Castle of the Heart

ISBN 1558174117 - Castle of the Heart is getting one star more than the average romance from me, because the terrible people and the treachery they got up to earns it. Other than that, pretty basic, average romance. Selene is insane - no reader could miss that, even before she goes the rest of the way off the deep end. She's obsessed with sex, and the sin that it is. And the fact that her mother and her mother's lovers are so widely known and talked about only makes it that much harder for Selene to think of sex as a good thing, even in a marriage. So, of course, she'd like to enter a convent. Too bad she's living in 1100 and her parents get to decide for her. Helping her parents along with their decision is Isabel, mother of Thomas. Banished forever and prohibited from contacting her son, Isabel is only slightly less insane than Selene, but far more evil. She plants the idea of Selene's marriage to Thomas and then uses Selene to exact her revenge. Like the good mother she is, Isabel is just as happy to destroy her son as she is to destroy anyone else. Thomas, however, has people by his side who truly love him. His aunt and uncle, who have a rare marriage: they love one another deeply. That love overflows to include others, among them, their nephew Thomas. When Thomas brings his new bride and her dear friend and distant kinswoman, Arianna, to Afoncaer, every effort is made to make them welcome. Arianna responds well to the caring nature of this family, even though she is hopelessly in love with Thomas and heartbroken over it, but Selene now adds paranoid to her baggage. She doesn't mind alienating everyone, because she is only suffering through this marriage (and the sex that it entails) so that she can get Isabel her revenge. How could this possibly end well for everyone? The people on the back cover look like Hans Solo and Princess Leia, which I can't blame the author for. The chick on the cover looks a little like the actress from Alias, too. It's a weird set of images to try to relate to kings and queens and arranged marriages, but it has nothing to do with the story. The story is interesting and far more entertaining than I expected. Worth a quick read.