Oh my. This is bad. Unfortunately it is readable and almost compelling but it is not a story to enjoy. The plot centers on revenge, and it’s misplaced revenge at that, and the hero, Andreas (yes, he’s Greek so we have yet another stereotype), makes it clear that he does not and will not love the heroine Regan.

Plot Synopsis – Click to Skip Spoilers

Regan interviews for a job as a companion/governess to a young teen girl that turns out to be a smokescreen to get her to Andreas’s house in rural England. There he tells her that her father stole his wife and deliberately caused a car racing accident that left him blind in one eye. Therefore he’s going to marry Regan, get her pregnant, make her life hell, all to get his revenge on Regan’s dad who is now dead. (His ex wife is dead also but no one seems to care about that.)

Andreas has been thorough and clever, having a young employee act as Regan’s boyfriend the last year or so, in order to keep her pure and untouched. Now she’s shoved into an upstairs room and Andreas threatens to rape her/make her his mistress, until she agrees to marry him. Regan is no pushover so she climbs out the drainpipe but Andreas sees her and she falls the last few feet. She’s hurt but not incapacitated, and he pressures her into marriage. (Her first mistake.)

There is an interlude back in England where Regan goes to her aunt and uncle’s home, finds out they knew all about the accident and bad feelings, but not about Andreas’s revenge drive. Andreas meets her there and takes her semi-willingly to Greece. She’s starting to fall in love with him. (Her second mistake.)

Andreas continually provokes her and then bullies her into apologizing for reacting with “disrespect”, i.e., treating him as he treats her. She apologizes each time. (Her third mistake.)

He takes her to Greece and once she’s healed forcibly seduces/rapes her. Then he leaves with his secretary whom he implies is also his long term mistress.

Regan and Helena, Andreas’s daughter, go to England where Regan goes to a friend’s wedding with Clive, the nice man Andreas had used to interview her initially. Regan is saying good-bye to Clive when Andreas walks in all puffed up with haughtiness and arrogance and conceit and makes nasty comments and jeers at Regan and Clive. Clive ignores the jeers and tells Andreas he’s misjudged his innocent wife. Andreas makes a snide comment about having made sure Regan is no innocent any longer. Clive leaves.

Andreas admits he learned that the car crash that blinded him was truly an accident, not semi-deliberate attempted murder. He kinda sorta apologizes for seeking revenge on Regan but it’s obvious he’s not sorry a bit, more sorry for himself that he had made a mistake.

He pushes at Regan about their one time intercourse, was it rape? She says no. (I guess because at the end she physically responded and enjoyed it. Still rape in my book.) Was it love? She says no, but then you told me it would not be love. It was hate. Andreas makes a big noise about he didn’t hate Regan, in fact he started to love her when she risked death to escape him. We have the great denouement, with both Andreas and Regan saying I Love You. Gag.

Characters

Regan may think she is in love with Andreas, but reading the story it’s clear that her mistakes in first agreeing to marry, then allowing him to browbeat her in accepting blame for his nasty behavior, then mistaking physical attraction for love is going to make for a long and unhappy marriage once she wakes up to the man she is stuck with.

She should have refused marriage and if Andreas raped her, filed a police report. Perhaps Andreas could have talked his way out of a rape charge using the old “lovers’ tiff” dodge, but Regan would have been off the hook. Andreas threatens to follow her, drag her back if Regan attempts to escape before or after marriage, but there are laws against stalking. Andreas can make Regan’s life miserable trying to stay away from him but it’s a better misery than being stuck with a guy like him for life.

Andreas taunts Regan, makes vicious comments, alternates between treating her as a nuisance he can barely tolerate and a sex toy, there solely to please him in bed. He never treats her as a person. There are many jerks and arrogant, obnoxious, self-satisfied mean males (I won’t call them men) in Harlequin Presents but this guy is one of the worst.

I didn’t find either love at all convincing. If Andreas truly loved Regan he would not have forced her, not have continued to treat her like dirt, certainly would have treated her better or offered her an annulment once he learned he was mistaken to blame her father. If Regan loved Andreas she wouldn’t have been so cowed by him.

Overall

I liked Devil Lover the first time I read it, gave it 3 stars on Goodreads, but upon rereading must drop it to a very low 2 star rating. I don’t usually rate books as 1 star unless they are exceptionally lousy, or I don’t finish them or they are filthy. Devil Lover isn’t that bad nor is it smut so

2 Stars.

I got my copy from Harlequin.com and you can read it online for free at Archive.org. Amazon has it in E and paperback formats and it is available on used book sites and eBay.

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