Monday, November 24, 2008

Tempt the Devil-Anna Campbell

Tempt the Devil
Anna Campbell
Avon, Jan 2009, $6.99
ISBN: 9780061234934

In 1826 London, Olivia Raines is the first choice of anyone wanting a courtesan. Her beauty and skills are beyond comparison as nobody does it better than she does. Surprisingly, behind her enticing smile is a woman whose heart is ice.

Earl Julian Southwood has just come home to England after time in places like Marrakech and Constantinople. Considered a rake by polite society, he persuades Olivia to be his mistress. However, he is different than those hedonistic aristocrats who desire her especially those who have had her; he wants more than her body. He wants her mind, her heart and her soul given freely to him. Julian knows he will not get them unless he can get her to confess the secret that turned her heart into an iceberg even as she begins to thaw with a desire for his lover’s touch.

TEMPT THE DEVIL is a powerful late Regency romance starring two wonderful vivacious lead characters whose role reversal refreshes the story line. He is the one who seeks much more depth with their arrangement; while she is the one whose past limits her relationship to sexual dalliances. Fans will think of Dean Martin’s tune Everybody Needs Somebody Sometime as Julian builds his campaign around expanding that theme because he needs the whole Olivia; but she distrusts passion, intimacy, and especially love. Anna Campbell provides a potent, entertaining and heartwarming historical romance.

Harriet Klausner

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