ABDUCTED BY A PRINCE by Olivia Drake (Barbara Dawson Smith)

PUBLISHER: St. Martin's, 4/29/2014
GENRE: Historical Romance
SETTING: England & Scotland, 1800's (I guess)
SERIES: Cinderella Sisterhood, #3
AUTHOR SITE: link
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: D

SYNOPSIS: Ellie Stratham gave up her childhood dreams of a fairy tale romance long ago. To repay her late father’s debts, she’s forced to serve her spoiled cousin, Lady Beatrice. But Ellie has devised a secret plan to escape her life as a drudge. A plan that is thrown into jeopardy when she’s abducted by a mysterious stranger. A notorious seducer of women—and a scoundrel to boot—Damien Burke has earned his nickname as the Demon Prince. But his plot to kidnap Lady Beatrice to make her brother return a priceless heirloom backfires—and he ends up with their penniless cousin, Ellie, as his hostage. By the time Damien realizes his mistake, he and his fiery-willed captive are trapped in a remote castle during a wild winter storm. And he soon finds that the true hostage may be his own heart.

MY THOUGHTS: Oh, dear. Another terrible one and another one where the year isn't given. The heroine, twenty-six year old auburn-haired Ellie lives with her awful aunt, uncle, two cousin, and Lady Anne, a nonrelative who's very nice to her and is the only nonservant in the house who cares about her. Ellie's parents died separately when she was six and fourteen and she had no choice but to live with them. She's secretly writing a 'storybook'.

Twenty-eight year old black-haired, green-eyed Damien has been given the ridiculous nickname of The Demon Prince when there's nothing demon-like about him and he's not a 'notorious seducer of women' either. He's your regular, run of the mill self-made hero who grew up poor and has become wealthy. He's widowed with a young daughter, Lily. He never knew who his biological parents were but that changes for him near the end of the story.

My favorite theme of all is abduction of the heroine by hero, or someone sent in his place to do it. That's why I was excited to read this. Aside from the abduction itself this was pretty uneventful until the laughable bit of stuff near the end regarding his paternity. I liked the story until her abduction and my opinion of the book went downhill fast after that. She was obviously angry with him at first for abducting her but soon became resigned to her fate. He treated her well and they became friendly with each other, then turned into lovers. And that's about it. I understand why they married but damn, why'd they have to get married just a few weeks in? I think the story only spans 2-4 weeks. Both characters were likeable but my mind tuned out when they became friends and the storyline disappeared. It became endless pages of her working on her storybook.

I received this from the publisher in 2014 in exchange for an honest review.