“Too Sinful To Deny”
Author: Erica Ridley
I just finished reading “Too Sinful To Deny” by romance novelist Erica Ridley. While I’m not an avid romance reader and I wasn’t sure what to expect from Ridley, having never read her works before, I am however glad that I read it.
Susan Stanton, our damsel in distress, has been banished to a remote manor located on the side of a massive cliff overlooking the ocean because her socialite parents find her too inquisitive for her own good and their social standing. Even before Susan settles in she makes an eerie discovery and realizes that everything is not as it would appear to be. Finding her new home to be both maze and prison Susan attempts a descent down the cliffs to the seashore so she can hopefully locate a town and some form of transportation to return her to London. She thinks she’s unobtrusively following the handsome scoundrel Evan Bothwick outside but once she’s trapped on the steep cliff trail with nowhere to hide he decides to take that moment to confront her. With nowhere else to go she finds herself at his mercy…and I’ll let you continue from there when you decide to read “Too Sinful To Deny.”
I think we all know that most romance novels all have the same theme: in the beginning a beautiful but tragically unhappy damsel runs into the devilishly handsome but all wrong for her scoundrel yet somehow, by the end, they have worked out all their differences; have fallen madly in love with each other; have the world’s best um…“evening activities” and manage to live happily ever after. And of course “Too Sinful To Deny” is definitely more of the same.
With that being said though I must compliment Ridley on her writing style and technique. She takes a closely followed formula and successfully makes it her own. Her writing is descriptive; her characters are engaging and the plot itself is surprisingly interesting.
In summary I give “Too Sinful To Deny” a four-star rating and am placing it in the “must read” category for anyone who enjoys reading a well-written romance novel.