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"You must beware, mademoiselle ...." The fortune-teller's ominously harsh voice had sent shivers down Christina's spine. "Beware of the devil at Archangel."
The prediction seemed silly when Christina first arrived at the Brandon's beautiful Caribbean plantation. Left without means and a home by her godmother's death, the job at Archangel seemed like a gift from heaven.
But everything changed when she met Devlin Brandon. He disturbed her to the core of her being. She must indeed beware of this manor did another devil await to torment her?
The prediction seemed silly when Christina first arrived at the Brandon's beautiful Caribbean plantation. Left without means and a home by her godmother's death, the job at Archangel seemed like a gift from heaven.
But everything changed when she met Devlin Brandon. He disturbed her to the core of her being. She must indeed beware of this manor did another devil await to torment her?
158 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1978
69 people want to read
About the author
Sara Craven
493 books267 followersAnne Bushell was born on October 1938 in South Devon, England, just before World War II and grew up in a house crammed with books. She was always a voracious reader, some of her all-time favorites books are: "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen, "Middlemarch" by George Eliot, "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë, "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell and "The Code of the Woosters" by P. G. Wodehouse.
She worked as journalist at the Paignton Observer, but after her marriage, she moved to the north of England, where she worked as teacher. After she returned to journalism, she joined the Middlesbrough Writers' Group, where she met other romance writer Mildred Grieveson (Anne Mather). She started to wrote romance, and she had her first novel "Garden of Dreams" accepted by Mills & Boon in 1975, she published her work under the pseudonym of Sara Craven. In 2010 she became chairman of the Southern Writers' Conference, and the next year was elected the twenty-six Chairman (2011–2013) of the Romantic Novelists' Association.
Divorced twice, Annie lives in Somerset, South West England, and shares her home with a West Highland white terrier called Bertie Wooster. In her house, she had several thousand books, and an amazing video collection. When she's not writing, she enjoys watching very old films, listening to music, going to the theatre, and eating in good restaurants. She also likes to travel in Europe, to inspire her romances, especially in France, Greece and Italy where many of her novels are set. Since the birth of her twin grandchildren, she is also a regular visitor to New York City, where the little tots live. In 1997, she was the overall winner of the BBC's Mastermind, winning the last final presented by Magnus Magnusson.
She worked as journalist at the Paignton Observer, but after her marriage, she moved to the north of England, where she worked as teacher. After she returned to journalism, she joined the Middlesbrough Writers' Group, where she met other romance writer Mildred Grieveson (Anne Mather). She started to wrote romance, and she had her first novel "Garden of Dreams" accepted by Mills & Boon in 1975, she published her work under the pseudonym of Sara Craven. In 2010 she became chairman of the Southern Writers' Conference, and the next year was elected the twenty-six Chairman (2011–2013) of the Romantic Novelists' Association.
Divorced twice, Annie lives in Somerset, South West England, and shares her home with a West Highland white terrier called Bertie Wooster. In her house, she had several thousand books, and an amazing video collection. When she's not writing, she enjoys watching very old films, listening to music, going to the theatre, and eating in good restaurants. She also likes to travel in Europe, to inspire her romances, especially in France, Greece and Italy where many of her novels are set. Since the birth of her twin grandchildren, she is also a regular visitor to New York City, where the little tots live. In 1997, she was the overall winner of the BBC's Mastermind, winning the last final presented by Magnus Magnusson.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 6, 2017
HAIKU BOOK REVIEW: The Devil at Archangel, by Sara Craven.
Stupid martyr girl,
Stuck on gothic plantation,
Why won't you grow up?
March 30, 2017
Not much to say about this one. While not the worst HQN I've read, it doesn't stand out as anything awesome.
The heroine, Christine, is an extremely broke orphan. She's got nothing to hold her in England, so she accepts a rich old bat's invitation to become her secretary on a lush Caribbean plantation. She's on edge because some street-peddling fortune teller looked at chicken bones & told her to beware the devil at Archangel, her new place of employment. But who's the devil? Is it the resident Jerkoff Alpha, the old bat's nephew, who's obsessed with Christine's purity? (Jerkoff or not, he sure does make her girl-bits swoon when he touches her arm. Oh noes!) Or is it the petulant, foot-stomping, abusive young grandson that the old bat is pushing on Christine with hopes of marriage? Sure, the petulant young grandson keeps trying to menace her into submission...but regardless of any unwanted rom-suspense plotlines, she's absolutely certain she could never be happy in such a posh atmosphere because Alpha Jerkoff keeps a boat tied in the nearby harbor. Bastard.
Yeah, we all know what's gonna happen. :P
Compared to other Alpha Assholes in HQNland, this hero doesn't do anything physically threatening aside from a couple possessive kisses; in fact, he makes a habit of rescuing the heroine from her repeated moments of peril. What set me against him was the guy's obsession with rape. He meets Christine in a shitty part of town & she's terrified that some local hoodlums are stalking her with evil intent...which he sees fit to taunt her with at every opportunity. WTF. "Don't worry, I won't rape you in front of everyone." "Still worried you'll be raped behind a bush?" "Your precious virtue is intact, little prude." None of these are exact quotes, but whatever -- it made my nose wrinkle. Any guy who talked like that to me would be dumped to the curb, no matter if he saved me from drowning.
...But otherwise, a fairly tame Harley. Christine was a limp dishrag & the rushed ending falls flat (despite proper karma dished out in full), but the author did make a stab at some romantic suspense atmosphere. I also liked the whole Caribbean plantation angle; I'd have liked to see more details of that setting, but there's only so much to be done with HQN page counts.
2.5 stars, rounded up. I'm feeling generous today.
The heroine, Christine, is an extremely broke orphan. She's got nothing to hold her in England, so she accepts a rich old bat's invitation to become her secretary on a lush Caribbean plantation. She's on edge because some street-peddling fortune teller looked at chicken bones & told her to beware the devil at Archangel, her new place of employment. But who's the devil? Is it the resident Jerkoff Alpha, the old bat's nephew, who's obsessed with Christine's purity? (Jerkoff or not, he sure does make her girl-bits swoon when he touches her arm. Oh noes!) Or is it the petulant, foot-stomping, abusive young grandson that the old bat is pushing on Christine with hopes of marriage? Sure, the petulant young grandson keeps trying to menace her into submission...but regardless of any unwanted rom-suspense plotlines, she's absolutely certain she could never be happy in such a posh atmosphere because Alpha Jerkoff keeps a boat tied in the nearby harbor. Bastard.
Yeah, we all know what's gonna happen. :P
Compared to other Alpha Assholes in HQNland, this hero doesn't do anything physically threatening aside from a couple possessive kisses; in fact, he makes a habit of rescuing the heroine from her repeated moments of peril. What set me against him was the guy's obsession with rape. He meets Christine in a shitty part of town & she's terrified that some local hoodlums are stalking her with evil intent...which he sees fit to taunt her with at every opportunity. WTF. "Don't worry, I won't rape you in front of everyone." "Still worried you'll be raped behind a bush?" "Your precious virtue is intact, little prude." None of these are exact quotes, but whatever -- it made my nose wrinkle. Any guy who talked like that to me would be dumped to the curb, no matter if he saved me from drowning.
...But otherwise, a fairly tame Harley. Christine was a limp dishrag & the rushed ending falls flat (despite proper karma dished out in full), but the author did make a stab at some romantic suspense atmosphere. I also liked the whole Caribbean plantation angle; I'd have liked to see more details of that setting, but there's only so much to be done with HQN page counts.
2.5 stars, rounded up. I'm feeling generous today.
November 11, 2021
Another great cover by Gerry Sevier, I love the leisure suit.
SC had her gothic cliché check list handy for this story set on a fictional Caribbean island.
Christina is one of vintage HPlandia's winsome young orphans manipulated by older women into foregoing higher education to become dogsbodies. In this instance her godmother, exploiting the well known SC heroine trait of being absurdly deferential to their elders, insists Christina give up school at 16, vaguely suggesting Christina will be taken care of, presumably left a tidy sum or a charming cottage. Unbeknownst to Christina what GM really meant was that GM and her BFF had plans for Christina's reproductive bits, being as how they are enclosed in nice blonde packaging. GM dies and 19 yr old Christina is left with nothing.
Hovering in a state between dire boredom and pure potentiality she's ripe for the picking by a rapidly approaching middle-age man, aka an HP hero, but no MOCs for Christina! She gets picked up by another older woman, the mysterious BFF of her deceased godmother, who suggests that she too needs a dogsbody and offers Christina a job and a vacation and buys her a new wardrobe made up of bikinis. Conveniently avoiding the important details like her grandson is a psycho and Christina is supposed to make a baby with him.
On Martinique Christina encounters hero Devlin in a classic HP meet maddening scenario when he happens upon a trio of local boys who are intimidating her. He chastises her for jumping to racist stereotypes by imagining the young toughs might have raped her, implies her skirt is too short, insults her, manhandles her, then disappears. Christina's fear, closely followed by befuddlement and frustration, because WTF dude? is well conveyed and Devlin is perfectly infuriating. Naturally she's strangely disturbed by him, more so when obeying forces utterly outside her control she finds herself squatting in the dirt across from a fortune-teller who casts chicken bones at her feet while intoning spookily to beware the Devil at Archangel. Hah! Christina may not know much but even she knows you can't spell Devlin without Devil and having been warned who to watch out for she can safely overlook the threat posed by the beautiful but seriously disturbed grandson when she gets to the sugar plantation and finally meets him.
Gothics can't happen if a heroine is savvy enough to avoid the sinister manse in the first place so I'm blaming most of Christina's subsequent foolishness to the genre and her youth. To use Grrrrace's terminology she's overwhelmed but not a doormat. Undereducated and insecure because of it, her attempts to just brazen her way through situations is very endearing. There's a large statue of the Archangel Michael in the foyer of the plantation house; Christina doesn't recognize the iconic image of him standing atop lucifer so "Christina thrust her hands into the slanting pockets on her skirt and nodded towards the carved figures. 'Do tell me,' she invited with a fair attempt at insouciance, 'who is the downtrodden gentlemen?'" Devlin, who can't resist an opportunity to be an ass, proceeds to be one. It's only their second meeting but already he knows all he needs to know about her. He's disgusted and yes, cynically disappointed that after an entire half day on the island this teenaged stranger has failed to suss out and reject his evil aunt's nefarious plans for her. Ignorance is complicity, never mind that neither his deceased parents nor he himself have yet succeeded in outmaneuvering said aunt.
What to make of Devlin who lives in a beach shack and carves wood sculptures? He has messy tawny hair, wears his shirts open to the waist, has beaded curtain doorways, and these skeevy incidentals actually contribute to his déclassé charm. He's hard to pin down but as half of a bantering couple along with Christina he's really very funny and they're wonderfully sparky and sexy together. He's also an example of one of my favorite but somewhat uncommon hero types: the hero who would rather not be called upon to do any saving at all thanks! (It would be grand if there was something like the ATU folktale index for harleys). SC must be a fan of the type too, the hero from Past All Forgetting which immediately precedes TDAA is an even better example, but they flout so many of the conventions of the controlling alpha hero that it's hard to pull off.
Christina keeps getting into dangerous situations with the psycho grandson yet Devlin offers little more than uselessly cryptic warnings, while waiting till the last possible moment to offer help to Christina. It's not chivalrous but it's consistent with the most intriguing thing about him—which is that he has expectations for Christina that she needs to meet beyond being young and pretty. He has no interest in being a woman's guardian; he wants to be a partner.
My biggest gripe is how few interactions they actually have, by books end I think they've only spent about 5 fully conscious hours together. But given page count limits SC really comes through with TDAA, offering some legitimately harrowing scenes along with great H/h chemistry. Ultimately, it's Devlin's insistence on a relationship based on what he calls his "fantasy" where they meet not as protector and protected but as equals that makes this one distinctive. It's the necessary corollary to any heroics averse hero, this desire for an equality of body, spirit and mind. I find it so much more satisfying then the unequal, obsession based relationships so common to HPs and it's rarely as well articulated as it is here
SC had her gothic cliché check list handy for this story set on a fictional Caribbean island.
Christina is one of vintage HPlandia's winsome young orphans manipulated by older women into foregoing higher education to become dogsbodies. In this instance her godmother, exploiting the well known SC heroine trait of being absurdly deferential to their elders, insists Christina give up school at 16, vaguely suggesting Christina will be taken care of, presumably left a tidy sum or a charming cottage. Unbeknownst to Christina what GM really meant was that GM and her BFF had plans for Christina's reproductive bits, being as how they are enclosed in nice blonde packaging. GM dies and 19 yr old Christina is left with nothing.
Hovering in a state between dire boredom and pure potentiality she's ripe for the picking by a rapidly approaching middle-age man, aka an HP hero, but no MOCs for Christina! She gets picked up by another older woman, the mysterious BFF of her deceased godmother, who suggests that she too needs a dogsbody and offers Christina a job and a vacation and buys her a new wardrobe made up of bikinis. Conveniently avoiding the important details like her grandson is a psycho and Christina is supposed to make a baby with him.
On Martinique Christina encounters hero Devlin in a classic HP meet maddening scenario when he happens upon a trio of local boys who are intimidating her. He chastises her for jumping to racist stereotypes by imagining the young toughs might have raped her, implies her skirt is too short, insults her, manhandles her, then disappears. Christina's fear, closely followed by befuddlement and frustration, because WTF dude? is well conveyed and Devlin is perfectly infuriating. Naturally she's strangely disturbed by him, more so when obeying forces utterly outside her control she finds herself squatting in the dirt across from a fortune-teller who casts chicken bones at her feet while intoning spookily to beware the Devil at Archangel. Hah! Christina may not know much but even she knows you can't spell Devlin without Devil and having been warned who to watch out for she can safely overlook the threat posed by the beautiful but seriously disturbed grandson when she gets to the sugar plantation and finally meets him.
Gothics can't happen if a heroine is savvy enough to avoid the sinister manse in the first place so I'm blaming most of Christina's subsequent foolishness to the genre and her youth. To use Grrrrace's terminology she's overwhelmed but not a doormat. Undereducated and insecure because of it, her attempts to just brazen her way through situations is very endearing. There's a large statue of the Archangel Michael in the foyer of the plantation house; Christina doesn't recognize the iconic image of him standing atop lucifer so "Christina thrust her hands into the slanting pockets on her skirt and nodded towards the carved figures. 'Do tell me,' she invited with a fair attempt at insouciance, 'who is the downtrodden gentlemen?'" Devlin, who can't resist an opportunity to be an ass, proceeds to be one. It's only their second meeting but already he knows all he needs to know about her. He's disgusted and yes, cynically disappointed that after an entire half day on the island this teenaged stranger has failed to suss out and reject his evil aunt's nefarious plans for her. Ignorance is complicity, never mind that neither his deceased parents nor he himself have yet succeeded in outmaneuvering said aunt.
What to make of Devlin who lives in a beach shack and carves wood sculptures? He has messy tawny hair, wears his shirts open to the waist, has beaded curtain doorways, and these skeevy incidentals actually contribute to his déclassé charm. He's hard to pin down but as half of a bantering couple along with Christina he's really very funny and they're wonderfully sparky and sexy together. He's also an example of one of my favorite but somewhat uncommon hero types: the hero who would rather not be called upon to do any saving at all thanks! (It would be grand if there was something like the ATU folktale index for harleys). SC must be a fan of the type too, the hero from Past All Forgetting which immediately precedes TDAA is an even better example, but they flout so many of the conventions of the controlling alpha hero that it's hard to pull off.
Christina keeps getting into dangerous situations with the psycho grandson yet Devlin offers little more than uselessly cryptic warnings, while waiting till the last possible moment to offer help to Christina. It's not chivalrous but it's consistent with the most intriguing thing about him—which is that he has expectations for Christina that she needs to meet beyond being young and pretty. He has no interest in being a woman's guardian; he wants to be a partner.
My biggest gripe is how few interactions they actually have, by books end I think they've only spent about 5 fully conscious hours together. But given page count limits SC really comes through with TDAA, offering some legitimately harrowing scenes along with great H/h chemistry. Ultimately, it's Devlin's insistence on a relationship based on what he calls his "fantasy" where they meet not as protector and protected but as equals that makes this one distinctive. It's the necessary corollary to any heroics averse hero, this desire for an equality of body, spirit and mind. I find it so much more satisfying then the unequal, obsession based relationships so common to HPs and it's rarely as well articulated as it is here
July 18, 2016
As is typical of many Sara Craven heroines, Christina is hopeless for anything other than a Gothic adventure. A couple of years before the story begins, Christina’s godmother pulled her out of school and said Christina was better off doing odd jobs and a bit of gardening than furthering her education. Because what do women like Christina need education and careers for anyway? They’ll just end up married and arranging dinner parties and having babies.
While Christina is mildly pretty, there’s no real hint that she’s traffic-stopping beautiful, and she’s not terribly smart. She seems to have fit into the lady’s companion groove her godmother established without any sense that she’s missed out. Sure, she’s a little glum. She’s an orphan, she has no money, and now that her godmother’s dead she’s not quite sure what to do. Godmother promised she’d provide for Christina, kept hinting that it would a pretty good provision as well, but she’s left Christina no money. That’s all gone to actual family members, who are keen to turf Christina out of the idyllic little cottage that’s been her only real home (aww).
They even have a horrible au pair job lined up for Christina, which I thought was really quite decent of them. They’re under no obligation at all, so even if it is a horrible job it’s a good start but of course Christina is dreading it. So she really lucks in when a mysterious old lady shows up and offers to take her to the Caribbean.
So, the old lady’s story is that she was friends with Christina’s godmother, and they’ve had numerous chats about working out Christina’s future. She gives off some bad vibes, but Christina is eager to take a vague job on the other side of the world over the drudgery her Godmother’s relatives have proposed.
So she packs up her pitiful clothing rags, and it’s off to the islands. Before they head to the smaller island where the old lady runs her dead husband’s sugar plantation, Christina escapes for the afternoon to wander about the town. She meets a psychic who tells her she’s going to meet the devil. Fun! She gets chased by some youths, and is rescued by a sexy man. She’s not all that grateful, and he’s not all that impressed by her competence at keeping herself out of trouble, but sparks do fly.
Old lady is very cranky about Christina taking off by herself, and Christina starts to get the hint that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
When they arrive at Archangel, Christina is shown to the best guest bedroom and is treated like she’s the most interesting thing to happen in years. She meets a servant girl who is not quite rude to her, but there are hints that rudeness will occur in the near future. And she meets the heir. He’s crazypants, and the whole ‘why she’s there’ becomes clear to the reader, although not so much Christina, because she’s dim. The old lady’s plan is to marry Christina to the crazypants heir, and somehow keep crazypants under control enough to impregnate Christina and make more babies for the old lady to control. While crazypants is not setting fires to watch things burn, or flaying small animals and leaving them out as offerings, it’s hinted that he could probably go that way pretty quickly.
If you’re like me, you’re wondering, why Christina? Why go all the way to England to get some hopeless girl when there are probably dozens of hopeless girls closer to home? And while the plot does deal with the specifics of why Christina, the underlying answer is snobbery. Christina is a good white middle class English girl and can therefore be expected to do as she’s told and maintain certain snobby standards. A lot of Sara Craven girls are married for their good white middle class heritage. It’s linked to the skills all Sara Craven heroes want, which is someone to organise the dinner parties that are part of the social lives of their business networks.
Christina’s one awesome moment, the moment that elevates her from numpty heroine to sexy little beast, comes at her second encounter with the hero. The hero is Devlin Brandon, and he’s the old lady’s nephew, and the old lady is definitely doing him out of the sugar business. She’s also doing the sugar business very wrong, even Christina knows that. I think Christina might read the newspapers, but that does nothing to make me think she’s intelligent.
Anyway, Devlin has a beach hut and a yacht. Christina stumbles across his beach hut while exploring and discovers that he’s an artist. She’s particularly interested in the small naked carving of the not-yet-rude servant girl, and draws her own conclusions. Devlin comes across her, sparks fly, and she bites him. It’s all deeply erotic and it made me think that there was hope for her, because under all that dim glum passivity she had the potential to be a bedtime tiger.
As a Gothic heroine, Christina is suitably wary of the old lady, ridiculously blind to the scare factor of crazypants’ crazy antics, and tortured by jealousy and suspicion over what Devlin is really doing, and how he fits in with the hinted at family secrets and general miasma of family evil. It’s her job to get everything wrong, and she does it with gusto.
Devlin’s a carefully managed hero. He’s been wronged out of the family sugar business by his aunt, and the family tension is all about them not quite getting into a gunfight over it. I rate the old lady, she was a nasty scrapper. However, because he’s the hero he still has to come across as competent and boss of every situation, which mean that his actual problems were, at times, a bit vague. I think if Christina hadn’t bitten him nothing would have happened, because there’s no way he actually needed a dinner party wife. I think it appealed to the artist in him, where he could appreciate her subtle erotic power under a very bland exterior.
All up, this is a satisfying island gothic, with madness and family secrets, passions and tensions and storms and a poor clueless heroine trying to integrate her desperate want to go to bed with a sexy man with her overall blandness.
While Christina is mildly pretty, there’s no real hint that she’s traffic-stopping beautiful, and she’s not terribly smart. She seems to have fit into the lady’s companion groove her godmother established without any sense that she’s missed out. Sure, she’s a little glum. She’s an orphan, she has no money, and now that her godmother’s dead she’s not quite sure what to do. Godmother promised she’d provide for Christina, kept hinting that it would a pretty good provision as well, but she’s left Christina no money. That’s all gone to actual family members, who are keen to turf Christina out of the idyllic little cottage that’s been her only real home (aww).
They even have a horrible au pair job lined up for Christina, which I thought was really quite decent of them. They’re under no obligation at all, so even if it is a horrible job it’s a good start but of course Christina is dreading it. So she really lucks in when a mysterious old lady shows up and offers to take her to the Caribbean.
So, the old lady’s story is that she was friends with Christina’s godmother, and they’ve had numerous chats about working out Christina’s future. She gives off some bad vibes, but Christina is eager to take a vague job on the other side of the world over the drudgery her Godmother’s relatives have proposed.
So she packs up her pitiful clothing rags, and it’s off to the islands. Before they head to the smaller island where the old lady runs her dead husband’s sugar plantation, Christina escapes for the afternoon to wander about the town. She meets a psychic who tells her she’s going to meet the devil. Fun! She gets chased by some youths, and is rescued by a sexy man. She’s not all that grateful, and he’s not all that impressed by her competence at keeping herself out of trouble, but sparks do fly.
Old lady is very cranky about Christina taking off by herself, and Christina starts to get the hint that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
When they arrive at Archangel, Christina is shown to the best guest bedroom and is treated like she’s the most interesting thing to happen in years. She meets a servant girl who is not quite rude to her, but there are hints that rudeness will occur in the near future. And she meets the heir. He’s crazypants, and the whole ‘why she’s there’ becomes clear to the reader, although not so much Christina, because she’s dim. The old lady’s plan is to marry Christina to the crazypants heir, and somehow keep crazypants under control enough to impregnate Christina and make more babies for the old lady to control. While crazypants is not setting fires to watch things burn, or flaying small animals and leaving them out as offerings, it’s hinted that he could probably go that way pretty quickly.
If you’re like me, you’re wondering, why Christina? Why go all the way to England to get some hopeless girl when there are probably dozens of hopeless girls closer to home? And while the plot does deal with the specifics of why Christina, the underlying answer is snobbery. Christina is a good white middle class English girl and can therefore be expected to do as she’s told and maintain certain snobby standards. A lot of Sara Craven girls are married for their good white middle class heritage. It’s linked to the skills all Sara Craven heroes want, which is someone to organise the dinner parties that are part of the social lives of their business networks.
Christina’s one awesome moment, the moment that elevates her from numpty heroine to sexy little beast, comes at her second encounter with the hero. The hero is Devlin Brandon, and he’s the old lady’s nephew, and the old lady is definitely doing him out of the sugar business. She’s also doing the sugar business very wrong, even Christina knows that. I think Christina might read the newspapers, but that does nothing to make me think she’s intelligent.
Anyway, Devlin has a beach hut and a yacht. Christina stumbles across his beach hut while exploring and discovers that he’s an artist. She’s particularly interested in the small naked carving of the not-yet-rude servant girl, and draws her own conclusions. Devlin comes across her, sparks fly, and she bites him. It’s all deeply erotic and it made me think that there was hope for her, because under all that dim glum passivity she had the potential to be a bedtime tiger.
As a Gothic heroine, Christina is suitably wary of the old lady, ridiculously blind to the scare factor of crazypants’ crazy antics, and tortured by jealousy and suspicion over what Devlin is really doing, and how he fits in with the hinted at family secrets and general miasma of family evil. It’s her job to get everything wrong, and she does it with gusto.
Devlin’s a carefully managed hero. He’s been wronged out of the family sugar business by his aunt, and the family tension is all about them not quite getting into a gunfight over it. I rate the old lady, she was a nasty scrapper. However, because he’s the hero he still has to come across as competent and boss of every situation, which mean that his actual problems were, at times, a bit vague. I think if Christina hadn’t bitten him nothing would have happened, because there’s no way he actually needed a dinner party wife. I think it appealed to the artist in him, where he could appreciate her subtle erotic power under a very bland exterior.
All up, this is a satisfying island gothic, with madness and family secrets, passions and tensions and storms and a poor clueless heroine trying to integrate her desperate want to go to bed with a sexy man with her overall blandness.
May 10, 2019
"You must beware, mademoiselle ...." The fortune-teller's ominously harsh voice had sent shivers down Christina's spine. "Beware of the devil at Archangel."
The prediction seemed silly when Christina first arrived at the Brandon's beautiful Caribbean plantation. Left without means and a home by her godmother's death, the job at Archangel seemed like a gift from heaven.
But everything changed when she met Devlin Brandon. He disturbed her to the core of her being. She must indeed beware of this man... or did another devil await to torment her? (less)
The prediction seemed silly when Christina first arrived at the Brandon's beautiful Caribbean plantation. Left without means and a home by her godmother's death, the job at Archangel seemed like a gift from heaven.
But everything changed when she met Devlin Brandon. He disturbed her to the core of her being. She must indeed beware of this man... or did another devil await to torment her? (less)
November 6, 2017
قيد الوفاء
July 16, 2020
Didn't like and skimmed to see the ending.
May 27, 2020
Enjoyed this story at first time of reading.
Synopsis:
"You must beware, mademoiselle ...." The fortune-teller's ominously harsh voice had sent shivers down Christina's spine. "Beware of the devil at Archangel."
The prediction seemed silly when Christina first arrived at the Brandon's beautiful Caribbean plantation. Left without means and a home by her godmother's death, the job at Archangel seemed like a gift from heaven.
But everything changed when she met Devlin Brandon. He disturbed her to the core of her being. She must indeed beware of this man... or did another devil await to torment her?
Synopsis:
"You must beware, mademoiselle ...." The fortune-teller's ominously harsh voice had sent shivers down Christina's spine. "Beware of the devil at Archangel."
The prediction seemed silly when Christina first arrived at the Brandon's beautiful Caribbean plantation. Left without means and a home by her godmother's death, the job at Archangel seemed like a gift from heaven.
But everything changed when she met Devlin Brandon. He disturbed her to the core of her being. She must indeed beware of this man... or did another devil await to torment her?
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews