TEST
By the time this review is posted, many Robin Schone fans will already have read Gabriel’s Woman and decided how they feel about it. Before reading this book, I checked out reviews of this author’s previous efforts, including posts to various lists. Some readers have loved it, others have not. Some felt it was not as good as prior books, some thought it a waste of time. In the end, all I have is my own impressions to offer. This was my first Robin Schone; I’m not a fan, but I’m not a detractor either because I’ve never read this author before. I offered to take on this controversial book as stand-alone volume and have judged it solely on its own.
Once I opened it … I could not put it down.
I rated Gabriel’s Woman an A-. Is that because I loved it? No. I did not love it. Is it because I found it erotic and romantic? No. I found it neither erotic nor romantic in the least. Did I love the characters and plot to the point I would place this book on my keeper shelf and cherish it? No. I found the characters and plot difficult to like, let alone love to the point of veneration. So, why the high grade?
I gave Gabriel’s Woman an A- simply because there was no other grade that would do.
The story takes place over a mere three days’ time, but the intensity and intimacy of that seventy-two hours creates the illusion that these two people, Gabriel and Victoria, have spent a lifetime exploring each others’ secrets, and that the reader has been with them every moment. I wanted to learn why these people were in such pain, and I wanted to know that they could be, and would be, healed by love.
Gabriel, a former prostitute who was trained to service men rather than women, is so beautiful, he is referred to as an angel. He chose the name Gabriel for himself as a boy, in the hopes he could someday escape his poverty and suffering and rise above his mean beginnings. In a way, he has. But the price has been a terrible one to pay. At forty, he is now owner and proprietor of the House of Gabriel, an establishment that caters to the most elite clientele and offers only the finest in the sensual arts.
Impoverished and terrified, Victoria Childers has been dismissed, without references, from her last position as governess. Born a lady, Victoria has been living on the London streets for the last six months, hiding from a man who would harm her. At thirty-four, she is at the end of her rope, so she goes to the House of Gabriel in search of a protector. A virgin, she plans to sell her innocence for as much money as she can get.
At the age of twenty-seven, Gabriel was chained down and viciously raped by two men. One of the men, he tracked down and killed. The other has eluded him for fourteen years, but the cat and mouse game is about to come to its climax. When Victoria offers herself in his establishment, Gabriel immediately knows she has been sent to him by the second man and that if he doesn’t protect her, this man will kill her.
Since his rape, Gabriel has not allowed anyone to touch him; he has not had sexual release in all that time. But he purchases Victoria and takes her to his rooms. What follows is a fervid, agonizing, heart wrenching, frightening psychological duel between two injured souls, neither of whom believes there is any goodness in life and that the only thing they have to look forward to is more pain, and death.
Readers first met Gabriel in The Lover, where Gabriel’s long-time friend and companion whore, Michael, overcame his past and met the woman of his future. Further examination of the relationship between Gabriel and Michael exists here, even though Michael does not actually appear in much of the story. When he does, he’s as confused as the reader as to why Gabriel both loves and hates him.
Were there things about Gabriel’s Woman that bothered me? Yes. Much repetition, stilted conversations, anachronistic language, vagaries in the plot, unrelenting sorrow and feelings of helplessness all irritated me from time to time. The story’s set-up is cryptic and I thought at one point, the end had certainly better be worth all this nebulous dialogue. It was.
Victoria is one of the strongest heroines I’ve ever read. Strong enough to love a man who, to his very core, does not believe in love. Strong enough to try and heal a broken soul with nothing more than determination and a ferocious tenderness. Strong enough to use passion to finally touch the untouchable. Victoria deserves her hard-earned happy ending and the words she thought never to hear coming from the man she thought would never say them.
Gabriel is tormented and tortured not only by memories of what happened to him, but by his reaction to it. This haunts him and has made him doubt himself, and hate the one person who has always loved him. He dwells on death because he hasn’t been able to come to terms with his internal demons. If ever two people were in need of therapy, it’s Victoria and Gabriel, but given the time period they can only look to each other, and the laying bare of all secrets, for healing.
The personalities of all the characters, primary and secondary, in Gabriel’s Woman are extremely complex. Gabriel is a man of good conscience who believes down to his bones that joy and love will never be his. It is the way the author has portrayed this sense of profound helplessness, and this man’s ultimate redemption that lifted this book so high in my estimation.
Of course, there is graphic language and “imaginative” sex. I learned more new names for a man’s hoo-ha than I ever dreamed existed, but reading is such an educational experience, don’t you think.
I realize that many readers will not agree with my assessment of this book, and that’s fine. But I can’t help but admire this author’s sparse writing style, her intensity, her frank evaluation and portrayal of male-female relationships, and her unflinching honesty in presenting an uncomfortable and dark world. Gabriel’s Woman is more a psychological thriller than a romance. But when Gabriel finally realizes his happily ever after, it doesn’t matter one bitte.
Grade: A-
Book Type: European Historical Romance
Sensuality: Burning
Review Date: 16/09/01
Publication Date: 2001
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.