About Margaret Mallory

Margaret Mallory recently surprised her friends and family by abandoning her legal career-and her steady job-to write tales of romance and adventure. At long last, she can satisfy her passion for justice by punishing the bad and rewarding the worthy-in the pages of her novels, of course. She lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her husband and their two college-age children. Knight of Desire is her first book so she would dearly love to hear from readers.
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About Knight of Desire

FEARLESS IN BATTLE… His surcoat still bloody from battle, William FitzAlan comes to claim the strategic borderlands granted to him by the king. One last prize awaits him at the castle gates: the lovely Lady Catherine Rayburn. TENDER IN BED… Catherine risked everything to spy for the crown. Her reward? Her lands are declared forfeit and she is given this choice: marry FitzAlan or be taken to the Tower. Catherine agrees to give her handsome new husband her body, but she’s keeping secrets, and dare not give him her heart. As passion ignites and danger closes in, Catherine and William must learn to trust in each other to save their marriage, their land, and their very lives.

My Review of Knight of Desire

Genre: Historical Romance
Finished: July 3, 2009
Rating: 3 Stars

In Knight of Desire, Lady Catherine Rayburn is locked in an abusive marriagve, her only solace the memory of the one innocent night she spend with a kind man as a girl and her son. When her husband becomes a traitor to the English crown for his own benefit, she spies on him and sells him out to the English. When they put him to death, Catherine considers herself delivered and free. All she wants is a quite life in her castle with her child. Unfortunately, the King of England has other plans for her– it is either to the Tower for being the wife of a traitor or marry another man and let him resume control of her castle.

Emotionally and mentally wounded from her former husband, Catherine does not trust or submit easily to her new husband William FitzAlan, who she does not recognize as the man she spent her one good evening with before marriage. William, a soldier, has a hard time understanding women or trusting her because his own mother quite manipulative. It takes the two of them a while, but they soon enough fall into passionate love with a few tiffs in between since William is the jealous and quick to assume type. At the same time, conspiring against them is William’s friend Edmund, who pretends to be a loyal protector in order to give Catherine over to the enemy. Held hostage by the Prince of Wales and the Tudor family, the now pregnant Catherine can only accept her fate or hope that her husband comes to rescue her.

Knight of Desire is a historical romance, its context Medieval England and the Welsh rebellion of the 15th century. I have to admit, my knowledge of Medieval England is a bit lacking, but I do know a considerable bit about Medieval society and expectations in general. Aside from a few things that I couldn’t imagine a woman of the time doing (not saying some women didn‘t and couldn‘t defy expectations, of course), I was pretty much pleased with the historical accuracy of Knight of Desire—and trust me, I was looking at the small things such as what they used for dinner and how they ate. If a fork showed up, I would have promptly closed the book and refused to reopen it!

The book is very well written, as well, so it flows along from page one to the end without those little bumps along the way that come with reading a book that is a bit difficult or awkwardly written at times. All of the action and the descriptions work well on text. As it seems, this is Mallory’s first novel and shows just what a adept writer she is and how much she deserves to be published. Her talent with words give credibility to the entire novel in general. Mallory’s English countryside is breathtaking, the wilderness wild, the fights rough and bloody, and the passion hot. I certainly never got bored with reading this novel and had it in bed with me late into the night and early morning.

Most of the second half of the drama was fueled by Catherine supposedly being so beautiful that a man wanted her enough to hate her. Typical romance stuff there, which I have difficulty enjoying. I prefer my romance to defy convention in certain ways and to catch me by surprise. I was a bit bothered by the rampant use of the phrase “in sooth” because I don’t believe in dotting modern language novels with archaic terms unless the words used are nouns. That is just a personal pet peeve of mine, and my personal feeling on the matter doesn’t diminish the simple fact that Mallory wrote a very good historical romance novel, which paints a satisfactory picture of Medieval life in England. All in all, Knight of Romance is a good book and I would definitely recommend it to fans of the romance genre.

Giveaway!!

closed

I have been given the amazing opportunity by Hachette Book Group to give out 5 copies of Knight of Romance by Margaret Mallory. There are a number of ways you can win this book, each good for one entry each. For each entry, leave me a separate comment. Also, make sure that you leave me a way to contact you if you win.

1.) Leave a comment below telling me that you’d like to win.
2.) Blog about this contest and leave a comment with the links.
3.) Add me on twitter (@morbidromantic) and Tweet this contest then comment with a link to the Tweet or your username.
4.) Stumble this giveaway or my main site and comment with your StumbleUpon username.
5.) Rate my blog at Blogged. Click here or find the graphic on the sidebar under ‘ranks.’
6.) Add my RSS reader here and leave me a comment telling me that you subscribe to my feed.
7.) Comment on any of my previous book reviews and leave me a comment telling me that you have.
8.) Go to any of my book reviews and rate it using the ‘Rate this post’ option in the post header information. Leave me a comment telling me you have.
9.) Add me on LibraryThing, Good Reads, Shelfari, Book Blogs, or BookBlips and leave a comment telling me where you’ve added me and (if you can), your username/name.
10.) Answer this question: so which is it for you? The Tower of London or a new marriage?

If you do all of the above, you will get ten entries. That’s ten chances to win.

Winners will be selected on 11:59pm EST on July 18th. I will be using Random.org to select the winner. When you win, I will send you an email asking for your physically mailing address, which you have 3 days to respond to before new winners are selected. No PO Boxes. This contest is open to the US and Canada only.

Participating Sites:

http://bridget3420.blogspot.com – June 29 giveaway.
http://www.thisbookforfree.com – June 29 giveaway
http://mustreadfaster.blogspot.com/ – June 29 review and giveaway.
http://yankeeromancereviewers.blogspot.com/ – June 29 to July 10 review and giveaway
http://rannthisthat.blogspot.com – June 30 review and giveaway.
http://BookSoulmates.blogspot.com – July 1 review and giveaway.
http://epicrat.blogspot.com – July 1
http://www.foreigncircuslibrary.blogspot.com/ – July 2
http://booklover125.blogspot.com/ – July 2 giveaway
http://www.loveimpossible.com – July 3
http://www.chickwithbooks.blogspot.com/ – July 4 review and giveaway
http://booksandneedlepoint.blogspot.com/ – July 5 review; July 19 giveaway.
http://bookinwithbingo.blogspot.com – July 5
http://ajourneyofbooks.blogspot.com – July 6 review and giveaway.
http://seductivemusings.blogspot.com/ – July 7 review and giveaway.
http://alphaheroes.blogspot.com/ – July 8 review and giveaway.
http://www.bookwormygirl.blogspot.com/ – July 8 review and giveaway.
http://annavivian.blogspot.com/ – July 8 giveaway.
http://martasmeanderings.blogspot.com – July 9 review and giveaway.
http://reviewfromhere.com/ – July 10 review.
http://www.startingfresh-gaby317.blogspot.com/ – July 10 review and giveaway
http://reesspace.blogspot.com – review and giveaway.
http://www.myspace.com/darbyscloset – review.

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