An Innocent Mistress
Grade : D

Sophia LaRue is an agent with the U.S. Secret Service. She operates in Galveston, Texas, under a secret identity known as Twilight's Ghost. I found the code name rather silly, and the premise just wrong (there were no female Secret Service agents until thirty years ago), but those things aren't really what bothered me about this book

Sophia's life was ruined when she was a child by a swindler named Adam Stone. Her grandmother, who was Sophia's only living relative, died after having her entire fortune stolen by Stone. Sophia was sent to an orphanage, and ever since then she's wanted to find Stone and avenge her family. When an opportunity comes to use her Secret Service connections to send one of Stone's sons to prison, she takes it.

Jarrod Stone is a filthy-rich businessman and the eldest son of the long-vanished Adam. When his youngest brother Holden goes to prison, he's determined to find Twilight's Ghost and force him to free Holden. He hears that Sophia is Twilight's Ghost's mistress. So he kidnaps her and holds her in luxurious captivity, hoping that either Twilight's Ghost will attempt to free her, or that she will betray T-G to him. Neither of those things happen.

What does happen is they fall in love, which is a problem for me because Jarrod is an incredibly obnoxious captor. He assumes Sophia's a whore and sets about attempting to buy her loyalty with jewels and other material possessions. He also touches her a lot, and showers her with the sort of suggestive commentary some romance writers seem to think readers find arousing, like: "I'd like to rope you to a tree and ravish you".

Sophia's response to captivity is to make a lot of nonsensical promises that she can't keep, like vowing not to eat - that doesn't last a day, of course. Jarrod's manly dominance makes Sophia go tingly all over, and when he takes her on little outings, horseback riding and sailing, she falls for him.

There's a scene, later in the book, in which Sophia ponders all the things she loves about Jarrod: he gave her nice clothes when she was his prisoner (and blackmailed her into wearing them). He gives money to his servants if they get in trouble. He owns a dog. It seemed to me that Jarrod was being damned with very faint praise - Sophia couldn't come up with any really good reasons for her feelings at all. Certainly none of these things satisfied me.

There are several plot elements that don't add up. For instance: Jarrod's brother Holden's crime was holding horses for a notorious criminal gang. Jarrod hired the best lawyers money could buy, but Holden still got six years in the state pen for this crime, which he committed when he was ten - some fourteen years in the past. Then Jarrod plans for Twilight's Ghost to free Holden. But Holden was convicted by a jury of his peers - what does Jarrod expect T-G to do about it? This part of the plot - the entire motivation for the hero's overbearing behavior - simply doesn't make sense.

Worst of all, several nights in a row Sophia escapes from Jarrod's house to pursue her investigations, and then breaks back in to continue being his captive during the day. The rationale for this is that she doesn't want her secret identity as T-G to be revealed. How would her secret identity be revealed if she went to the nearest police officer and told him she'd been abducted?

Although I thought the first half of this book was wall-bangingly bad, things did get a bit better about halfway through. They begin to work together to find Adam Stone and make him pay for what he did, and they enjoy a few very hot love scenes.

In spite of my many problems with this book, I think that Ms. Wade has the makings of a good romance writer. Her love scenes, in particular, are very well written. The book's final chapters are filled with page-turning suspense, and it ends on a romantic, satisfying note. However, no author can write her way around a hateful hero, wimpette heroine, and cobbled-together plot. I hope she takes more care in the crafting of her next book - if so, it might be worth reading.

Reviewed by Jennifer Keirans
Grade : D

Sensuality: Hot

Review Date : October 10, 2001

Publication Date: 2001

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Jennifer Keirans

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