Scan barcode
A review by chloe_liese
The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
"I wouldn't mind being the one that does the choosing for once, instead of the gents always getting to do the deciding."
This book had some powerful feminist messages and cultural critique. I think my favorite was how Hoyt highlighted the double-standard which dictated women were "compromised" when known or even rumored to have been sexually active outside marriage, while a man's reputation remained untarnished. This tension and societal hypocrisy is at the heart of the book, driving both Edward's conviction about "what's done" and "doing right" by Anna, and Anna's burgeoning independence in flouting societal confines upon her autonomy, her welfare, and ultimately her happiness.
Also, I want to salute and praise Ms. Hoyt for writing "plain" lead characters in a romance (though I wish the cover accurately reflected this). Edward is scarred from smallpox, and Anna is consistently portrayed as "no great beauty." Their initial impressions of each other are no less than "ugly" and "unremarkable." But delightfully, deliciously, she sucks her reader into the heart of a very old, proven adage: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
While the writing began strong with spare but vivid descriptive passages and enticing exploration of simmering sexual tension, I felt that the back half of the book fell flat on both fronts. Sex became a lot of sex (most of it pretty damn hot) that wasn't always necessary to drive the narrative, and while I love me some heat, I usually don't want to feel like I'm getting repetitive scenes that don't develop the story, or even worse, like I'm getting sex scenes *instead* of narrative that will develop the story.
Overall, a story I'm glad I read, but not one I'll need to return to. I'm intrigued enough by Hoyt's feminist narrative explorations and complex character development to try another of her books before coming to a decision about whether or not her storytelling is necessarily for me.
This book had some powerful feminist messages and cultural critique. I think my favorite was how Hoyt highlighted the double-standard which dictated women were "compromised" when known or even rumored to have been sexually active outside marriage, while a man's reputation remained untarnished. This tension and societal hypocrisy is at the heart of the book, driving both Edward's conviction about "what's done" and "doing right" by Anna, and Anna's burgeoning independence in flouting societal confines upon her autonomy, her welfare, and ultimately her happiness.
Also, I want to salute and praise Ms. Hoyt for writing "plain" lead characters in a romance (though I wish the cover accurately reflected this). Edward is scarred from smallpox, and Anna is consistently portrayed as "no great beauty." Their initial impressions of each other are no less than "ugly" and "unremarkable." But delightfully, deliciously, she sucks her reader into the heart of a very old, proven adage: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
While the writing began strong with spare but vivid descriptive passages and enticing exploration of simmering sexual tension, I felt that the back half of the book fell flat on both fronts. Sex became a lot of sex (most of it pretty damn hot) that wasn't always necessary to drive the narrative, and while I love me some heat, I usually don't want to feel like I'm getting repetitive scenes that don't develop the story, or even worse, like I'm getting sex scenes *instead* of narrative that will develop the story.
Overall, a story I'm glad I read, but not one I'll need to return to. I'm intrigued enough by Hoyt's feminist narrative explorations and complex character development to try another of her books before coming to a decision about whether or not her storytelling is necessarily for me.