msmattoon's review against another edition
1.0
He rapes her three times, I think it was three nights in a row. So disappointing. He "loves" her though, and apologizes, so I guess she's okay with it. He saves her life from the danger she gets in by trying to escape the raping and imprisonment. Yay, he's a hero.
eslismyjam's review against another edition
1.0
I'm coming to the conclusion that I don't like old school romance. The hero was a jerk. I didn't like him, at all. Supposedly there is some redemption by the end but most of the book is just Kylemore treating Verity like crap, kidnapping her and raping her. NOT OKAY. He's a bad, bad dude. I wasn't willing to stick around until the end to see if he somehow became a nice guy, because how do you come back from kidnapping and rape? I don't know that you can. Maybe with a lot of groveling, but he didn't seem the type to grovel and I just wanted to punch him in the face.
ellie_klemm's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
lindacbugg's review against another edition
3.0
I loved the writing but the premise had a squick factor that I just couldn't overlook so it lost 1 1/2 stars.
ccgwalt's review against another edition
2.0
2.5*
I was undecided about how to rate this book and almost gave it three stars despite the rape scene, which usually means a DNF for me. Why did it sort of work for me? Honestly, I'm not entirely sure.
Claiming the Courtesan has a very gothic feel to it, but with slightly more sympathetic characters than in many gothic novels. I can see why the book is said to be a "new" old skool (70's- 80's style) bodice ripper romance. It fits much better with the few bodice rippers I've read than most "modern" historical romances.
While I still hate the whole rape/forced seduction thing, it plays out a little better here because of Kylemore's own emotional problems and his grief and sorrow over his actions later in the book. It doesn't make it all right, but it makes it more believable for the time period. What irritated me almost as much was Verity's determination to walk away from Kylemore without telling him the real reason.
One more thing I didn't care for in the book was how on the second and third times Kylemore decides to have his way with Verity, she gets caught up in the passion despite her supposed hatred of the man. I don't like when authors make "No" mean "Yes." I simply don't believe that a woman who hates a man or is scared of him will suddenly get passionate just because of "good chemistry." Blech!
But if the whole forced sex issue was off the table, I could enjoy this somewhat melodramatic and overwritten book for exactly what it was. Plus I wanted to know what happened, dang it!
I was undecided about how to rate this book and almost gave it three stars despite the rape scene, which usually means a DNF for me. Why did it sort of work for me? Honestly, I'm not entirely sure.
Claiming the Courtesan has a very gothic feel to it, but with slightly more sympathetic characters than in many gothic novels. I can see why the book is said to be a "new" old skool (70's- 80's style) bodice ripper romance. It fits much better with the few bodice rippers I've read than most "modern" historical romances.
While I still hate the whole rape/forced seduction thing, it plays out a little better here because of Kylemore's own emotional problems and his grief and sorrow over his actions later in the book. It doesn't make it all right, but it makes it more believable for the time period. What irritated me almost as much was Verity's determination to walk away from Kylemore without telling him the real reason.
One more thing I didn't care for in the book was how on the second and third times Kylemore decides to have his way with Verity, she gets caught up in the passion despite her supposed hatred of the man. I don't like when authors make "No" mean "Yes." I simply don't believe that a woman who hates a man or is scared of him will suddenly get passionate just because of "good chemistry." Blech!
But if the whole forced sex issue was off the table, I could enjoy this somewhat melodramatic and overwritten book for exactly what it was. Plus I wanted to know what happened, dang it!
the_reader_reads_stuff's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape
akoala's review against another edition
The male main character sucks and is boring as hell
una_macchia's review against another edition
1.0
I wanted to read this book because it's rather unlike romances I've read before; I gather it follows a similar pattern to old-school bodice rippers, but I'm new enough to romance novels that I haven't read any of those. The "hero," Kylemore, isn't just an asshole, he violently abducts and rapes Verity. The effect of his actions on her is taken seriously, and I thought her reactions were portrayed in an interesting way. Verity is terrified of him and she hates him...and then she falls in love. This is where it gets even more queasy for me. It feels like Stockholm Syndrome, not true love.
I was reminded of Mary Jo Putney's Uncommon Vows, in which the hero takes the heroine captive and sexually assaults her. Putney also treated the hero's behavior toward the heroine seriously - she's traumatized and he's horrified by what he's done. But in Uncommon Vows, the love between them is one-sided while she's his prisoner. He makes a genuine effort to be a better man and she comes to love him when he treats her with respect and care. I suppose the turnaround here felt too fast for me. Verity starts to see a different side of Kylemore when she comforts him during his nightmares, but the nightmares alternate with harrowing rape scenes. She thinks about how complicated he is and gives him credit for "not being as bad as he set out to be" (paraphrasing), which I found pretty disturbing because this is after he abducted her at gunpoint and raped her multiple times! In other romances I've sometimes felt that the hero is given too much credit for meeting a very low standard - like, "he didn't rape me when he had the chance, so he must be a good person." "He didn't rape me as many times as he could have" is just depressing. When she decides she loves him, it reads like he finally succeeded in breaking her. I kept reading, but I can't see being with him as a romantic or happy ending for Verity.
Strangely, Kylemore and Verity are pretty thinly drawn characters. I say strangely because the shifting relationship dynamics between them are (obviously) very intense, but while Campbell explores their emotions, judgements and schemes regarding each other in fascinating detail, I can't say I actually know much about who they are outside of their sexual and romantic desires/pasts. What do they really like, what do they enjoy doing, what's important to them, etc. - I don't know. We do learn about their pasts, and I thought Verity's in particular was pretty interesting and I wished it had been explored more, especially her relationship with her siblings. Kylemore and Verity are very isolated for most of the story, so I would have liked to get more of a feel for what she's like around other people besides him. Part of her character development is about how she's dissociated herself into separate personas - there's her courtesan alter ego, who's unabashedly sexual but emotionally closed off, and what she sees as her true self, the respectable woman who wants to live quietly and do good works. The reconciliation between the two personas didn't totally work for me, because we barely learn anything about her "respectable" side. She spends three months establishing herself respectably with her brother, but we don't see any of that happening on the page. There's no clear picture of what she (thinks she) wants from life before Kylemore shows up, or what her ideal life would be like if she had successfully escaped him.
There are some odd parallels in Kylemore's family, and I'm not really sure what Campbell was going for there.
The first ~2/3s of this book are very readable in a kind of lurid, sickening way. After Kylemore and Verity each realize their love for one another, it really drags even though there's a fair amount of action moving the plot along. It just feels like filler. Overall: I can't say I really enjoyed this, but it was at least interesting. Just not what I want from a romance novel.
I was reminded of Mary Jo Putney's Uncommon Vows, in which the hero takes the heroine captive and sexually assaults her. Putney also treated the hero's behavior toward the heroine seriously - she's traumatized and he's horrified by what he's done. But in Uncommon Vows, the love between them is one-sided while she's his prisoner. He makes a genuine effort to be a better man and she comes to love him when he treats her with respect and care. I suppose the turnaround here felt too fast for me. Verity starts to see a different side of Kylemore when she comforts him during his nightmares, but the nightmares alternate with harrowing rape scenes. She thinks about how complicated he is and gives him credit for "not being as bad as he set out to be" (paraphrasing), which I found pretty disturbing because this is after he abducted her at gunpoint and raped her multiple times! In other romances I've sometimes felt that the hero is given too much credit for meeting a very low standard - like, "he didn't rape me when he had the chance, so he must be a good person." "He didn't rape me as many times as he could have" is just depressing. When she decides she loves him, it reads like he finally succeeded in breaking her. I kept reading, but I can't see being with him as a romantic or happy ending for Verity.
Strangely, Kylemore and Verity are pretty thinly drawn characters. I say strangely because the shifting relationship dynamics between them are (obviously) very intense, but while Campbell explores their emotions, judgements and schemes regarding each other in fascinating detail, I can't say I actually know much about who they are outside of their sexual and romantic desires/pasts. What do they really like, what do they enjoy doing, what's important to them, etc. - I don't know. We do learn about their pasts, and I thought Verity's in particular was pretty interesting and I wished it had been explored more, especially her relationship with her siblings. Kylemore and Verity are very isolated for most of the story, so I would have liked to get more of a feel for what she's like around other people besides him. Part of her character development is about how she's dissociated herself into separate personas - there's her courtesan alter ego, who's unabashedly sexual but emotionally closed off, and what she sees as her true self, the respectable woman who wants to live quietly and do good works. The reconciliation between the two personas didn't totally work for me, because we barely learn anything about her "respectable" side. She spends three months establishing herself respectably with her brother, but we don't see any of that happening on the page. There's no clear picture of what she (thinks she) wants from life before Kylemore shows up, or what her ideal life would be like if she had successfully escaped him.
There are some odd parallels in Kylemore's family, and I'm not really sure what Campbell was going for there.
Spoiler
Early on we're introduced to the theme of madness running in his family. When Kylemore tracks her down and abducts her, Verity recalls hearing rumors that she never took seriously, and they add to her fear of him. Much later, he tells her about his early childhood with his father, who terrorized him. His father also was an opium addict who had a 12-year-old "mistress." During the final showdown with his mother, the dowager duchess has "almost sexual" thrill at the prospect of seeing Verity disfigured and raped at the hands of her servants. When Kylemore arrives with his men and she tries to threaten him, one of his counter-threats is that he'll publicly reveal that she pays working class men for sex. (She also has numerous affair among men of her own class, because she's just that much of an Evil Slut.) So along with Kylemore, both of his parents have some kind of sexual pathology. However, the family madness is never explicitly connected with sexual behavior - it's described more in terms of dangerously obsessive tendencies among the men in the family.The first ~2/3s of this book are very readable in a kind of lurid, sickening way. After Kylemore and Verity each realize their love for one another, it really drags even though there's a fair amount of action moving the plot along. It just feels like filler. Overall: I can't say I really enjoyed this, but it was at least interesting. Just not what I want from a romance novel.
nelsonseye's review against another edition
4.0
Very difficult to read in places but I was very involved in the story.