Sara Craven has a near-miss with Moth to the Flame. On the plus side this is intensely emotional with rich visual imagery and three vivid main characters. On the minus the romance does not satisfy because it is not believable. The hero, Santino, does not act as though he loves the heroine Juliet. At the end he claims he intends to marry her but he never says he loves her. And I do not think he does.

Plot Synopsis (Click here to skip spoilers)

Juliet’s younger sister Jan works as a model in Italy. She is beautiful, shallow, selfish and the apple of their mother’s eye. Jan hasn’t written for three weeks and mom worries and insists Juliet must go to Italy to find out what is wrong.

Jan tells Juliet she intends to marry Mario, but his older brother Santino adamantly disapproves and intends to stop the marriage. Jan is pregnant and claims Mario is the father although she doesn’t seem to love him. Brother Santino shows up unexpectedly while Juliet is alone in Jan’s apartment, believes Juliet is Jan and demands that she agree to take the buy off he offers her to leave Mario alone. Juliet doesn’t know what he’s talking about but she’s annoyed at Santino’s nasty comments, doesn’t believe Jan would take a payoff, and decides to play along to divert his attention while Jan and Mario supposedly are off getting married. He walks in on her while she’s dressing and makes lewd comments to embarrass her.

They have dinner together and Juliet fends off Santino’s insulting demands that she take his money and acting on Jan’s behalf, refuses to leave Mario, claims she loves him. Santino slips a sedative into her coffee and instead of driving her to Jan’s apartment, kidnaps her to his remote Castillo on the coast. He takes some of Jan’s glamour outfits along but misses Juliet’s more normal clothes and leaves her purse with her passport, return ticket and money behind.

At the Castillo he tells Juliet that he has notified the scandal media that he has brought Jan to his home, expecting this will cool his brother and turn him from marrying Jan. They have several near seduction scenes and Santino, all along believing Juliet is Jan, alternately calls her a prostitute and acts as though he’s attracted himself. Santino shocks Juliet, tells her about several Jan escapades, including one time where she did a striptease dance at an exclusive party.

Juliet found Santino attractive during that first dinner and over the next two days at the castillo she is horrified to realize she’s on the verge of falling in love with him. She knows they are from separate worlds and he’s not likely to fall for her, so she fights the attraction. It doesn’t help when Santino keeps trying to lure her into bed. Juliet believes he’s after her only because she’s there and he thinks she’s Jan, available, not because he’s interested in her.

Finally Juliet has enough, decides that Jan has had plenty of time to marry Mario if that is indeed what they were doing together, and reveals that she is not Jan, she is sister Juliet. She’s dumbfounded that Santino laughs this off as fairy tales. He’s in the middle of seducing her when his mother and stepfather arrive along with a nasty aunt by marriage whose goddaughter is engaged to Mario, and who collects gossip to sell to tabloids. Santino knows this aunt would like the goddaughter to marry her son instead of Mario, but he thinks the intended marriage will help Mario grow up and doesn’t want the engagement broken. He claims Juliet and he are engaged, that the story he planted about Jan was actually a misprint and was supposed to say he had Juliet with him.

Mother is there because Mario is in the hospital after crashing his car with Jan. Juliet goes with the family to the hospital and finds Jan is quite annoyed with the set up. Mario did not marry her, she’s two months pregnant, she has no job and will lose her apartment. And now her boring, stick in the mud, less pretty sister is engaged to the rich and gorgeous Santino. Santino wants her to go along with his story that Mario was bringing Jan to a family party to celebrate his engagement to Juliet, but if Jan spills the truth, it will cause a great deal of gossip and hurt Mario’s fiancée. Jan agrees to keep silent if Santino takes her along with Juliet to stay at his Castillo.

Once the three are together Jan mounts a relentless campaign to supplant Juliet as Santino’s fiancée. Juliet finds herself pushed to the side and Santino doesn’t seem to mind this at all. In fact when Juliet joins them on the beach and insists on talking to Santino in private about getting her passport and ticket to return to her job in England, he is cold, acts as if he was interrupted and sneers at her. He says he knows why she is going and Juliet thinks he means he knows she is in love with him; she does not know that Jan took magnified Juliet’s tepid friendship with another teacher into a huge love affair.

When Santino returns to Jan on the beach he runs his finger down Jan’s spine. That evening he takes Jan to Rome and comes back a day later after his mother has visited again. Juliet tells his mother that they never were engaged, that it was fake and that she’s going home. Mother is fed up with both her sons and cannot understand why Santino took Jan to Rome. Neither can Juliet, unless Santino wants an affair with Jan.

When Santino and Jan return Jan has “all the appearance of the cat who has had the cream and intends to make the saucer hers as well.” Jan tells Juliet that she’s wearing her heart on her sleeve, that Santino is bored with their engagement and Juliet was undignified when she dragged Santino away on the beach and he didn’t want to go. “Learn to be a good loser” she advises. Santino tries to talk to Juliet but she shrugs him off and goes upstairs to her room. She’s convinced that Jan got what she wanted from Santino, either marriage or an affair.

Back in England Juliet is miserable. She now knows she loves Santino, that it wasn’t just infatuation. Walking home after work Juliet sees Santino’s car parked by her home. Jan walks in wearing an enormous diamond. She’s married and brought her husband and wouldn’t Juliet like to come and greet him? No way. Juliet tells her that is a pleasure she must forgo and wishes them both every happiness. Juliet walks up the steps and Santino comes up behind her, picks her up and carries her to her room. He’s not going to watch her walk away up some stairs again. Jan is married to a former lover and Santino wants to marry Juliet. He tells her he wants her, he has always wanted her. He even agrees to wait to marry until she works out her notice at the end of term.

Why Is the Romance Flat?

Juliet’s Side. Juliet felt she knew Santino, as though she had always known him, had been waiting for him all her life. That could be love. That could be infatuation. Both feel wonderful at first but only love lasts. She did not spend much time with Santino, one dinner where he insulted Jan non stop, two days at his Castillo where he insults and tries to seduce her, a drive to Rome, a month at his Castillo when he leaves for days at a time on business and Jan is always there.

Love at first sight romances can be completely believable – Sara Craven’s The Unwilling Wife is a good example from the man’s side – so that is not why this doesn’t work for me. The main reason is Santino.

Santino’s Side. Why did Santino allow Jan to push Juliet aside? More damning, why did he continue to flirt with her and touch her as he did on the beach when she had her bikini top off? I thought of several reasons:

1. He’s trying to make Juliet jealous.
2. He knows he hurt and scared Juliet and wants to give her time to grow accustomed to him
3. He doesn’t think Juliet cares for him and wants to pay her back for it.
4. Jan is so blatant that Santino is laughing at her internally when he allows her to play up to him.
5. He wants to keep Jan sweet so she doesn’t spill the beans to the gossipy godmother
6. He is physically attracted to Jan.

Santino says reason #2 is why he devised the fake engagement and implies it is why he left Juliet alone so much. Frankly, I don’t buy it. True he wanted to give her space but that does not mean letting Jan have the space – all the cream and the saucer to boot – and it certainly does not mean stroking her back when she’s lying on the beach with her top off. I think it was a combination of #4, 5 and 6.

Santino thought Jan was little better than a prostitute, certainly she was promiscuous and accepted an apartment and fancy clothes from the man she eventually marries. All along Santino thought Juliet was Jan and tried his best to seduce her into bed which says it all. Santino was too proud to allow a sleep-around to marry his brother but he wasn’t too proud to take advantage of physical proximity. Santino acted revolted when Juliet revealed she believed he and Jan had an affair and had possibly even married. Santino would never marry someone like Jan, but he was all too willing to have an affair.

Writing Style

I like Sara Craven’s style. In Moth to the Flame she lets the action and dialogue show the emotions and drive the story. We see everything through Juliet’s eyes, and there is quite a bit of introspection when she worries about falling for Santino, when she’s sickened by Jan’s behavior, when she’s desperate to get back home. The author uses Juliet’s thoughts to help explain Juliet’s reasoning and her behavior and doesn’t rely on them to make the story real.

Moth to the Flame is set mostly in Italy, either in Rome at an apartment or restaurant, or at Santino’s old Castillo. The settings are part of the story and described well enough that we can visualize them. The Castillo is built from stone by a cliff so it has some atmosphere that Juliet notes but doesn’t obsess about.

Overall

Moth to the Flame is a decent read albeit not a great story and far from one of Sara Craven’s best. The romance between Juliet and Santino doesn’t work because he spends far too much time insulting her, trying to seduce her, or flirting with Jan, and far too little time developing any connection between them.

3 Stars

I got my used paperback copy of Moth to the Flame from Thriftbooks. Amazon has copies and most likely you can find it on eBay and other used book sites.

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