Book Review... The Innocent's Surrender - Sara Craven

The Innocent's Surrender - Sara Craven
Mills & Boon Modern
Harlequin Mills & Boon, 2010
ISBN: 9780263877649











My rating

From the back cover:

"His price: her awakening 
Natasha Kirby has long been saddened by her family’s feud with the Mandrakis men…now she’s caught in its savage crossfire. Her family’s business has fallen into the hands of merciless tycoon Alex Mandrakis. Summoned to his bedroom, Natasha is given an impossible ultimatum: sacrifice her virginity, or he will destroy her family! 
Captive on Alex’s luxury yacht, Natasha finds her trembling fear turns to traitorous shivers of desire. By rights she should despise him, but slowly she finds herself wishing that her bittersweet seduction could last for ever…"


I feel like before I start writing this review I should put a disclaimer or something... This will not be a book for everyone, that's for sure!

This is a difficult review to write because this is a difficult book to read, at times. There is something about Sara Craven's rather un-PC books that I like, she's certainly 'old school' in her style. This one, well, perhaps it went a little too far!

If you read any other review for this you will be able to ascertain that the first love scene is, er, not the best. I'll be honest, it's a little rapey...

In my opinion it would have been much better without it as the rest of the story is beautifully written and very absorbing.

The book feels very dark, so in a way the first love scene does fit the mood. Sara Craven does a great job of hinting at the real truth underneath all the horrible surface stuff, and that makes you want to keep reading.

The heroine fights her feelings at every step and as a result her character really goes on a journey of self discovery (sorry for the newage speak!). She starts off unforgivably naive yet ends up really growing as a character.

The same for the hero, even though there was no POV for him, at the start I hated him but ended up falling totally for him.

This is a very up and down book, but somehow Sara Craven waves her wand and makes this a very compelling read.

If I have one moan it is that the hero and heroine didn't meet until 15% into the book (thank you Kindle stats!) and that felt a little too long to wait, IMO.

Anyway, like I said, it's not for everyone but I actually enjoyed this book.

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