A review by tessisreading2
The Corrupt Comte by Edie Harris

3.0

This is one of those overly-dramatic romances where both characters are cruelly overcome by circumstances - the hero is a secretly heterosexual spy working for a sadistic French duke under the guise of a homosexual nobleman, which he was forced to adopt when he was raped and tortured after being impressed into the French army as a teenager; the heroine is an innocent virginal heiress who is going to be sold off in marriage by her theatrically wicked, cruel parents. Nobody is particularly bright but there's lots of High Drama and creative sex. Not usually my thing, hence three stars, but I do think it was fairly well-done for what it was - the French setting was done well and used well, and I think very effective at helping set a tone for the book; the writing was fairly clean if occasionally overwrought (which is par for the course with this kind of book). The level of drama was definitely very high for how vaguely and easily things wrapped up at the end, though.