The King's Pleasure

The King's Pleasure
Heather Graham, writing as Shannon Drake (website)
Published by Open Road
Available on Amazon Kindle
382 pages
Thanks to NetGalley for the preview.
3 / 5 cupcakes



Well. I did not love this one. In fact, I struggled with it a LOT. I must have put it down three or four times, and had to force myself to pick it back up. It isn't that this is a bad book, it's just that I didn't like the way it was written.

Let's start with the pros:

• You get a lot of English and French medieval history, which actually is rather interesting. Heather Graham, writing here as Shannon Drake, writes the Social Studies portion of the festivities in an entertaining fashion, not dry or dull at all.
• Adrien MacLachlan is a hunka hunka burnin' love, girls. Big, brawny, ultra masculine. Hair on the chest and a brogue to match. He loves his woman and will protect her - even from herself - at all costs.
• Danielle D'Aville, our plucky heroine, is plucky indeed. And she's very pretty. 
• It's fast-paced.

And that's about it for the good stuff. 

Now we get to the negatives, and they are legion:

• In the majority of sex scenes, Adrien all but rapes Danielle. For reals, people. He forces himself on her time and again. Now, we do see that she responds, but you'd have to be a box of rocks not to respond to him. She pushes against him, she pulls him to her. But for all of her robust responsiveness, she nonetheless refuses him, and he does not respect that. Look, I'm all for a feisty minx givin' 'er to her big man, but Danielle's repeated resistance became kind of awkward and uncomfortable. 
• The battle scenes got soooooo redundant. I felt like I read the same scene over and over again. After those times when I put the book down, I'd have to double and triple check to make sure I hadn't misplaced my bookmark, because I would have SWORN I'd read some of that stuff beforehand.
• The supporting characters are straight out of Central Casting. There is not an original one in the bunch, from the men who covet Danielle to the woman who wants Adrien. Can you believe they plot against our happy couple? I know! I'm shocked too.
• The non-rape sex scenes are tepid. Yes, there is some hotness there, but not enough to keep you hooked. While we know that these two can rock that headboard right into next week, their couplings are pretty standard fare. Oh! There is a brief episode of spanky panky, so yet again, I can drag Christian Grey's name into this review. Hey, Christian!
• It's just kind of ... boring. 

Here is a little snippet:

He clenched and unclenched a fist, trying to ease some of the tension from his body. She had matured from a beautiful girl into a voluptuous and stunning woman. She was more fiercely independent than ever, as prickly as a wild rose, but in her he could still see the passion of the girl he had known with the healing hands, proud spirit, and undying courage.

Healing hands? Proud spirit? Undying courage? Um, okay.

If you dig history, then you might want to give this a try. In fact, history buffs might be all over it, maybe to fact check Ms. Graham / Drake's assertions. But if you're looking for a hot historical romance novel, this isn't your best bet.