Lynne Connolly‘s review of The Sheikh’s Chosen Queen by Jane Porter
Contemporary romance released by Harlequin Presents 1 Apr 08
At last, a title I can remember! Jane Porter has done some research and describes the scenes, especially one set in Dubai, very well. It does make a difference to the story and helps to set the world in something a little closer to ours than many of the sheikh romances out there.
Pause for a confession. I love me a good sheikh book. Which is strange, because I don’t in general like European royalty stories. But shiekh’s – it’s all that Ethel M. Dell stuff. Fantasies about tents and oases (I looked it up – betcha didn’t know the plural of oasis before this!) and gorgeous olive-skinned hotties. Oh and we can’t forget the young Omar Sharif and Oded Fehr, can we?
Anyway, the hero of this book, Sharif Fehr (someone else with the same fantasies as me?) fits well into the mold. He’s a conscientious monarch, perhaps more than he should be. He met the heroine, then they broke up, he married someone else and had three girls by her, then he comes to find the heroine. Not as a wife, but a teacher, at least that’s what she thinks.
The heroine, Jesslyn, is a teacher in the United Arab Emirates. She’s American by origin, but she enjoys the challenges of teaching abroad. At the start of the book, he walks into her classroom after she’s closed for the summer and asks her to teach his girls.
The girls do have problems, real ones, and to my mind they were too easily solved. The kind of treatment they were subject to would have left deeper traumas. Their father had little time for them, he was guilty over the death of his wife and busy with his duties, and their grandmother was, well, a bitch.
You do know that from the start, and one of my problems with the book was that I wanted to see her suffer, and she didn’t really get proper punishment for what she did. And all the villainy was down to her, so it got a bit old by the end. A partner in crime would have varied things a tad.
Other problems – the hero was only sketchily drawn. I know HMB prefers to concentrate on the heroine, make it her story, but I’d really like his side, too, sometimes. After all, a romance is between two people and I’d love both sides. I’ve read a lot of HMB Moderns and Silhouette Desires recently where the hero is more like an object, and the heroine, however well drawn, doesn’t make up for the out-of-the-box alpha hero. And how about a blond or two, just for variety?
Jesslyn is a bit of a saint, too much for my taste. She’s a good teacher, she’s practical, she’s, well, pretty much perfect. And a tiny bit bland. By the end, when the hero calls her a miracle, I felt like I’d OD’d on candy.
But the book was well written, with some nice details and the characters did have a few surprises, enough to keep me reading. I’ll look up the next book in the series, presumably about one of Sharif’s brothers, who are mercifully absent but mentioned in this one, but I won’t be waiting with bated breath for it to arrive.
So a B- from me and thanks for a nice, comfortable read.
Grade: B-
Summary:
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She would live by the Sheikh’s rules–as his bride and queen!
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When Jesslyn once knew him in London, Sharif Fehr was a playboy prince–their romance was carefree and fun.
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Now Jesslyn has been summoned to the desert land that Sheikh Sharif rules. The intervening years have proved harsh and cruel and Sharif has grown used to his word being law. No one dares challenge him- except Jesslyn who refuses to take his orders! But for all her sweet insolence, Sharif is sure of one thing: she will obey his ultimate command and submit – to becoming his wife and queen!
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Read an excerpt here.
