Catherine fights Sean with every ounce of her being, even trying to escape into the night, while earning the respect of Sean’s men. Sean brutally rapes the innocent Catherine and then makes her his whore and puts her to work as a slave on his older brother’s estate of Shelan in Ireland. Abducting Enderly’s daughter is only the beginning.

Hardened by the English atrocities he has witnessed, Sean weaves an intricate plan using his smuggling in art, spies and munitions to destroy Viscount Enderly, the man responsible for decimating Sean's family in Kenlo and consigning hundreds of Irish to their deaths. It’s the story of Sean Culhane, a bitter Irishman seeking revenge, and the spirited English beauty Catherine, daughter of John Enderly, Viscount Windemere. It begins in the late 18th century and continues into the early 19th, set in Ireland (mostly), England, Scotland and France.

If the story is absorbing and the characters compelling, if I can’t stop thinking about it and I find myself reading late into the night, then I know I have a keeper.

To me a story stands or falls on its own no matter the era it was written (some of my favorite keepers were written decades ago). Some readers might categorize this an “80’s bodice ripper” and so it is, first published in 1984, but I never look at books that way. So, of course, I had to read it to discover the truth for myself. This has been a controversial romance, not just because it’s a bodice ripper, but because of some of the harsh elements it contains.

Stormfire by christine monson