LynneC’s review of One Night Heir by Lucy Monroe
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Presents 18 Jun 13
This is a duty versus love story, and while some parts are a bit unbalanced, it is an enjoyable read.
Maks is a crown prince and has to produce an heir. His long-term love, Gillian, has infertility problems, so Maks feels obliged to dump her. Then Gillian discovers she’s pregnant.
While I understand Maks’s need for an heir, I do feel bad for Gillian. Monroe does a good job of showing Maks’s remorse at dumping her, but he is always a little removed in this story, so I’m never fully engaged in the romance. It isn’t helped by the lack of physical connection between the two. There is one fully realized sex scene and the rest of the scenes had fadeout. That meant the reader is blocked from understanding any physical development which might have gone on between the two, and in this story, that is important. There needs to be something to explain why Maks goes from considering Gillian a dumpee to making her essential to his life. Despite her pregnancy and not because of it.
Gillian adores Maks and is completely broken up when he dumps her, but being a woman of spirit, she goes on with her life.
There’s an insidious message in this book that a woman can’t have a career and a happy marriage. Her mother had a successful career but couldn’t do it without leaving her father. Then the heroine dumped her career without a second glance, as if it’s just something she did to kill time before she married.
Maks is a suitably dark and handsome hero, but if he has espresso eyes once, he had them a dozen times and eventually it became noticeable, i.e., “not that again.” He’s developing the oil business in his country and has been working hard to make it ethical and green, but in one section it’s claimed that he is doing business with Zimbabwe. I’m not sure that works with the ethical explanation, considering how many people are exploited and murdered in that country.
“No country on earth had stricter environmental regulations and policies than Volyarus.”
And yet he does business with Zimbabwe, and doesn’t consider nuclear power, which these days is probably the best option? At least we don’t get fracking as environmentally safe!
“Two different fumbling attempts during her university days at intimacy that ended in dismal failure and none of the pleasure she found in his arms had left her with no real practical experience at pleasing a partner.”
While we are told that Gillian is strong and independent, she tends to come across as the waiflike innocent who can’t stand on her own two feet in this harsh world. For a start, she’s a pseudo-virgin, that is, she’s had a couple of unsatisfactory relationships before Maks, who is the only man to bring her to fulfilment (orgasm?) and without him, she flounders, although she tries to do her best for the sake of the baby.
On the whole, Gillian clings to Maks a little too much and Maks is too much the macho hero for me to completely engage with the story, but Monroe’s smooth, professional writing leads the reader through to their happy ending.
Grade: C
Summary:
Only a royal wedding…
Bitter life lessons have taught Crown Prince Maksim Yurkovich that duty must come before desire. His country needs an heir, so when he discovers his lover can’t have children, he must sever their ties. Only Maks can’t resist spending one last night in her bed.
…can avert this royal scandal!
Now he faces the biggest diplomatic crisis of his life. Against all odds, Gillian Harris has become pregnant. Maks’s royal reserve masks the heart of a fierce Cossack warrior—one who is not above using their mutual passion to convince a hurt, wary Gillian that she must be his queen!
Read an excerpt.
