June Featured Review

Deeply disturbing, dark, and poignant, Tempting Eden is a love story that will stay with you long after the final page is read.

Maragaret Rowe, who also writes much lighter historical romances for Kensington/Brava as Maggie Robinson, pushes the boundaries of romance in this intense psychological, erotic tale. This book is not for the faint of heart, but if you do have the heart, it’s well worth the read.

At the very least, I was hesitant to read Tempting Eden. To say this is a disturbing romance would be, in my opinion, understating the matter. The premise of the book is taboo. The heroine, Eden Emery, is seduced by her stepfather, and at the age of eighteen willingly assumes the role of his mistress, plays the slave to his master.

I say his slave because not only are they lovers, her stepfather is the dom in this twisted relationship. He is cruel. He is sadistic. He is sick. The book begins by stating his intentions:

When he was done, she’d be the greatest whore in all of Christendom.

And good to his word, in the following four years, Eden’s stepfather, the Earl of Hartford, applies himself to doing precisely that. And his vow, his vision is a success. Eden does any and everything he asks of her. I have to admit this was the hardest thing for me to deal with in reading Tempting Eden, that the heroine took this road willingly…eagerly…at first.

Upon his death, his nephew and heir, Stuart Harford, or Hart as he is called, resumes responsibility for his uncle’s stepdaughters, Eden and her sickly younger sister, Jannah. He and his aunt travel to Hartford Hall to assess his inheritance: the property and the females themselves.

Eden’s introduction to the new lord nearly has her fainting at his feet, for he’s the younger image of his deceased uncle, the man who’d tortured her all those years. And to Hart, Eden is a scrawny wisp of a woman whom he considers ‘a plain virgin’. Little does he know.

But when he discovers a provocative drawing of her ‘au naturelle’ done by his very talented uncle, he immediately understands and is sickened by the nature of their relationship, thinking she seduced his uncle after her mother’s death. He had originally planned to send her away with his aunt after her sister died (Jannah’s illness is terminal), but now he wants her to have nothing to do with his family. The problem is his attraction to her, which of course bothers him to the nth degree because he is the man some called ‘Holy Hartford’ because of his pillar of moral rectitude.

Eden is just as pained and horrified by her attraction to him, which wars with the depth of the shame she bears over the relationship she had with his uncle. Her shame only deepens when Hart confronts her with his knowledge of it. She believes he’s found the book his uncle had published (one single copy) to document his seduction of her titled, The Seduction of a Young Lady.

For me, the other difficult part of this book were the flashbacks. Very difficult. Ms. Rowe does not skimp on the details of Eden’s seduction at her stepfather’s hands. Most of these flashbacks are explicit in nature. There were many times that I sorely wished she had been raped. The fact that I feel this way is a bit stunning, but that’s how difficult it was for me to digest the fact that she was so very willing in the beginning. This affair began when her mother was alive and Eden had no compunction in carrying on with her mother’s husband behind her back. This just added a more unsavory air to something that was unsavory enough.

But once I grew to understand the psychology of this kind of seduction, Eden’s willingness made sense in the context of a mother who might have been in her life in body but certainly not in mind. Her biological father was deceased and the only male figure in her life set his mind on her seduction years in advance. Eden was so ripe for the picking with his flirtations and liberal helpings of wine, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Trials and tribulations abound in Eden and Hart’s difficult road to understanding and happily ever after, but they make it, this is a romance after all. Hart has a level of understanding of this tragic part in her life that few men would, and Eden not only has to learn to trust him, she has to learn to forgive and trust in herself. Love, in the end, has the power to heal and give them a fresh start at a new beginning, as they leave the ghosts of the past behind. ~ Beverley