LoveSpell, $5.50, ISBN 0-505-52353-1
Historical Romance, 1999

Tempted has a virginal preacher for a hero. The cover is lovely. But the story inside is one sadistic tale of an anally-plugged hero bending a free-spirited heroine to his twisted notions of propriety that in the end, the woman is an empty shell. The head-up-his-excretory-orifice man is the hero by the way.

Preachers can make romantic heroes. But Preacher Mike Mulgrew should just jump off a cliff. He sends for a mail-order bride, expecting a willowy, obedient Miss Prim from Boston. He gets No-Account Savage, an orphan of dubious origin instead. The newspaperman who composed No-Account’s reply letter had played a joke on Mike, and now, Mike isn’t a happy man.

No-Account has wonderfully simple views in life, which she espouses with dry wit and charming naivety that has me warming up to her. She also has a somewhat slow brother called Slow, which is the reason why she wants to be married. She wants stability for them both.

But Mike is embarrassed that he is now a laughingstock. He treats No-Account like a punching bag. Even after she cleans up (into Miss America 1800s, of course) and gets a new name – Hope Savage – Mike still gets that ten feet concrete pole shoved up his you-know. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t lust after her. But he makes petty demands on Hope/No-Account, gets mad when she meets those demands, gets mad when she doesn’t, gets mad because he wants her like a horny toad, gets mad when she tries to seduce him, gets mad when she doesn’t want to be seduced… and I get mad too.

So much for all the things Mike preach before the flock. Underneath the cloth, he is a control freak, a spoiled, pampered, prejudiced Colonel Von Trapp on drugs. When he makes one too many petty “It’s Me Or Your No Good Dirty Friends!” demand – a few chapters before the epilogue! – and then banishes No-Account when she chooses to help her friends, this book is a goner.

Mike gets the rack and Tempted gets one oogie, solely on the account of the heroine.