Book:Everlasting by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
Genre:Historical/Romance
Setting:England/Scotland

Let me say up front that I am not a big fan of romance, this is probably my second romance novel.

My opinion on a scale of 1 - 10; I give this book a 4.

Everlasting is about the young Abrielle who falls in love with a Scot named Raven Seabern, however she's forced to marry the revolting Desmond de Marle, the half brother of her dead fiance to save her family from poverty. Not long after she's married to him, de Marle, attempts to rape her. Raven shows up to help and de Marle attempts to rush him, he moves and de Marle falls down the stairs to his death. Long story short, things progress and she ends up forced into marrying Raven.

The love story is okay and the plots surrounding it are pretty good. But here are the irksome things:
The author is not all that great in her writing...I've no idea how she actually became a NYT Bestselling Author. She uses the same phrases and words over and over; many times within two sentences of each other in the same paragraph...so it kind of feels like you're reading the same thing over again. I had to stop and read paragraphs a couples times before i realized I wasn't missing anything.

Another irritation of the book is the the main character, Abrielle, obviously likes Raven, but the author makes her act like she hates him because she doesn't think he really likes her. Which, a lot of times will add taste to the story, but in this...it was flat out irritating, especially since after he saves her, she acts like she wants him to hang around her then starts up again with the 'no i don't like you' stuff.

Another annoying factor of the book is that not only is the main character near raped i don't know how many times rolleyes is they are in england, but everyone's name is 'de-something or another'. Correct me if I'm wrong...but 'de' is a french word meaning 'of' and is in many french surnames. Basically it's like saying so-n-so of whatever. Now all the characters in the story with the exception of Raven are of either English or Norse decent...so the 'de' thing just doesn't make sense.

Not to mention...the titles doesn't completely fit the story...if they meant everlasting love...well it was never demonstrated to be everlasting...

Now, the good parts...

I'm always hesitant about buying romances because either the story is crap to surround slutty sex scenes or sex scene after sex scene. This book however does have a good plot within a plot. It goes into what starts to happen after King Henry is killed and the characters are slightly involved with the warring. Another thing I liked is the story is not another version of Helen of Troy. When you start reading you feel like it's going to become that way. In fact, it's about the wealth that Abrielle inherits from de Marle's death.

The book all in all encompassed only three, fairly brief sex scenes. If things had been written out better, this would have made for a fantastic romance because it was about the love of the two characters not about the amount of sex or the kind of sex they had. The sex scenes themselves weren't bad to read either, they were very tasteful. Much better than some I've read that make you think of porno. And make your head go burning_eyes

The characters were well developed although the author seemed to have a little trouble with making up her mind with Abrielle's mindset..one minute she's strong, the next she's jello and the next she's strong then squishy.,,,that part was frustrating...but the rest was good. Raven was well molded and Cordelia was a good character.

I'd suggest reading it but warn of the irritations aforementioned. If things like that destroy your want to read, then borrow the book from a library rather than buying it.