Book Review: If You Desire

I'm kind of bummed about this book because I feel like it had a lot of potential that for some reason, it just didn't live up to. This is the second book in the series that included If You Dare, which I loved. And, I'm a total, total sucker for romance novels that feature long-lost/long-denied loves, so I thought that would be great.

One of the premises in the series is that the three brothers it's based on have been cursed for centuries, or rather, their generation has. They have a book in their family that says that they shall "walk in death or walk alone," blah blah blah. Basically the old book says that their father will have three sons who will never know love and never have children and when the sons read the book the father will meet an early death and stuff like that. There's a bloodstain covering up the last two sentences of the curse that made it unreadable. Turns out that the morning after the boys read the verse their healthy father died in his sleep, and the night before the oldest brother was supposed to get married, his finacee died mysteriously. And, apparently the oldest brother is somewhat of a horny bastard, but so far he's never impregnated a woman. So needless to say they all believe the curse.

And poor Hugh, the middle brother. He's been in love with Jane, his employer's daughter, since he was in his early twenties, but he's always thought that he can't have her because he doesn't want to hurt her and he thinks the curse will lead to her death. And this guy is in love. He's tormented by it. It's kinda sad that he's lived alone for ten years denying himself, because Jane was crazy about him, too.

But what brings them back together is a threat to Jane's life. Hugh's employer (Jane's father) wants Hugh to protect her and he thinks that marrying her is the only way he can do it. So now Hugh is tormented even more because he's married to the woman he's always wanted.

Despite this, the chemisty between Hugh and Jane was not all that it could have been. I thought they kept their secrets from each other way too long and then once they were revealed, nothing really changed. But here's my biggest beef—the sex scenes were pointless. Maybe it's becoming a fine art for romance writers to write sex scenes that actually further the story and aren't just there, because more and more often I'm seeing sex scenes that don't appear to serve any purpose.

Lindsey's Grade: B-