Dark Prince

June 11, 2007
Silver's newest (after His Dark Kiss
), set against the wilds of early 19th-century Cornwall, makes a moody gothic romance out of the business arrangement between a crippled innkeeper and a vengeful privateer. Poor innkeeper Gideon Heatherington has only one option when stolid, hardened privateer Aidan Warrick shows up demanding payment on the inn's mortgage; he must sell his daughter, Jane, into indentured servitude to Aidan for a period of seven years. Anger over the innkeeper's past misdeeds fuels Aidan's attempts to keep his distance from the beguiling Jane, but he finds himself protecting her despite himself. Jane, for her part, can't help being intrigued by the man who makes “an ugly knot of terror curdle in her stomach.” As the attraction between them simmers, Aidan unwittingly reveals his caring side and, eventually, his troubling secrets. Domestic tension and Aidan's mysterious past drive the novel nicely, and the evolving, bittersweet relationship between the two damaged souls is, appropriately, this romance's strongest aspect.

July 1, 2007
Silvers darkly atmospheric gothic tale set in Cornwall early in the nineteenth century willallure readers new tothe genre, but fans ofVictoria Holt, Phyllis Whitney, and Mary Stewartwill find it rather predictable. Jane Hetherington, an innkeepers daughter with a crippled leg, is aghast that her ruinedfatheris losing everything to Aiden Warrick, the mysterious newcomer who has bought Trevisham House, the local crumbling manse. Warrick offers to let Janes father keep the inn if Jane will sign indenture papers. Butrather than going to Trevisham, they visit an inn on Bodmin Moor where, following his own secret agenda, Aiden treats hernothing like a servant. Gleaning bits and pieces about his life, Janeconcludes that Aiden is a smuggler, perhaps evenamurderer, butshe cant help but fall in love with him.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)