The Passion is aptly titled. The hero and heroine of this book share a great deal of passion for each other, and get to indulge that passion in creative ways on many and various occasions. Unfortunately, the end result is more like an erotic Hallmark card than a believable romance.

Lady Aurora Demming first meets Nicholas Sabine on the docks in the British West Indies where he is being mistreated as an American prisoner of the British Navy. She intercedes on his behalf, and even goes so far as to later visit him in prison. Nick is a condemned man, the Americans and the British are at war and he has been convicted of piracy at sea (he believes he was acting in self-defense). He will be hanged the next evening but desperately needs someone to leave his wealth to and set up as guardian for his half-sister. With no time for informed decisions, he asks Aurora to marry him for one day so she can be his sister’s ward upon his death and guide her into society. This will not be a marriage in name only, however, because he wants no basis for the marriage being overturned by the courts. She agrees because she craves financial independence from her overbearing father. This set-up allows them one night of passion before he is executed and leaves her a wealthy, independent widow.

Flash forward to London four months later. Nick Sabine is of course alive (no surprise here, there can’t be a story otherwise) and he is looking for his wife, but must assume a false identity so as not to be re-arrested by the British Navy. He wants to convince Aurora to stay married to him and live with him in America. Why? Why not. He needs to start producing heirs anyway. She had truly mourned his death, but is appalled at the notion of actually living together as man and wife. Why? It’s that independent streak of hers. The rest of the book basically chronicles Nick’s attempts to seduce Aurora into loving him and deciding to stay married to him. Along the way he falls in love with her himself, a few other minor side plots get resolved, and there are some obligatory last-minute but completely predictable revelations and crises to weather.

I did not find this book engaging, for a variety of reasons. The pacing seemed incredibly slow and the characters seemed like rejects from Hamlet. Like the Dane, nobody could make a decision in this book without agonizing over it for pages upon pages. To love or not to love, to be or not to be, and all that. During these agonies, the manner in which Nick and Aurora expressed themselves, both internally and in conversation with each other was reminiscent of sappy greeting cards: “How could she withstand his vital force when he was so single-mindedly tearing away her defenses with his incredible passion? How, she wondered desperately, could she quell her own relentless need and this painful, yearning ache inside her?” To make matters worse, not only had Aurora had similar thoughts in the previous chapter, she had similar ones in the next as well.

Despite all the effort these two were putting into convincing themselves of their feelings, there was precious little to base these feelings on. All told, Nick and Aurora have known each other for about a month. In that time they conclusively show us that they are in lust, but not much else. We’re told that there is more to their personalities: “Aurora was not like so many of her contemporaries….She had unexpected depths, intriguing facets that he found enchanting, sensual.” But we never see what these depths are – we just have to take them on faith. As for Nicholas: “Nicholas was danger. He was excitement. He was intensely alive. It was what set him apart from other men, she realized: his keen lust for life.” Well, if you count not dying as a “lust for life” then well, okay. In the end I just didn’t believe it. As far as I was concerned, these were two beautiful people who had mistaken lust and sexual compatibility for love.

As the title indicates, there is plenty of passion in this book, but except for one or two scenes, none of it is very interesting. I found myself skimming through the sex scenes in a vain hope that the plot would start up again. I think that since I didn’t care about these characters, I stopped caring about their sex lives too. The basic plot strained credibility, but certainly had potential as a basis for romance. Unfortunately, this potential was never realized, and the resulting novel felt overlong and under-romantic.