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The Secret Pearl
written by Mary Balogh
Studio : Dell
by Dell
Release Date : 2005-11-29
Publisher : Dell
Released : 2005-11-29
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780440242970
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 44 reviews)
List Price : $6.99
Our Price : $3.34
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Product Description |
Mary Balogh has no equal when it comes to capturing the complex, irresistible passions between men and women. Her classic novel, The Secret Pearl, is one of the New York Times bestselling author’s finest–a tale of temptation and seduction, of guarded hearts and raw emotion…and of a love so powerful it will take your breath away….
He first spies her in the shadows outside a London theatre, a ravishing creature forced to barter her body to survive.
To the woman known simply as Fleur, the well-dressed gentleman with the mesmerizing eyes is an unlikely savior. And when she takes the stranger to her bed, she never expects to see him again. But then Fleur accepts a position as governess to a young girl…and is stunned to discover that her midnight lover is a powerful nobleman. As two wary hearts ignite–and the threat of scandal hovers over them–one question remains: will she be mistress or wife? |
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4.5 stars |
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This is the last book I needed to read to complete my Summer Reading Challenge. I AVOIDED this book and left if for last because it has adultery in it. I don't enjoy reading about adultery at all, but somehow, Mary Balogh makes it work. This book is very intense, it is a story about a hero and heroine that, have yet to catch a break, that is until an encounter with each other one night. The story starts off with a bang, and then moves a little slow. The story soon picks up and the writer does an excellent job of showing the spirit of the main characters. The journey for Adam and Fleur's love was a HARD road to go down, and I wondered how on earth Mary Balogh was going to give this story a Happy Ending. Despite that hard road, each brief encounter between the two proves to build up tension, and the realization that they were soulmates. As Jerry Maguire put it, They completed each other. I highly recommend this book. It's deep, but very well worth the time invested reading about this forbidden love. |
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I'm in awe! |
I wish I had not reviewed other books with 5 stars before so that this one would stand out. It is one of the best, if not the best, romances I've ever read. It was obvious from my previous reads (More than a mistress, A summer to remember) that Mrs Balogh can write; not all romance writers can claim that. But in this book I think she exceeds herself.
It is a dark story, filled with angst and emotional heartache. The duke of Ridgeway and the heroine, Fleur, meet during her first -and only- night as a prostitute. He takes her virginity in a harsh way but saves her from starvation by doing that. Later Fleur is employed as a governess for a young girl. Soon though, she will realise that her employer is non other than the scar-faced gentleman that haunts her dreams. She is terrified of him; he wants to know her better and help her, believing that his guilty consience is driving him to her. He becomes more and more attracted to her; Fleur is slower to follow this path since the pain she suffered during their night together makes her afraid of him.
This is a book that I couldn't let of my hands until it was finished. I was so caught in their troubles and feelings, two persons so scarred in the past and so in need of each other's love that even when I was not reading, they were both in my mind. Adam is perhaps the best romance hero ever, a scarred, tortured man in desperate need of another human being to accept him and his wounds. I will only admit that Fleur's transition from fear to love was a bit too sudden, but even that couldn't detract from this book's unique allure. It is the only romance that made me cry for a long long time (when they say goodbye outside her house) because I felt their pain as my own. Please, please go ahead and read it! I will certainly do so again and again.
IF, on the other hand, you like light, fun, heart-warming BUT NOT heart-breaking romance (the Julia Quinn, Lyndsay Sands type), I don't believe this is the book for you; it's one of the darkest I've read. |
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A pearl of a book |
Until I was well over a third of the way through "The Secret Pearl", I wasn't sure if I liked it or hated it, but I just couldn't put it down. From the gritty opening scene where a young girl is forced to sell herself to survive, through accusations of murder, arranged marriage and its resultant unhappiness, and family betrayals, tragedy follows tragedy.
Fleur Hamilton and Adam Kent, Duke of Ridgeway make an unlikely pairing. He is physically scarred and locked into a desperately unfulfilled marriage; she is young and desperately fearful, having been accused of murder. Wracked by guilt at having purchased Fleur's virginity, Adam arranges for her to be employed as governess to his young daughter. Although initially terrified of him, she gradually comes to value him and together they undertake a journey to resolve the murder accusation, and fall deeply into an impossible love.
This is one of Ballogh's pre "Simply" and "Slightly" books and, I believe, one of her best. It's beautifully written, and the scene in the coach when, after resolving the accusations against her, Adam and Fleur return to her home to part, is one of the most poignant I have ever read. This book is definitely a keeper!
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This heroine is too dumb to live |
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I know a lot of people love this book. They think it romantic that the heroine overcomes a life of prostitution (one time? Please!) and that the hero is so upstanding and gallant. What they don't tell you is that for the first 200 pages of this book, the heroine is a whining, simpering idiot who is honestly too dumb to live. She shudders in revulsion when the hero touches her from a choice that SHE made. Did she ply her services as a prostitute? Yes. Did he rape her? No. Was she paid accordingly--and even three times what she asked for? Yes. End of story. No need to whine about it. But whine she does. Endlessly. Her stomach roils whenever our gallant hero comes near her, let alone touches her. More than halfway into the book that's still her sentiment. And that does not a romance make, no matter how sweet the ending. |
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Melt-your-heart hero |
"If I loved you, Fleur," [Adam] said, "and knew that you loved me, I would turn heaven and earth upside down [for you]"
I found Mary Balogh's THE SECRET PEARL a chronically addictive reading experience containing the right touches of an impossible, challenging road to love and featuring tortured characters that never really leave you. Unfortunately, I thought THE SECRET PEARL needed to balance the memorable characters and heart-rending love story with better pacing, prose and settings. A majority of this 399-page paperback amounts to meandering introspection. Granted, one of the advantages of literature includes sharing the thoughts of characters but some novels (often of a romantic nature) makes the introspection and thoughts very interminably exasperating. THE SECRET PEARL contains a lot of introspection and if it weren't for the uniquely endearing characters and their plight, I probably would have found the book pretty bad. Not your typical rosy romance fare, the characters and premise alone offer a worthwhile reading experience. Although the ending wasn't bad, again I thought it resorted to amateurish introspection instead of gripping plotting or possibly a chapter or two of marital bliss. The love here is mutually giving, and it isn't just the hero giving everything.
Rarely are romance heroes as interesting or honorable as THE SECRET PEARL's Duke of Ridgeway Adam Kent, and I thought the novel belongs to him. Adam's time with the English infantry at Waterloo scarred him terribly along his face and body, so he isn't handsome by the time our heroine Isabella Fleur Bradshaw meets him. Adam is vulnerable, and harbors insecurities of his own, though it isn't belabored. After a shocking opening scene in which Adam hurts Fleur -- knowingly, for reasons that are clear from the context -- Adam's vulnerabilities and his efforts at atonement afterwards really melt your heart. Also very much unlike the last romance I read (Joyce's VOICES OF THE NIGHT), the hero Adam here astutely infers the heroine's situation, figures out her pursuers, consequently takes steps to discover her complete history, and in turn, really helps her. THE SECRET PEARL's Adam Kent is a man of action, from beginning to end. I think I'm a sucker for a romance novel in which the heroine really detests the hero all the while he's doing everything in his power to help and protect the heroine. I'm not sure why or how, but I'm ineffably drawn to a heroine's intense, unwarranted hatred for her hero (not superficially insulting, imprecating). In this respect, THE SECRET PEARL resembles Hunter's superior THE RULES OF SEDUCTION (*****) and its heroine Alexia's unwarranted enmity for her hero. Even though the title of this book refers to the heroine, I thought the hero Adam was a hidden treasure in his own right. If only this novel offered something more in terms of prose, pacing, settings, and love scenes. |
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