Night Fire, by Catherine Coulter

>> Wednesday, September 17, 2003

I started Night Fire, by Catherine Coulter.

Areille leslie is a sixteen-year-old girl forced to wed Paisley Cochrane, a sadistic old man who abuses her. When he dies, she believes herself free. But she’s not.

Burke Drummond, Earl of Ravensworth – a young man she’d worshipped three years before – is home from the wars, and he wants her. When he catches her, he’s in for an appalling surprise.
A long time ago, before the advent of the internet, I used to read whatever romance novels I could find here in Uruguay. We got only big authors, like Coulter herself. These books were what drove me from historical romance, with their disgusting rapist heros (or force seductionist heros, right, yeah, huge difference) and doormat heroines. When I found websites like All About Romance, The Romance Reader and Mrs. Giggles I discovered not all historicals were like that, and came back to the genre.

I never did go back to reading Coulter, and I was never even tempted. Until I read the AAR review of Night Fire, which described an interesting story and stated that Burke Drummond was Coulte's kindest, gentlest hero.

I think I might go back and finish it, trusting the reviewer in that this is going to get better, but after 120 pages, I'm absolutely hating this. It has all those little "Coulter" touches that I hated so much and which contributed greatly to me swearing never to read a historical again. I'm talking about things like the hero getting a mistress because he's randy and he has needs, all while he already "knows" he's in love with Arielle and is planning to court her. "To save him from losing control with Arielle" indeed! Disgusting jerk! And do we really need to have graphical descriptions of Burke fucking his mistress? Meanwhile, the author goes into contortions so that Arielle keeps her magic hymen. She's been abused, but never fear, readers! She's still a virgin. Argh!

Also, the supposedly nice hero is a pedophile, who goes crazy with desire when he meets Arielle when she's 15 and very much a child. Lovely! And if he's so nice, why can't he take a no for an answer? Why does he believe he has the right to abduct a woman, any woman, when she's very clearly saying no to him? That's a stalker to me, period.

Oh, and to top it all, it really looks as if the story won't just be about a couple learning to trust each other and getting over the tragedy of Arielle's past. No, there's Arielle former son-in-law there, madly in lust with her, and it looks like a big part of the book will be him trying to have his wicked way with her. Bah!

UPDATE: I finished this book in October. Click here to read my final comments.

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