Read this book, if you dare
If You Dare by Kresley Cole is a historical romance that takes place in the Pyrenees. I have not encountered a book that used this location as the setting for adventure, but it was nice to see that I still remembered something from my European History classes in high school.
It is the first book of the MacCarrick Brothers Trilogy.
The adventure begins when we meet our hero, Court MacCarrick, a Highlander who had been hired as a mercenary by General Pascal, but when Court realizes Pascal’s evil, he double-crosses him and gets captured in the process to be tortured and killed. Court narrowly escapes, but he is seriously injured and near death.
Lady Annalía (aka Anna), a Castilian noblewoman, finds Court barely hanging on and nurses him back to health. When Court recovers and finds that he is being cared for by the fiancée of General Pascal, he plans his revenge and kidnaps her.
Pascal has blackmailed Anna into the betrothal by threatening to kill her brother if she does not marry him; so she is committed to escaping her kidnapper despite the growing attraction to the Highlander.
Court doesn’t want to find himself growing attached to Anna, because she is supposed to be the means to an end, especially when his life is complicated by a curse that haunts him to stay alone. But despite her noble birth, he can’t deny the passion that is growing between them, especially as he discovers that under her demure façade hides a very passionate woman.
Cole certainly has a steamy style of writing, able to convey the absolute heat created by the chemistry of her characters. The author does an excellent job of mounting the tension between Anna and Court as the story goes on.
It would have been a little less believable if Court had his way with Anna from the onset, but that is not to say that he doesn’t show his physical attraction to her from the beginning. But when they do finally get together, they generate real heat. It is totally HOT.
Onto the next…
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