Sinful by Charlotte Featherstone
Historical Romance
May 1, 2010
Paperback, 336 Pages
Spice


Why I read: I have been wanting to read Charlotte Featherstone for some time now and this was offered through NetGalley.


Favorite Quote: Yet somehow he knew she was different from all the others. Somehow he knew she was forbidden. Forbidden to be tainted by someone as debauched and amoral as himself. But damn him, he could not resist this temptation – this woman who made him yearn.

Matthew, Earl of Wallingford is a very talented artist – but his art is of the disrespectful kind, usually including naked women. Matthew has a painting up for auction and he desperately hopes the bidding goes high so he can open his own art gallery. You see, although he is an Earl, his living expenses are not plenty due to a very poor relationship with his father. Matthew cares for no one – not even himself. He is a very broken man, having endured sexual abuse while growing up, he sees sex as just an act. Women are just an object to achieve release. Period. As he says, he has had very little good in his life.

It is during this auction that he is robbed and suffers a very bad head trauma. He ends up at London College Hospital where Jane Rankin works as a nurse on the night shift. Matthew’s eyes are swollen and bandaged so he can’t see Jane, but she instantly calms him. As panic overcomes him being bound to the hospital bed, her soothing voice makes it bearable for him. She becomes the only person allowed to touch him. Jane has not had a happy childhood either, homeless as just a child, she was taken up by Lady Blackwood and has become her companion. She finds solace in the nursing profession and now as an adult doesn’t have a lot of shame for being a working woman.

Jane takes in the attractive, yet violent Matthew and is overwhelmed. She has seen plenty of naked patients, but there is something different about Matthew, something that draws her to him.

After Matthew is released, he can’t get Jane out of his mind. He sends word to her to meet him and as she walks up to him, he doesn’t recognize her. He takes her for a mere servant and brutally ignores her. Jane flees, and by coincidence meets up with him at a wedding for mutual friends. The truth comes out to her true identity. Jane and Matthew have much healing to do, and they go on a very difficult journey.

Oh Sinful, where do I begin? This book leaves me a bit baffled as to if I really liked this book. First of all, this book is dark. I mean DARK. Matthew is such a broken, tortured soul – and that is usually  one of my favorite character traits. I also love when the hero remains broken throughout the book. When the hero is dark and takes one look at the heroine and is ready to blow bubbles and spin pinwheels it makes me want to gag. That is definitely not the case in this book, but darn by the end if I didn’t want to have some rainbows and sunshine. One of the things I liked about this book is nothing is sugarcoated. Matthew grew up with a crappy life and has a foul father, and even at the end of this book, yes there is resolution with Jane, this is a romance book, but it has a dark twist. And I enjoyed that – it felt real. I kept reading the conflict at the end thinking how in the world is the hero is going to resolve it – and then the end comes and I hadn’t even considered that option! They also have a confrontation about the time when he ignores her, that again came across as real and raw. All problems are eventually brought out into the open.

Now, onto what doesn’t work. For one, the sex scenes felt overly dramatic. They were so intense, so overly descriptive, just way, way over the top.

“I want to make you weep with pleasure, Jane.” He slid up the length of her luscious body. “I want to take your tears away on my lips and keep them with me forever”

or

“Help me to find my way back to heaven, Jane. But I want to go there while I am inside you.”

The sad thing is, this is where Matthew’s healing takes place. And instead of being absorbed into the emotional pull of his “therapy” I found myself rolling my eyes and wishing the scenes were over. And for the majority of the book, it felt like one big therapy session.

I also don’t know if I truly bought into Jane’s attraction to Matthew. She sees him as two people – Matthew, the more gentlemanly person who she sees while injured in the hospital, or she sees him care for his sister. But she also sees Earl of Wallingford, the crude, violent, dismissive Matthew who treats her like dirt. She knows he has had trauma, but she forgives him – for a lot. I had a hard time with her continually going back to him and falling under his spell.

Many have asked me how this book compares to Addicted. Unfortunately I have not read that book, this being the first I have read of Charlotte Featherstone. So I can not tell you. I will say, Sinful is definitely a book I will not forget for a long time, but this one had too many things that didn’t work for me.


Rating: 2.5/5

Recent Reviews:
Book Addict – 4/5
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Book Lovers Inc – 5/5
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