♥ Forever Book Lover ♥ : My Ruthless Prince by Gaelen Foley

My Ruthless Prince (Inferno Club #4)
by Gaelen Foley
Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: December 27th 2011
ISBN: 0062075918 (ISBN13: 9780062075918)

Review courtesy of netGalley

The Inferno Club: To London Society, they’re notorious for their scandalous pursuits. In private, these warriors would risk their lives for king and country.
His brother warriors fear the Earl of Westwood has turned traitor, but Emily Harper knows this is impossible for the man she has loved since childhood . . . as impossible as a marriage between them could ever be—she, the gamekeeper’s daughter and he, a bold and adventurous nobleman.
Driven by hatred and revenge, Westwood is playing a deadly game of deception, bent on destroying the enemy’s dark conspiracy from the inside, and he’s furious when Emily plunges herself into danger for his sake. Forced into close quarters, their long-suppressed desire explodes into all-consuming passion.
Emily knows her love can save him . . . but Westwood is a man who doesn’t want to be saved.

My Thoughts:

I was worried that I wasn’t going to connect with the characters since this is part of an ongoing series, but I was immediately drawn into the plot from very beginning. If anything I have missed out on the learning about the other characters, but it didn’t take anything away from this page turner.

This was a true love story, their love was forbidden, Drake being the earl’s heir and Emily, the woodman’s untamed daughter. I loved the tenacity of Emily, she loved her man and she would do anything to bring him back from the dark side.
As the story unfolds we learn, Drake, a member of the “Order of St. Michael the Archangel ”, was captured and suffered months of torture which broke him deeply inside. The torturers caused his mind to swallow up many of the details of his old life as a warrior for the “Order”. But even they had never succeeded in making him forget the reason why he fought… it was because of Emily, when he would think of home he didn’t think of the mansion or his family, he thought of her, wild and free.

Drake is a changed man, he was now working for the men who kidnapped and tortured him. He no longer is the same man that Emily knew back from her childhood, but that didn’t deter Emily she had a blind devotion for Drake, although others saw another “Drake” she knew he was still there, if she could only bring him back…

She needed him like he was the other half of herself.

Drake was on a suicide mission, but he did not intend to die until he had also made sure that his enemies joined him. He no longer cared what lines he crossed for he had nothing left to lose. Drake was not all he appeared to be, but revealing more in this review would be telling too much of the plot.

You can feel the Emily's anguish when she realized that she would have to shoot a burning arrow into the temple, knowing that Drake was in there.

You cannot ask me to kill the man I love... I love him, I want him with me."

The end reminded me of Romeo and Juliet, she couldn’t live without him and she almost sacrificed herself to be with him. Very emotional!!

I was moved by this story, it was a page turner, just when I thought the story line would calm down, it kept right on capturing me in, I couldn't put the book down and I read it until the early hours of dawn. Suffice to say, you will be pulled into this web of deception, it doesn't slow down at all, just when you think you know what will happen, the author takes you on another path you least expected. Bravo! Through all the rollercoaster of emotions, true love is the savior for even a broken man, it's the light at the end of a very troubled tunnel.

On a personal note: I wish I knew more about the character, Virgil, the one who recruited all of them to serve in the “order”. He would be one of the reasons for me to read the first three books in the series.

I received this arc in exchange for an honest review.

My Rating:

Author:

Gaelen Foley is the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher's Weeklybestselling author of seventeen historical romances set in the glittering world of Regency England. Her books are available in fifteen languages and have won numerous genre awards, such as the Bookseller's Best, the NJRW Golden Leaf (three times), the CRW Award of Excellence, the National Reader's Choice Award, the Beacon, and the Holt Medallion.

A Pennsylvania native, Gaelen holds a B.A. in English literature with a minor in Philosophy from the State University of New York, College at Fredonia, a quaint lakeside village where Mark Twain once owned a home. It was here, while studying the Romantic poets, such as Wordsworth, Byron, and Keats that she first fell in love with the Regency period in which her novels are set. Gaelen lives in western Pennyslvania with her college-sweetheart husband, Eric, and a mischievous bichon frise named Bingley (Mr. Darcy's sidekick in Pride & Prejudice). She is hard at work on her next book.

On the Gaelen's website, she mentions Book 5 of the Inferno Club series is tentatively titled:

MY SCANDALOUS VISCOUNT
Beau & Carissa's Story!
COMING AUTUMN 2012
(Release Month Yet To Be Determined. Please Note that Title could also still change.)