50books_poc | 'Dark Enchantment' by Karen Harbaugh

The cover of this book said 'Vengeance. Desire. Bloodlust. A dark erotic journey is about to begin'.

I'm not entirely sure which book whoever designed the cover had read, because I really don't think it was this one.

'Dark Enchantment' is a fairly cute paranormal romance, set in 17th century France. As a very brief plot summary, it's the story of Catherine de la Fer, who is a runaway French aristocrat with amnesia and stigmata, and Jack Marstone, who is an English mercenary who picks her up planning to sell her back to her family for cash, but gets more emotionally involved than he would like. It's set in a world in which there is magic, but it's quite subtly done - there's some debate amongst the characters as to whether magic exists or not, and it's definitely something perceived as rather dubious and suspicious by those who do believe in it.

I started off rather unsure of it - it set some of my 'anally retentive historian' buttons going, and I kept wanting to yell 'what the f**k is going on with those stigmata? Stigmata don't work like that! They aren't some kind of Green Lantern style magic power up!' - but as the story progressed I increasingly did get quite caught up with the protagonists, and for some odd reason I loved the fact that at least one of the lead characters was actually worrying about contraception, which seems to get forgotten far too often in magic-romance-world. The chemistry between the two lead characters was really sweet, and the ending didn't involve babies, which made me happy.

I am informed by my French speaking housemate that the occasional French words and phrases thrown in are fairly cringe-worthy, and feature some pretty basic mistakes which may well bug anyone with any particular working knowledge of the French language.

Just don't belive the cover. It lies!