"Intense historical about angry lovers"

Lily Hill has come home to Bar Harbor, Maine, after a ten- year absence, for a vacation at the request of her grandmother. That is a long time to be away from the people and places you love. Lily walks into the kitchen and sees her grandmother in the same place she was ten years ago. On the surface it seems like she has just left; life is slow and casual and never seeming to have changed.

Ten years ago Frank Johnson was thrown over Widow's Walk down to the rocks below. When Lily ran, Doyle Donovan was blamed. Lily was accused of sleeping with Frank and in a fit of jealous rage Donovan killed him. Nothing was proven but Doyle's architectural business suffered and he almost lost sole custody of his brothers.

1887 was a very conservative time in America. Not only were the fashions constricting but so was society. An unmarried woman was expected to have a chaperone and go from her father's house to her husband's. Women were not educated, but were a prize shown off by their husbands. They were treated like possessions or chattel. But Lily just wanted to sketch and paint and she had loved Doyle since she was seventeen.

Overall the mood of this story is anger. Anger from Doyle that Lily left Bar Harbor and him ten years ago. Anger from his brother John that Lily didn't give in to his sexual advances. And anger from Lily for Doyle that he would not have sex with her ten years ago or now.

The research done depicting all the floral life Maine has is wonderful. But I really wanted to hit Lily over the head with a board for not trusting in Doyle and the love that he was showing her. Also Doyle's sexual proclivities are a little domineering and downright arrogant. He never gives Lily a choice to object, he just steamrolls over her. Even while Doyle proclaims his love for Lily he treats her as an object. It makes me appreciate being born in the twentieth century.

Sensuality: Masturbation, Oral sex, Exhibitionist Sex, Anal sex, Bondage.

Reviewed by Hunter McKenna
Courtesy Sensual Romance
Posted May 15, 2003

Formerly published by Ellora's Cave Publishing. Not currently available.

Summary

1887, Bar Harbor Maine: A woman's sexual odyssey begins when she returns home to untangle the lies, distortions, and secrets of her past... Ten years ago Lily Hill was involved in a sex scandal that led to a suspicious death and Doyle Donovan, the man she once loved, was the prime suspect. When Lily returns to the home she both loves and fears, she hides the fact that she has been receiving anonymous threats for years, threats that warn her to stay away from town. But now that she is home Lily has a special goal in mind - to clear Doyle's name of the stigma of scandal. Lily desperately wants to gain his forgiveness; if in doing so she must make herself his sexual slave, then so be it.