mary Sue deserves the blame because she rejected him. Logan inherits exactly the same attitude and decides that Mary Sue's innocent daughter must be just like her mother simply because she inherited her beauty.
He knows Dawn is a virgin. He still decides to seduce her, make her his mistress and use her as revenge for what her mother supposedly did to Joe.
The hypocrisy only became worse the more the backstory unfolded.
We later learn that Mary Sue began sleeping with men at fourteen and gave birth to Dawn at sixteen. Any reasonable person should have known Mary-Sue was no manipulative temptress who destroyed men, but a child who had almost certainly been exploited long before she ever had any real agency. Later we discover that her husband (the heroine's father) regularly gambled Mary-Sue away in card games whenever he ran out of money. She was clearly another victim. The hero knows this but calls Mary-Sue a man-eating whire never-the-less. Wth!
Plus the entire town continues treating her as the villain while excusing the men around her.
If Dawn was born when Mary Sue was only sixteen, then Joe was apparently pursuing marriage with a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old girl despite being around twenty-four himself.
Instead of recognising how disturbing that is, the novel expects us to sympathise with Joe's lifelong bitterness after being rejected by a child. I simply couldn't.
If anything, Logan's attitudes seemed even worse than Joe's. Joe at least experienced personal heartbreak. Logan builds his entire identity around hating women because of stories his brother told him. It made him extremely difficult to admire.
The timelines also seem inconsistent.
At one point Dawn recalls being twelve while Logan was twenty and Joe was thirty-eight, suggesting an eighteen-year age gap between the brothers. Elsewhere Logan remembers himself as five or six while Joe was about seventeen, reducing the difference to roughly twelve years. These inconsistencies became quite distracting and difficult to piece together the exact backstory.
The opening section nevertheless contains exactly the kind of tortured emotional setup I usually love.
Three years earlier Logan won Dawn's parents' ranch in a gambling game and forced her parents to leave. His younger sister, who is Dawn's closest friend, persuades him to let the eighteen-year-old Dawn stay temporarily because she has nowhere else to go.
Hiwever, the moment Logan sees that she's a beauty, the image of her mother, his lust kicks in and he decides that she will become part of his revenge.
He deliberately sets out to seduce her.
Reading those early chapters felt uncomfortably close to watching an older, experienced man groom a vulnerable eighteen-year-old who trusts him completely.
Dawn falls deeply in love with him, believing his growing tenderness is genuine.
Instead, one night Logan seduces her into almost-sex intimacies, then informs her that she is going to become his mistress.
He tells her he will keep her until he grows tired of her and even threatens that if she so much as looks at another man he will strip her naked and leave her in the middle of town. He acts like he is doing her a favour to let her stay at the ranch for a few years until she is done with college and he is done using her body and turning her into his whore.
Dawn is horrified.
She has spent her entire life being judged for her mother's reputation, and now the one man she trusted intends to turn her into exactly what everyone already believes she is.
She leaves immediately.
One thing I did appreciate is that Logan recognises he has left her with nothing. Through his sister he secretly provides the money that allows Dawn to build a new life for herself in Aspen, where she earns a living selling the beautiful woven textiles she learned to create with her grandmother.
Three years later Logan develops pneumonia.
His heavily pregnant sister, carrying high-risk twins, begs Dawn to return temporarily because Logan refuses to care for himself and may literally work himself into the grave.
Dawn initially refuses but eventually agrees out of loyalty to her friend, especially after discovering that the loan which enabled her new life had actually come from Logan.
The next section of the novel was wonderful. The caretaking trope is exceptionally well done.
Dawn transforms Logan's neglected ranch house back into a home. She cooks for him and the ranch hands, cleans the house, hangs her beautiful weavings throughout the rooms and patiently nurses him back to health despite his resentment.
Logan is furious that she has returned but far too ill to resist her fully.
Eventually she persuades him to obey the doctor's orders by reminding him that his sister's pregnancy is dangerously fragile and that she cannot bear the strain of losing him.
Watching Dawn quietly restore warmth and comfort to both the house and Logan himself became one of my favourite parts of the novel.
Unfortunately she finds that Logan's obsession with revenge never disappears.
He is determined that Dawn must pay for her mother's "crimes" against Joe by becoming his mistress.
His internal reasoning never worked for me because the wound driving it remained so fundamentally flawed.
I loved that Dawn was wide enough and brave enough to repeatedly tell him exactly what I was thinking. That he is allowing Joe's tragedy to destroy his own life and that he is becoming just like his brother. He refuses to hear it.
Seeing his festering hatred destroying the man she still loves, eventually Dawn concludes that perhaps the only way to end his obsession is to surrender herself to him. Let him have his vengeance and get it over and done with and then maybe he can love again.
I feared this would make her a doormat that I'd despise, but luckily it didn't. She still fights for his tenderness and against his rage.
Their physical relationship is thus surprisingly tender. The love scenes are open-door without being especially explicit, and I appreciated seeing these emotionally important moments on the page.
The problem comes afterwards. Each time Logan reminds himself this is revenge and immediately follows their intimacy with cruel words designed to hurt her.
He insists she belongs to him until he decides otherwise. That he will use her whenever he likes. And he does. Then rejects her cruelly afterwards.
Dawn continues caring for him while slowly losing what remains of her emotional strength.
This sustained emotional punishment is exactly the kind of angst I normally enjoy, even though I loathed his motivations behind it.
Logan's redemption ultimately worked better than I expected.
The turning point comes when he believes Dawn is flirting with another man.
Consumed by jealousy, he almost forces himself on her before suddenly realising how terrified she has become.
The moment he recognises her fear he immediately stops. Instead of satisfying his own desire, he holds her and soothes her until she calms down.
That scene demonstrated that even at his worst, there was still a line he could not cross because he must care for her more than he hated her. She realises this too.
But afterwards he goes completely cold on her and ignores her for days, leaving her lonely.
Then they face a blizzard while trying to save calves being born during the storm.
Working together allows Logan to see Dawn's strength, competence and determination. He repeatedly tries to send her back for safety, but ultimately respects her decision to stay and help. The storm becomes another convincing step in his redemption.
Afterwards, they finally make love again, during which Dawn inadvertently tells Logan she loves him. In the morning, she lets him get some much needed sleep (as he is still recovering from illness) while she gives the ranch hands urgent instructions following the storm because she knows exactly what needs doing.
Logan overhears and harshly turns on her, accusing her of manipulating him in order to regain control of the ranch. He throws her out. Tells her to wipe all traces of herself away.
Completely broken, Dawn begins burning all of the beautiful weavings she has created during Logan's recovery, including the large tapestry that had gradually become a symbol of both her love and their rebuilding relationship.
Outdoors, Logan finally reflects on her actions in the storm, her despair at the dyung calves, the empiness in her eyes. Just like the emptiness when her ordered her to leave. Only then does Logan finally understand what he has become.
He realises he has spent years destroying the one person who has offered him nothing except warmth, loyalty and love. His revenge has left both of them empty.
His race back to the house, his despair at the burned art, and his reaching her in time to stop Dawn before she destroys the final tapestry, is genuinely moving.
His final declaration of love was moving and feels earned because his emotional realisation is convincing and several precious scenes supported this. Thus the ending was cathartic enough for me to feel satisfied.
Despite my enormous reservations about the novel's foundation, Elizabeth Lowell wrote emotional conflict extremely well. The chemistry between Logan and Dawn is intense, the pacing rarely falters, the caretaking storyline is excellent, and Dawn herself is a wonderfully strong, compassionate and intelligent heroine.
Unfortunately, I could never fully accept Logan's emotional wound because it rests on misogyny, sexual double standards and relentless slut-shaming of women who were themselves clearly victims. I spent too much of the novel trying to ignore the reasoning behind his behaviour in order to appreciate the romance itself.
For that reason I'm settling on 3.9 stars. Had Logan's need for revenge been grounded in something genuinely understandable rather than such deeply unpleasant attitudes towards women, this would easily have been a 5 star read for me.
March 14, 2022
This is hard to read because H is evil.
It is well-written but H Logan is horrible, cruel, taunting, out for revenge. His method of choice is diabolical. He makes Dawn be his mistress, supposedly agreeing that if she does so that he will have his vengeance against her mother who was horrible to his brother.
Of course this makes no sense and Dawn finds out that Logan simply gets deeper and deeper into his revenge fantasy, making love tenderly and lovingly then cutting her to bits with humiliation and cruel words. She finally realizes that he won't quit until he destroys her or until she leaves, and he already told her that if she leaves it means she's just like her mother, a tease.
Logan manipulates Dawn and all she does is give him love and caring and he gets wilder and nastier. He also forbids her to give any commands to the ranch hands, even though she knows exactly what to do, and when she does he kicks her out. Of course he realizes he blew it and stops her from leaving.
Sorry, I don't buy the happy ending. I don't see him redeeming himself or changing his ways after a day or two. He's too ingrained in the habit of hating and taking and hurting to stop. He faced up to the fact that Dawn was nothing like her mother and he is nothing like his brother a couple times before but it made no difference in how he acted. Dawn was a virgin and he knows this but he still treats her like a dirty tramp.
As long as the hs are not doormats I often enjoy the romances with jerky Hs because they get their comeuppance. This one I can't enjoy or recommend.
It is well-written but H Logan is horrible, cruel, taunting, out for revenge. His method of choice is diabolical. He makes Dawn be his mistress, supposedly agreeing that if she does so that he will have his vengeance against her mother who was horrible to his brother.
Of course this makes no sense and Dawn finds out that Logan simply gets deeper and deeper into his revenge fantasy, making love tenderly and lovingly then cutting her to bits with humiliation and cruel words. She finally realizes that he won't quit until he destroys her or until she leaves, and he already told her that if she leaves it means she's just like her mother, a tease.
Logan manipulates Dawn and all she does is give him love and caring and he gets wilder and nastier. He also forbids her to give any commands to the ranch hands, even though she knows exactly what to do, and when she does he kicks her out. Of course he realizes he blew it and stops her from leaving.
Sorry, I don't buy the happy ending. I don't see him redeeming himself or changing his ways after a day or two. He's too ingrained in the habit of hating and taking and hurting to stop. He faced up to the fact that Dawn was nothing like her mother and he is nothing like his brother a couple times before but it made no difference in how he acted. Dawn was a virgin and he knows this but he still treats her like a dirty tramp.
As long as the hs are not doormats I often enjoy the romances with jerky Hs because they get their comeuppance. This one I can't enjoy or recommend.
contemporary-but-not-hq
January 17, 2021LOGAN GARRETT DIDN'T BELIEVE IN LOVE
He believed in revenge. Dawn Sheridan's beautiful, calculating mother had destroyed Logan's older brother, and Logan had sworn vengeance. When he won the Sheridan ranch in a poker game he should have been satisfied -- but he wasn't. Dawn, who resembled her beautiful mother so closely, was the perfect target for his anger. Yet Logan found that in hurting her, he came away wounded.
Dawn understood what Logan was afraid to admit -- that what he wanted from her was love, not hatred. She gave him that love, risking everything to reach the gentle, caring man beneath his pain, knowing that if she lost, Logan would finally have the vengeance he sought.
He believed in revenge. Dawn Sheridan's beautiful, calculating mother had destroyed Logan's older brother, and Logan had sworn vengeance. When he won the Sheridan ranch in a poker game he should have been satisfied -- but he wasn't. Dawn, who resembled her beautiful mother so closely, was the perfect target for his anger. Yet Logan found that in hurting her, he came away wounded.
Dawn understood what Logan was afraid to admit -- that what he wanted from her was love, not hatred. She gave him that love, risking everything to reach the gentle, caring man beneath his pain, knowing that if she lost, Logan would finally have the vengeance he sought.
January 14, 2017
What kind of crazy woman would put up with a man like this? What I just read was mankilling material.
This jackhole hero nearly raped the poor girl twice. Then he continued to treat her with contempt after intimate yet consensual episodes.
I would not have stayed to give this man chance after chance to change. Truth be told, this man had zero redeeming qualities. Zero appeal. Zero personality. Zero zero zero.
The heroine was a sweet girl with zero brains. So I guess they will be happy together.
1 star.
This jackhole hero nearly raped the poor girl twice. Then he continued to treat her with contempt after intimate yet consensual episodes.
I would not have stayed to give this man chance after chance to change. Truth be told, this man had zero redeeming qualities. Zero appeal. Zero personality. Zero zero zero.
The heroine was a sweet girl with zero brains. So I guess they will be happy together.
1 star.
December 30, 2022
Its an nice enough story but the male character had an overall negative effect on the story as a whole. His entire behavior was based on something that was not completely true. And to exact revenge on the person that was not at fault, but was just available, comes across and weak and in poor taste. Not one of her better works I am afraid.
September 23, 2018
It pains me because Elizabeth Lowell is my favorite romance author of all time, but this is old school 80s romance in all its glory. It was the last one to complete my collection of owning every single one of her books so I forced myself through.
April 29, 2026
This book made me so mad I had to take a week or two before reviewing it. I consider it one of the most dangerous vintage romances I've read, because it portrays a blatantly textbook-abusive relationship, but with the woman's doormat, enabling, appeasing, fawning behavior "changing" the man... in like a second.
It's dangerous in a way that some of the most over the top HP heroes don't quite manage to be. Because this one is encouraging staying in abusive relationships in the hope that the abuser might eventually change.
Don't get me wrong, the writing itself is perfectly fine, and there are elements that could have been intriguing and interesting, such as the h's penchant for weaving complex tapestries and using that as a wonderful metaphor for life and healing and overcoming the bad patterns of the past and whatnot.
Now, the author ATTEMPTS to use the weaving metaphor in these ways, but the problem in this book is that she wrote a """hero"""" who is a delusional, abusive, rage-filled psychopath whose past patterns are in fact too deeply ingrained to have been even kind of resolved or healed or changed over the course of this book.
So, the book starts and continues until maybe 2 pages from the end with the hero HATING the heroine with the passion of a million suns. Why does he hate the heroine, do you ask? Does he think she cheated on him? Tried to steal money from him? Betrayed him in some way? Seduced and abandoned him? Had a secret baby she hid from him?
Nope.
She had the audacity to be born to his brother's ex-flame. That is it.
Throughout the story, there's a bit of mystery as to their "past" and it almost seems from his perspective that the h did in fact do SOMETHING to him to make him so bitterly angry and vengeful to the point that he would rather die of pneumonia than receive help of any kind from her.
But no, the only thing she ever did was be born to the wrong woman.
And we don't even really know that her mother was all that bad, really. She was dating and maybe engaged to the H's older brother who raised him after their parents died, and ended up dumping him and marrying a different, wealthier man with a larger ranch. Maybe from mercenary reasons or maybe big bro was already the alcoholic he later became; we never get her perspective at all.
So the H has decided that the h's mom was a harlot-slut-tramp-hoar-jezebel and despises her forever, when (several years before the story starts, when the h was barely 18 and bffs with his younger sister) the h is invited to stay with them by his baby sister, he decides that the h is just like her mother based on zero evidence and interaction with her, and he plans to seduce and/or r*pe her, set her up as his mistress/maid, and if she refuses, he threatens to strip her naked and march her into the center of town and show people what a (see above description of h's mom) the h really is. No, this was not a historical novel.
Said h is a shy, virginal, sensitive, artistic, sheltered girl who was mostly raised by her paternal grandmother, who taught her the art of weaving etc. and she ended up falling for the H until the day his sister was out of the house and he unveiled his lovely plan for the h, expecting her to capitulate and just fold.
Instead, she, heartbroken, sneaks out, retreats to a cabin in a nearby village in the woods, and has been making her own quiet life for the past 5 years, when the H's sister shows up preggers AF and begs the h to please go take care of the H because he's on the verge of dying.
He's been running his ranch (it was actually the heroine's dad's family ranch that he lost in a game of cards to the H in the other part of his diabolical scheme to ruin their family... no, this is not a historical novel. I know it sounds like it because you just can't do the stuff the H does and attempts in even the vintage years of the 80s in Colorado) nearly by himself, but has neglected himself and has walking pneumonia and is about to have under the ground post-pneumonia.
NOW.
If the story had been written in a way that the H, during his incredibly weakened and near-death condition at the beginning of the story, had an epiphany and perspective shift about whether evil revenge on an innocent party is really that important in the grand scheme of things, and while he is recuperating, began to soften up and sane-up and gain some perspective, that would be a different story and somewhat believable.
NO. He ends up somehow convincing the h to stay, but gets MORE bitter and angry (because he's secretly in love with her somehow; may this love never ever find me, thank you) as he gets better. Oh, did I mention that he's incredibly paranoid that the h wants to steal his ranch from him even though she's never once hinted or shown any interest in doing so in the entirety of her existence, AND even though morally she would be entitled to be a little bit bummed/bitter that she lost her home to him at the age of 18 and had to go live somewhere else?
Yeah he is paranoid and delusional. He is not a well man.
Anyway the bulk of this book is him making her his bangmaid and her just letting him. And when he's not banging, he treats her like absolute dirt, calls her names, sneers at her compassion for him, belittles everything she is and does, etc.
And at the end he has a very sudden revelation after he finally said/did something so heinous and evil that she finally had enough and starts to leave; he stops her and says he was sorry, and they hea I guess?
This woman is going to be murdered to death by him in less than 5 years because he is certifiably insane and needs help and medication.
It's dangerous in a way that some of the most over the top HP heroes don't quite manage to be. Because this one is encouraging staying in abusive relationships in the hope that the abuser might eventually change.
Don't get me wrong, the writing itself is perfectly fine, and there are elements that could have been intriguing and interesting, such as the h's penchant for weaving complex tapestries and using that as a wonderful metaphor for life and healing and overcoming the bad patterns of the past and whatnot.
Now, the author ATTEMPTS to use the weaving metaphor in these ways, but the problem in this book is that she wrote a """hero"""" who is a delusional, abusive, rage-filled psychopath whose past patterns are in fact too deeply ingrained to have been even kind of resolved or healed or changed over the course of this book.
So, the book starts and continues until maybe 2 pages from the end with the hero HATING the heroine with the passion of a million suns. Why does he hate the heroine, do you ask? Does he think she cheated on him? Tried to steal money from him? Betrayed him in some way? Seduced and abandoned him? Had a secret baby she hid from him?
Nope.
She had the audacity to be born to his brother's ex-flame. That is it.
Throughout the story, there's a bit of mystery as to their "past" and it almost seems from his perspective that the h did in fact do SOMETHING to him to make him so bitterly angry and vengeful to the point that he would rather die of pneumonia than receive help of any kind from her.
But no, the only thing she ever did was be born to the wrong woman.
And we don't even really know that her mother was all that bad, really. She was dating and maybe engaged to the H's older brother who raised him after their parents died, and ended up dumping him and marrying a different, wealthier man with a larger ranch. Maybe from mercenary reasons or maybe big bro was already the alcoholic he later became; we never get her perspective at all.
So the H has decided that the h's mom was a harlot-slut-tramp-hoar-jezebel and despises her forever, when (several years before the story starts, when the h was barely 18 and bffs with his younger sister) the h is invited to stay with them by his baby sister, he decides that the h is just like her mother based on zero evidence and interaction with her, and he plans to seduce and/or r*pe her, set her up as his mistress/maid, and if she refuses, he threatens to strip her naked and march her into the center of town and show people what a (see above description of h's mom) the h really is. No, this was not a historical novel.
Said h is a shy, virginal, sensitive, artistic, sheltered girl who was mostly raised by her paternal grandmother, who taught her the art of weaving etc. and she ended up falling for the H until the day his sister was out of the house and he unveiled his lovely plan for the h, expecting her to capitulate and just fold.
Instead, she, heartbroken, sneaks out, retreats to a cabin in a nearby village in the woods, and has been making her own quiet life for the past 5 years, when the H's sister shows up preggers AF and begs the h to please go take care of the H because he's on the verge of dying.
He's been running his ranch (it was actually the heroine's dad's family ranch that he lost in a game of cards to the H in the other part of his diabolical scheme to ruin their family... no, this is not a historical novel. I know it sounds like it because you just can't do the stuff the H does and attempts in even the vintage years of the 80s in Colorado) nearly by himself, but has neglected himself and has walking pneumonia and is about to have under the ground post-pneumonia.
NOW.
If the story had been written in a way that the H, during his incredibly weakened and near-death condition at the beginning of the story, had an epiphany and perspective shift about whether evil revenge on an innocent party is really that important in the grand scheme of things, and while he is recuperating, began to soften up and sane-up and gain some perspective, that would be a different story and somewhat believable.
NO. He ends up somehow convincing the h to stay, but gets MORE bitter and angry (because he's secretly in love with her somehow; may this love never ever find me, thank you) as he gets better. Oh, did I mention that he's incredibly paranoid that the h wants to steal his ranch from him even though she's never once hinted or shown any interest in doing so in the entirety of her existence, AND even though morally she would be entitled to be a little bit bummed/bitter that she lost her home to him at the age of 18 and had to go live somewhere else?
Yeah he is paranoid and delusional. He is not a well man.
Anyway the bulk of this book is him making her his bangmaid and her just letting him. And when he's not banging, he treats her like absolute dirt, calls her names, sneers at her compassion for him, belittles everything she is and does, etc.
And at the end he has a very sudden revelation after he finally said/did something so heinous and evil that she finally had enough and starts to leave; he stops her and says he was sorry, and they hea I guess?
This woman is going to be murdered to death by him in less than 5 years because he is certifiably insane and needs help and medication.
April 9, 2021
I honestly didn't know how to rate this. The writing is superb but the story is deeply disturbing.
EL has an exquisite prose that can top even Charlotte Lamb and Robyn Donald and the gorgeous scenes they were able to paint in vivid colours. EL takes that sublime way of writing and extends it into wonderful metaphors. The writing is extraordinarily beautiful, especially for HP.
But holy moly, if only the hero hadn't been completely deranged, I could have loved this book. I'm no psychiatrist but he seemed to have some sort of serious mental illness like schizophrenia. It was there in the way he would swing wildly between normal and a twisted, distorted view of reality, obsessed with punishing the heroine for what her mother did to his brother.
We would get his inner monologue and it gave frightening insights into the unhinged state of his mind. Seriously, he was a maniac and the heroine should have run for her life. To me it felt getting into the mind of a serial killer.
But she seemed equally locked into their deathlike radioactive relationship - with her masochism fitting perfectly with his sadism. I usually love fictional stories where a broken man is healed by the love of a good woman, but sheesh, this went way too far me. Instead of getting healed he was intent on destroying her.
The ending was depressing. His epiphany that he loved her came within the last couple of pages, so was implausible and horribly, maddeningly short. No grovel whatsoever for everything he did to break her, or gratitude for her saving his life when he had pneumonia.
In that kind of toxic relationship he needs her to fulfil his obsessive hates and insane possessiveness, and can't let her go when she tries. So she gets reeled back in. If this were real life, she would end as another statistic of a woman killed by her intimate partner.
The story wasn't so much a romance story as a thriller or maybe a horror story. The only HEA could be if a sheriff or one of the farmhands suddenly broke in, and shot dead the crazed, obsessive stalker. Then she would finally be free.
A very dark story.
EL has an exquisite prose that can top even Charlotte Lamb and Robyn Donald and the gorgeous scenes they were able to paint in vivid colours. EL takes that sublime way of writing and extends it into wonderful metaphors. The writing is extraordinarily beautiful, especially for HP.
But holy moly, if only the hero hadn't been completely deranged, I could have loved this book. I'm no psychiatrist but he seemed to have some sort of serious mental illness like schizophrenia. It was there in the way he would swing wildly between normal and a twisted, distorted view of reality, obsessed with punishing the heroine for what her mother did to his brother.
We would get his inner monologue and it gave frightening insights into the unhinged state of his mind. Seriously, he was a maniac and the heroine should have run for her life. To me it felt getting into the mind of a serial killer.
But she seemed equally locked into their deathlike radioactive relationship - with her masochism fitting perfectly with his sadism. I usually love fictional stories where a broken man is healed by the love of a good woman, but sheesh, this went way too far me. Instead of getting healed he was intent on destroying her.
The ending was depressing. His epiphany that he loved her came within the last couple of pages, so was implausible and horribly, maddeningly short. No grovel whatsoever for everything he did to break her, or gratitude for her saving his life when he had pneumonia.
In that kind of toxic relationship he needs her to fulfil his obsessive hates and insane possessiveness, and can't let her go when she tries. So she gets reeled back in. If this were real life, she would end as another statistic of a woman killed by her intimate partner.
The story wasn't so much a romance story as a thriller or maybe a horror story. The only HEA could be if a sheriff or one of the farmhands suddenly broke in, and shot dead the crazed, obsessive stalker. Then she would finally be free.
A very dark story.
April 7, 2021
Rating: 4.2
My first read of Elizabeth Lowell and really what an unexpectedly good one. The author's prose and pattern of writing had me engrossed since the beginning whether it was the vivid description of the mundane everyday chores to her similes when it came to life and the nature from the FL'S pov. She wove the words so coherently and beautifully that there was no moment where I felt bored or wanted to skim through.
Coming to the leads I really liked the FL despite her being vulnerable to and having a forgiving nature when it came to the ML, she had a really strong core of strength and a lot of substance as a character.
As for the ML I am quite neutral towards him cause on one hand I could understand his fears and even pity him for it on the other I felt extremely frustrated on his short sightedness in the face of FL constantly proving his suspicions and doubts wrong.
FL's hope, strong will and patience in the face of the ML's callous behavior and a bitter outlook towards life and women was heartbreaking and warming at the same time. It was obvious the ML had invariably loved her since their meeting and loathed seeing her harmed or hurt yet it could not make me overlook his constant lashing out on her every time he softened towards her. This constant taking one step forward and going two steps back policy of ML made me want to bash him hard.
Yet for all his brutish attitude and being a jerk I could not come to hate him as much considering . Ironically before the FL entered his life again he had already become the person he had feared the most.
Overall, I really liked the story my only complain is I looked forward to a better ending, it seemed a bit rushed up to me still I look forward to checking out more of the author's work
My first read of Elizabeth Lowell and really what an unexpectedly good one. The author's prose and pattern of writing had me engrossed since the beginning whether it was the vivid description of the mundane everyday chores to her similes when it came to life and the nature from the FL'S pov. She wove the words so coherently and beautifully that there was no moment where I felt bored or wanted to skim through.
Coming to the leads I really liked the FL despite her being vulnerable to and having a forgiving nature when it came to the ML, she had a really strong core of strength and a lot of substance as a character.
As for the ML I am quite neutral towards him cause on one hand I could understand his fears and even pity him for it on the other I felt extremely frustrated on his short sightedness in the face of FL constantly proving his suspicions and doubts wrong.
FL's hope, strong will and patience in the face of the ML's callous behavior and a bitter outlook towards life and women was heartbreaking and warming at the same time. It was obvious the ML had invariably loved her since their meeting and loathed seeing her harmed or hurt yet it could not make me overlook his constant lashing out on her every time he softened towards her. This constant taking one step forward and going two steps back policy of ML made me want to bash him hard.
Yet for all his brutish attitude and being a jerk I could not come to hate him as much considering . Ironically before the FL entered his life again he had already become the person he had feared the most.
Overall, I really liked the story my only complain is I looked forward to a better ending, it seemed a bit rushed up to me still I look forward to checking out more of the author's work
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