Relay Publishing, $2.99, ISBN 978-1386756552
Contemporary Romance, 2018

During the convocation day of Sheikh Tarek of Zahkim and his cousins Buy My Book and Buy Mine Too—from Oxford University, of course, because we progressive people like our people of color pets to display Euro-centric values—he is confronted by an old lady that gives him a hint as to his future:

“An angel will fall from the sky and land at your feet, sheikh. She will save your country, but only if you fall at her feet in turn. Trust your instincts, my son.”

Save his country? Let’s see whom the heroine is… oh, is Tess Angel, a white woman. Oh, I’m sure this isn’t white man’s burden in action, heh!

Indeed, five years later, Tess crashes the plane she is flying right into Zakhim. Is it because of turbulence and bad weather? 

She’d been reviewing balance sheets and the proposal from Riya about investment in Sharma Entertainment, not paying attention to their route.

Oh. Those cute heroines. Always driving cars and planes right into the ground to meet their true loves, how adorable!

Our strong, independent, and modern woman—no, really, Tess is described that way in this thing—also blacks out, and our hero is conveniently close enough to bring her to his luxurious place for her to get her act together. Naturally, there is an attraction, but the hero will not be swayed into marrying some “modern” white woman and he will put his thing in her but never his ring on her finger, yadda yadda yadda.

The whole thing is bog standard Harlequin Presents but minus the brutal misogyny and cruelty. This has its pluses and minuses, of course.

A big plus is that this thing is easy to read and digest because of the lack of stomach-churning male pig antics.

However, this also means that there is nothing notable about this story, aside from perhaps the occasional snorts that come out of me when the author tries so hard to pass off the heroine as some paragon of modern femininity.

Indeed, there is an eye-rolling lack of cultural identity in Zahkim and Tarek that I wonder why the author even bothered with making the hero a sheikh.

While I am not asking for full-blown Arabian Nights stereotypes, I think I have the right to expect some distinct cultural vibe in the setting that makes it Zahkim and not someplace else. Here, however, Tarek could have easily been some Greek or South American billionaire, and the story would only need to change the names of people and places to accommodate the change in the hero’s race. Tarek acts like a white dude, and there is nothing about him that reflects a distinct culture or religion that warrants him being what he is and the setting being what it is.

Given that the author has already, cheerfully, made sure that the story is already objectionable to some folks by creating a white woman’s burden setting and making the hero whiter than whatever he is supposed to be, I’d say that this story should have gone all out and stop pussyfooting around concerns of offending anyone. Just focus on making the setting as real as it can be, and the hero actually be distinctly from Zahkim and not just some white guy wearing stereotypical Arabian Nights outfits, and this story wouldn’t feel so artificial and pointless.

In the end, Leslie North’s The Sheikh’s Captive American is a pleasant read, but it’s also the equivalent of bland cold porridge—sure, it won’t cause indigestion much, but there’s nothing else about it to savor.