Bantam, $5.99, ISBN 0-553-58869-9
Historical Romance, 1992
Harriet Pomeroy, at 25, is content to be a spinster for the rest of her life. Famous last words, I know. She’s lived in Upper Biddleton all her life, and her passion is archaeology. Her best friends are the members of the local archaeology club, most of whom are older than her and treat the club more like a social gathering. What else is there to do in a small, sleepy coastal village, after all?
Well, as anyone that have read enough of Enid Blyton’s teen capers can testify, when there are caves on the seaside, there will be smugglers, and hence, adventures, yay.
Our heroine has written many times to the boss of the neighborhood, Viscount St Justin, about having found evidence of thieves or worse stashing their goods in the caves while she is doing her usual bone-hunting in those caves. He never replies, so she is surprised when he does show up one fine day to do the usual melodramatic “Woo! Where is the scary piano music to accompany my entrance?” dark and brooding hero entrance. Oh, so he did read her letters, the wretch just never bothered to reply with even an “Okay, thanks!”, hmmph.
Well, Gideon Westbrook, our viscount in question, is determined to root out the thievery and smuggling problem, but Harriet insists on coming along to show him the caves. Naturally, he thinks it’s not a good idea but you know how it is with Amanda Quick’s heroines. You say “No, stay!” and they hear “No stay!” and dash after you instead.
They end up forced to stay the whole night in the caves together, due to the high tide, so Harriet’s reputation is compromised. That’s even before people discover where Gideon’s fingers have crept into during that night. Our hero decides that they need to get married, and our heroine is aghast at the very idea.
No, it’s not because Gideon has a scar, because we all know when heroes have scars, these scars are positioned strategically to enhance their air of dashing danger. She’s not concerned about the rumors that he caused the deaths of his fiancée and his brother as well. No, she’s just dismayed at the idea of marrying the Beast of Blackthorne Hall when there is no finer feeling involved, and no, those feelings that she experience when his digits are twirling like magical windmills inside her don’t count because… well, because.
Ravished is clearly a Beauty and the Beast story, because every romance author needs to write at least one story of this nature. It’s the law.
Now, up to this point, Amanda Quick’s offerings can be interpreted as her own takes on fairy tales and popular classics.
Seduction, with the heroine taken in by a man that turns out to be a cold-hearted prat with serious trust issues when it comes to his wives, feels like a happier version of Bluebeard.
Surrender has the hero running after the heroine around and all over the ballrooms in London, kind of like Cinderella on crack.
Scandal sees the heroine isolated from her family by the hero and made to pay penance for the sins of her brothers (and father as well, in this case)—seems like a far gentler take on The Wild Swans.
Finally, Rendezvous has the heroine in a Faustian position of breaking into her devil’s home, gambling with him, and losing her soul heart as a result.
So, Ravished isn’t bucking any trend. However, its biggest subversion here is that Gideon is the most agreeable hero of the author to date. He doesn’t see the heroine as someone that needs to change into another person in order to be perfect, and unlike the previous blokes, he doesn’t demand that loving the heroine should be on his own terms and only his. Instead, he’s actually a nice and gallant bloke underneath his brutish-looking exterior, and he’s far more grouchy than beastly.
In other words, while this is likely not planned in advance, the author has presented a historical romance version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast cartoon that just came out a year earlier.
Now, this one is considered by many to be Amanda Quick’s best offering. Me, I’m ever the contrarian in that I’m quite disappointed by it. Perhaps it’s due to the hype, as at that time, when I first read this one, I was already primed by people telling me to be blown away by the awesomeness of the story.
Let me give some background story to explain the possible reason for this. I discovered the author’s works, both under the Amanda Quick and Jayne Ann Krentz names, back in the early 1990s, long before this website started, and I read all the books I could get my hands on in a non-stop binge that probably couldn’t be healthy.
Unfortunately, by the time I read this one, I was starting to notice the sameness that is present in the author’s works. I remembered vividly how I groaned out loud when the hero and the heroine are trapped in the caves, because I was beginning to take note of the three stages of courtship in this author’s stuff: fingers, then mouths, and later, pee-pees. There will be always be three scenes to make the hero realize that the heroine is a hot wench in bed, and these scenes will eventually catalyze him into finally saying the L-word to the heroine.
Of course, before getting there, the hero will attempt to use sex as his ways to demonstrate his affections to the heroine, and the heroine will instead assume that this constant sexing is proof that the hero only desires her and despairs about how the hero clearly doesn’t love her because his actions don’t matter. If he didn’t say the L-word, then this is evidence that he never loves her. Often, such as in Seduction, it doesn’t matter what a jerk or a brute he had been up to that point—the moment he says the L-word, everything bad is magically erased, and the future promises only roses and champagne.
Unlike the douchebag in Seduction, Gideon is a nice guy, so this increasingly played-out relationship dynamic is still fine to read. However, I also find that the heroine believing in the hero’s “goodness” happen tad too quickly to be believable, and only drives home how some women can be easily diddled into believing whatever the guy wants them to believe. This relationship would have been a car crash, really, if the hero weren’t this adorable grouchy nice guy.
Indeed, he carries this one to the finish line, because Harriet never feels like a character in her own right as much as she is just an “understanding” body pillow for the hero. In fact, this often leads to me question whether our hero loves her for her, or he only thinks he loves her because she’s the first person in ages to have faith in him. Regardless, this leads to a nice scene of Harriet openly defending him in public, and our hero’s cold heart finally starts to thaw.
I say “nice” because I wait for the author to hit me in the feels. Her previous books sock me in a visceral manner, although in the case of Seduction it’s more like filling me with distaste, but Ravished only elicits a lukewarm “Aww, that’s sweet… what’s next?” reaction from me both during the first time I read it and during subsequent rereads over the years. It’s too hard to overlook the sameness and the increasing by-the-numbers feel slowly creeping into Ms Quick’s offerings. Various people have different points in reading the author’s works when they start to feel the magic fading, and for me, that’s when I read this baby.
Even the external conflict feels robotic. Everything is resolved in a neatly-ribboned parcel of convenience. Still, I’m willing to cut the author some slack in this because this one is a romance first and foremost, and the romance part is more than adequate to carry the whole thing to the finish line.
At the end of the day, I’d say that this one resides somewhere in that area between three- and four-oogie territories. Readers far less jaded about the author’s formulaic storytelling may be far more enamored of this thing. Me, I do have a soft spot for this baby, regardless of how it feels like a few steps backwards after the last few books… especially considering the downhill roll awaiting me when it comes to future offerings by the author.
