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Skye Warren’s dark romance, The Bishop, is the newest standalone novella in the long-running 1001 Dark Nights series. It introduces readers to the wealthy alpha males of the Den, a social club in Tanglewood, Illinois that doubles as an “underground hub for illicit activity.” Even though Warren writes compelling narrative, I couldn’t quite get a foothold in the story. Personally, my threshold for ‘light’ kidnapping and mild Stockholm Syndrome isn’t what it used to be.
The Den’s private on-call doctor Anders Sorenson is a tortured man driven by revenge. His plan to settle an old score is thwarted when a rare bishop chess piece disappears from an auction. Anders’ search for the chessman leads him to Natalie, a mysterious woman who knows the item’s whereabouts. When Anders discovers Natalie lying battered in an alley, he holds her captive at his friends’ mansion while she recovers. As secrets are revealed and desire intensifies, Anders risks losing his heart to a woman whose destiny is tied to his own.
The contrivances and improbabilities in The Bishop detract from the plausibility of the burgeoning romance between Anders and Natalie.
The flimsy plot has holes, and the largely unrelatable characters are only somewhat likeable. Anders is the typical stoic, damaged alpha male who quickly becomes enthralled with the object of his desire, and his obsession with retribution gives off a sociopathic vibe. To Anders’ credit, he does give Natalie an incredibly erotic (and consensual) post-kidnapping bath. Natalie’s intriguing backstory reveals that she has historically lacked agency over her life. She is insanely attracted to Anders’ Nordic good looks and shows minimal resistance. In fact, Natalie calls him “…my captor and my savior.” In context, this line makes a modicum of sense. However, the comment still sounds cringingly deluded. An unexpected turns of events leads Natalie to making an empowered decision, but she falls short of an inspiring character arc.
Anders’ friends, Gabriel and Avery, are secondary characters who I found particularly bothersome. Not only are they complicit in the kidnapping, but their courtship began after Gabriel purchased Avery’s virginity in an auction. Their romance is featured in Warren’s Endgame series. I suppose that an exploitation-turned-love affair might be possible, but I’m not terribly interested in finding out.
Skye Warren’s The Bishop delivers a quick fix for dark romance readers with abduction fantasies. Romance fans might be attracted to the soap-operatic tone and taboo subject matter, but they will find the story otherwise lacking.
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Grade: D
Book Type: Erotic Romance
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 29/01/20
Publication Date: 01/2020
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.
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I love this review, Liz – very sharp.
If anyone is new to Skye Warren and would like to try one of her less dark books, I recommend the Tryst Fund duet: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST and THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. The heroine is an artist who has inherited an enormous sum of money, but her step-brother (with whom she has a very complicated history) controls the trust fund.
Sorry—I meant Trust Fund Duet (stupid autocorrect)—but i bet a Tryst Fund duet would be interesting to read!
Ha ha, I like your title MUCH better! If I had to choose one off the shelf, I would probably grab tryst fund first! It sounds clever. Thanks for the tips too.
I agree that the Dark Nights series of novellas can be….dark. (I realize how obvious that sounds). I haven’t read Skye Warren but I have read Joanna Wylde’s Dark Nights novellas and Kristen Ashley’s. They are varying degrees of “dark” but one of Ashley’s novellas had some stuff that was about as dark as she usually gets in her books. A lot of the stories in the DK series seem to be “MC” based or about some kind of secret outlaw club. It’s definitely catering to people who enjoy a darker, rougher kind of story.
I’m not a fan of super submissive or Stockholm syndrome type stories so Warren doesn’t seem to be my type of author. Wylde can write some darker stuff but her heroines usually have a strong backbone and usually have no problem standing up to the guys. She does however highlight the chauvinistic nature of the MC’s and doesn’t sugarcoat it. Kristen Ashley has her own brand of kind of kooky MC- lite stories with her “sassy” heroines that may appeal more to people who don’t want a truly dark or harder edge to their novellas.
Thanks for the review and for the background on Warren’s other books and series for context. I think between the two of you, you both have given me a good idea what she is about and if her books are a good fit for me.
Thank you for both points of view.
I liked it more than you did—but I don’t think it can be read as a stand-alone. I didn’t like it as much as some of Warren’s other books (which are all very dark and often veer into dub-con/Stockholm Syndrome territory—if that’s not your catnip, stay away). I think the key to Warren is that all of her protagonists are in some way damaged, sometimes so deeply that only another damaged person can understand the way their love and sexuality is expressed. Here’s my mini-review (posted on SBTB in this last Saturday’s What Are You Reading):
Although billed as a stand-alone, Skye Warren’s novella, THE BISHOP, makes much more sense if you’ve read the other books in her Tanglewood series: THE KING, THE QUEEN, THE KNIGHT, THE CASTLE, and THE PAWN (do you detect a theme?). THE BISHOP is the dark story of a woman who is blackmailed into stealing a valuable chess piece and is later beaten and left for dead. She is rescued by the owner of the piece who also happens to be a doctor—a rather unorthodox one—who takes her to an isolated mansion to recover and to give up her secrets. This is not a book for everyone—it’s dark and both h&h are damaged. Along with CD Reiss, Warren is one of Romancelandia’s most astute writers of gender politics (her Trust Fund duet is all about how rich men use their wealth to impose their wills on the world) and THE BISHOP is no different—an underlying theme of the book is the varying ways (not all of them physical) men can hurt women. Key quote: “There may be moral absolutes, but people are too complex to whittle down to right and wrong. Real people are messy.”