Pride & Passion by Charlotte Featherstone

“BEYOND THE MIST, the darkness and shadow, he waits, reaching out through a veil of gossamer threads—‘your future,’ he whispers, ‘your destiny.’”

There really is something magical about Charlotte Featherstone’s writing. Her stories are truly romantic, erotic, passionate, exciting…and definitely captivating. I find myself feeling as though I’ve been swept away to another time and place, and once I’m there, I never want to leave. Her characters are exciting, complex people whose stories I can’t wait to learn - people who I care about and cheer for.

Pride & Passion is the second book in the Brethren Guardians series, continuing mere weeks after book one, Seduction & Scandal ends, and we follow Adrian, Black and Alynwick as the need to find the villain known as Orpheus reaches a near fevered pitch. Kidnapping, threats and murder… Orpheus will stop at nothing to bring down the Brethren!

I absolutely adore Adrian, the Duke of Sussex. I found him to be both physically and mentally strong, mysterious and oh, so very sexy.

“I haven’t forgotten the chalice. I would take care to fill it,” he whispered wickedly, “to put my lips to it and savor what flows from it.”

It aroused her, at the same time it made her laugh. “That is a very naughty analogy, your grace.”

“I’m a gutter rat,” he whispered against her lips.“We’re known to be crass and licentious. Shall I show you?”

Indeed, there’s nothing like a tortured hero with a hidden past to get me all tingly, and Adrian is definitely that! From the first page to the last, I couldn’t get enough of him and would gladly bring him home and love him until his painful past is forgotten.

Lucy, on the other hand, is a heroine that I just couldn’t connect with, and it took me some time to get into the story because of her.

She was afraid. So damn afraid of the feelings inside her. Conflicting thoughts and emotions. Passion. That was all she had wanted. But this… What she was feeling had nothing to do with passion, and she wanted to run from it, to hide behind the veneer she had erected.

Empty, soulless creature. You want only passion because it’s all you can feel. Because it makes you forget that inside you there is nothing.

In Seduction & Scandal, I found her to be annoyingly selfish and immature, and in fact, I didn’t like her then, and I'm only slightly fonder of her now. Her seemingly haughty behavior kept me from being pulled in right away and it wasn’t until the final chapters of this book that she had a sudden transformation which, in the context of the story was okay, but for me, it came too late. For Pride & Passion to have been a solid 5 star read, I needed this to happen much sooner than it did so that I could have had more time to adjust to and accept the “new and improved” Lucy. But still, since Adrian is perfection incarnate, and his choice is Lucy, how can I possibly hold a grudge against her?

The bottom line - While there were a few moments that had me feeling like I had missed something somewhere, overall Pride & Passion is a very sexy, emotional, exciting story that had me on the edge of my seat and dying for the next installment! I don’t often read books with cliffhangers, so I don’t know how you people do it! What do you do to make the time pass faster? I need to know!!

Pride & Passion was provided by netgalley.com in behalf of the publisher, HQN Books.This had no influence on my rating or my review.

4.5/5 stars