Very entertaining tale :)
I was hooked almost from beginning to end. ( )

I rarely venture out of my Regency World of Romance and step into Medieval World of Romance and when I do my hopes and expectations are high. This book was published in 1998 by Fanfare, but last month (8/8/2011) was rereleased by Loveswept for Kindle and I was lucky to get an eARC of it for an honest review.

Having never read the author I was pleasantly surprised to find her prose to my liking. The hero and heroine, the medieval setting, decent pace and even the fairly predictable plot were quite good and kept my interest from the start.

As the story opens, we get the glimpse of our heroine, Ceara (Keera) at sixteen and we already know that she’s a handful for her father, Lord Balfour of Wulfridge as she confronts him on his fealty to the bastard King William. At eighteen, much has changed in Ceara’s world, but she has stayed the same, willful, strong and brave as always.

Luc Louvat is a Norman Knight whose bravery and fealty to the King William is well-known and upon finding out that Lord Balfour has broken his word, William is incensed and wants the man brought to him in chains and for that he needs Luc and his brave knights. William promises Luc an earldom and all of Wulfridge as a prize.

I’m not sure that this story will appeal to all of you, but if you liked BRAVEHEART, you just might like this story which is chock full of a battles and political intrigue. That’s not to say that it lacks in sensual department. On the contrary, this couple’s tale is not just interesting but very entertaining and very sensual. If you’ve never read the original, I think you should give it a try this time around.

* I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review* ( )

I rarely venture out of my Regency World of Romance and step into Medieval World of Romance and when I do my hopes and expectations are high. This book was published in 1998 by Fanfare, but last month (8/8/2011) was rereleased by Loveswept for Kindle and I was lucky to get an eARC of it for an honest review.

Having never read the author I was pleasantly surprised to find her prose to my liking. The hero and heroine, the medieval setting, decent pace and even the fairly predictable plot were quite good and kept my interest from the start.

As the story opens, we get the glimpse of our heroine, Ceara (Keera) at sixteen and we already know that she's a handful for her father, Lord Balfour of Wulfridge as she confronts him on his fealty to the bastard King William. At eighteen, much has changed in Ceara's world, but she has stayed the same, willful, strong and brave as always.

Luc Louvat is a Norman Knight whose bravery and fealty to the King William is well-known and upon finding out that Lord Balfour has broken his word, William is incensed and wants the man brought to him in chains and for that he needs Luc and his brave knights. William promises Luc an earldom and all of Wulfridge as a prize.

I'm not sure that this story will appeal to all of you, but if you liked BRAVEHEART, you just might like this story which is chock full of a battles and political intrigue. That's not to say that it lacks in sensual department. On the contrary, this couple's tale is not just interesting but very entertaining and very sensual. If you've never read the original, I think you should give it a try this time around.

* I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review* ( )

The Vow is set in England, near the Scottish border, at the time of the Norman Conquest. Ceara of Wulfridge hates the Normans & the distruction they have brought to England. When a Norman lord demands entry to her home & sends her messanger’s head back in response to a request for a talk she attacks him & his troops. King William cannot allow this and sends Luc Louvat to quell the rebellion, take over the lands & deliver the rebel chieftain to him (thinking it is Ceara’s father). Luc succeeds in this and because he took her virginity as well (with her mostly willing cooperation) they are ordered to wed.
While the two are electric together, both have them a great many things to overcome in their own pasts, as well as in their combined present before they can admit their true feelings for one another. Ceara’s motivations were clear, what was driving her mistrust of him was spelled out early on & made sense. Luc though is another matter. His motivations for a long time were left vague to the detriment of the story for me & did not seems as driving as they were made out to be. It seemed he was just being difficult because he was an arrogant PITA a lot of the time. Plus his justification for his method of persuasion when he first slept with Ceara reminded me a little too much of a date rapist claiming his victim’s choice between having sex with him or walking home 10 miles in the freezing rain was actually a valid choice so therefore she was willing. That, more than anything kept me from warming much to him until near the end. Once bits of his background were filled in he made more sense & I’m not sure why those things were kept from the reader or Ceara for so long. Given the other things going on it would hardly of detracted from the story to explain his background earlier. I don’t think I have read a romance set in Norman times in more than 20 years & it was enjoyable to revisit the period, which was well done with a decent amount of detail. Overall I enjoyed it.
I received a free copy of the book from Net Gallery in exchange for writing a review ( )

1062. At sixteen Ceara is a woman in the eyes of countrymen but she is also considered a bad tempered she-wolf and possibly a women who conspires with the devil because of her bad temper and wicked tongue. She’s not pleased of the shaky truce with the Normans and tries to convince her father so, but for her being a woman she isn’t listened.

So the day comes when the Normans do arrive lead by Luc Louvat, a Knight without land, a bastard son of a Lord, if he can win Wulfridge from the stubborn Saxons he can keep it. But Wulfridge doesn’t fall easily, and it isn’t until the cunning wit of the Knight that they infiltrate the castle only to notice that they’d battled not against a Lord, but a Lord’s wicked daughter.

Ceara belittles and smites Luc with her wicked tongue and seriously tries his patience and gets him angrier than he has ever been, but there is something else about the fair-haired maiden that raises emotions, but it isn’t anything he wants to further explore. With as many tricks as Ceara has in her pocket he’s wise to be cautious as he begins to transport the Lord’s daughter to the King's court to lay her at his mercy.

But it turns out it’s not so easy to hate when you feel more elaborate emotions, electricity running between them drawing the two stubborn together, and the two fight to figure out what they want and what they need and wither those two just might intersect eventually and what would have to be sacrificed for that.

Ceara does seem her age in her emotions of invulnerability and in her teenage hormones, but she also has the side of a woman who has been through war and seen blood, and not being a stranger to a sword. She's not your frail maiden type, but an honest to god saxon warrior princess.
Luc comes off harsh and controlled but it’s yummy to read his resolves crack around her and her temper. She keeps tempting him, shunning him and purring for pleasure and it’s fun to see him control on how to react to her.

I love historical novels, there is something about the brute ways and swords and the knights taking what belongs to them, but doing it while falling in love with the heroine!

A temper filled, headstrong journey with passion that simmers to a boil as fast as you can draw your sword and hack down the enemy.
@ http://niinas-reading-and-reviewing.blogspot.com/2011/08/review-vow.html ( )