Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #193000 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 416 pages

Customer Reviews

Not the best of JL's books
Hi, as a massive fan of Johanna Lindsey, i try to read all of her books i can get. Some are however better than others and although this is enjoyable popcorn romance, it lack s the chatecter and depth of Love Only Once (my favorite to date of her novels) and Hearts Aflame. Worth trying to get throgh your Library first before Purchase in my opinion.
becca

Utter dross
I have never read one of Johanna Lindsey's books before, despite them enjoying quite a good reputation. I finally took a chance and picked out 'Secret Fire' because of the unusual setting - "A Russian romance," I thought. "Hmm, sounds interesting."

Unfortunately, the book has turned out to be so bad that I haven't finished it. I read the first hundred pages, skimmed the rest to see whether it got any better, and have now put it into my "Get rid of this quickly" pile.

The premise is that Lady Katherine St. John is mistaken for a common maid, and is kidnapped to serve the pleasure of Russian prince Dmitri Alexandrov. Through some extremely loose reasoning, she is taken back to Russia. Of course, Dmitri falls in love with her and they all live happily ever after.

The most striking problem is that the standard of writing is possibly the worst there is: not bad, but competent and pedestrian. There is no life in the prose and it is dull, dull, dull to read.

Another big difficulty was the first sex scene. Lady Katherine is given a potent aphrodisiac, and she is so aroused that it is Dmitri's duty to satisfy her. Is it just me that finds this a little dubious? Swap the handsome prince for a less physically attractive individual, and would the situation be the same? I don't think so...

And a last, rather petty gripe: the cover sucks. I didn't get the edition you see above, but rather a nasty peach affair, with metalic turquoise script and a poor painting of a torch.

Don't get burned - avoid 'Secret Fire'.

I dislike it absolutely!
It wasn't my 1st book of JL, in fact I've read almost all of them and I have to agree with author that gave 1 star. I myself Russian and I just hate such schematical and simple pictures of Russia and life in it. All those wild and rough Russians, even if they are aristorates. It's very silly! Bears on streets, ever winter, incredible Russian mafia and long queues - all these things are also from this category and leave, I suppose, only in imagination of mass media, which much more interested in negative information from here than in positive one. And I just recommend all the authors which would like to use "Russian exotic" in their books to study the subject more carefully (especially now when a lot of their creatures are translating into Russian and we can buy them here). And I have to say that pre-revolutional Russia (I mean aristocratical part) was rather similar to Europe and it wasn't difficult for high-society members marry partners from abroad and accomodate to life both in Europe or in Russia.