THE TASTE OF INNOCENCE

Author: Stephanie Laurens ISBN: 0060840862 3/2007 HISTORICAL Publisher: WILLIAM MORROW
Time Period: 1833

Business investor Lord Charles Morwellan can't escape marriage any longer: His closest friends have already chosen mates, and he has a family duty of producing an heir. Worn out by the ton's matchmakers and their wiles, he selects a partner for himself. Sarah Conningham, a 23-year-old woman well-established in the community and suitable for the role of countess. When he proposes marriage to Sarah, however, he gets something he never expected: a challenge. Sarah has turned down several proposals already. She wants, more than anything, to marry for love. So she negotiates a period of two weeks, during which they are to get to know each other better—giving Sarah ample time to ascertain whether she and Charlie can make a true love match. During their courtship, they steal away nightly to a summer house on Sarah's family's property, where Charlie introduces Sarah to pleasures she has never know before. Intoxicated by each other, they finally agree to be married ...but that's only the beginning of the challenges they'll face in their first year together. The orphanage Sarah has tended to all her life and loves so much is suddenly a target of speculation by investors. She turns down several generous offers to buy the property, as she has no intention of selling, and Charlie has made it clear to her that the orphanage is to remain under her care, as he has no desire to interfere with it. But then ...as Charlie seems to grow more and more distant, strange occurrences begin happening at the orphanage. Accidents overtake the orphanage and its staff, and Sarah becomes convinced that a villain is to blame—someone to whom she won't sell the place. But who could be responsible?

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

This is one of the most up and down books I've reviewed in a long, long time. Suffice it to say, I was on the fence through the first third of the book, engrossed and entertained by the second, and then, just when I thought things were running along fantastically to what I hoped would be a really great ending, I was tossed back down to an almost laughable reality when the supposed villain reached his final comeuppance. But not, unfortunately, before making an impassioned speech to our heroic couple. Why, oh, why, Ms. Laurens did you do that? It was absolutely... well, I have no words to express it because I was snorting too hard to think of any.

Despite that disappointing finale, I like Charles and Sarah as a couple, I really do, as they compliment each other very well. But I like them best about half way through the storyline, when friction in their marriage starts to take its toll. Their relationship begins as those of most of the others in the Cynster inner circle have—that of a sexy, handsome aristocratic running away from love, who finds it suddenly when he least expects to (it's always like someone hit them in the head with a brick). But how Sarah deals with the breech that begins to grow between her and Charles during that particular section of the story, was much more interesting to me than the unfolding swindling plot that parallels it. It was also one of the main reasons I awarded THE TASTE OF INNOCENCE as a 4 Rose Read.

Plus, other than Sarah's initial deflowering scene where there's too much introspection on both characters' part (not to mention their early sexual encounters are written in a prose that reminds me of listening to a soliloquy from a character on HBO's Deadwood—it sounds sort of profound in your head, it is rather mesmerizing and somewhat poetic when you read it, but when you're done with that passage you're left thinking, what the heck did that just say?), the sex scenes written after their marriage are sensual, sexy and hot, hot, hot, something Laurens has always been adept at writing.

I've been away from the Cynster family for quite some time—about seven books ago I stopped reading them, I think—but it was nice to know that many of those family members I read about before flit in and out of this one, as well as several of those characters whose stories I had missed along the way. The secondary characters were enjoyable, and there were some truly action-packed scenes here and there that kept me glued to what I was reading. While THE TASTE OF INNOCENCE won't go down in my book as one of the best of the Cynster's stories, I'm sure fans of Stephanie Laurens will really truly enjoy it.

Nancy Davis