Review: The Devil's Pawn by Elizabeth Finn

Let me first tell you why I jumped at the chance to read this book immediately after I heard about it… 

"Her new manager makes it abundantly clear he doesn’t appreciate her inexperience, innocence, and shyness. On the contrary, he despises everything about her."

Hero despises heroine? SOLD! ...The way the hero treated the heroine in this book may have been a big set-back for some readers out there, but Lord knows I love me some jerk heroes. Heck, I thought for sure I’d be able to file this book under my “favorites” shelf for that reason alone. Tie that in with a shy, virgin heroine and I figured I had just bought the book of my dreams... Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.

For me, this was basically an amateur version of the books Captive in the Dark and Seduced in the Dark… An incomparable wannabe, if you will. The thing that irritated me the most about this book was the lack of depth…

...That's just a HUGE no-no for me. Now, this entire story was written in the heroine’s point of view, which could explain not only the lack of depth, but the lack of character development as well. I found it extremely hard to connect with the story and the characters involved on any kind of emotional level because the only thoughts and opinions we heard came from the heroine. There were no glimpses into the hero, Derek’s mind. Sure, we may have been able to see a few glimpses of Derek’s soft side behind his hard and cold exterior but aside from how the heroine interpreted everything in regards to him and their relationship, readers just didn’t get the opportunity to see more.

…And don’t even get me started on the amount of sex in this book- Now, I'm no prude but a novel filled with sex on every other page is just completely unnecessary and irritating- Repetition leads to boredom, and sex thrown on every other page eventually starts to feel like a constant filler. Not only that, but it becomes way too unrealistic. While I know it’s not impossible to have an abundant amount of endurance in the bedroom, I do find it a little hard to believe a hero and heroine to have the stamina of an Energizer bunny.

I wish I could say that this story ended on a better note, but instead I was left wanting more. After reading about everything that this couple had to endure to reach their happily-ever-after, everything was just wrapped up nice and pretty entirely too fast. I also found it extremely hard to believe that the hero fell head-over-heels in love with the heroine… Unless that type of thing is possible after only seeming to share one or two conversations. So did The Devil’s Pawn completely dissuade me from wanting to read other books by this author? Not hardly. I've heard great things about some of her other novels, so I won’t disregard those before giving them a chance first. However, I can’t say that my first experience with an Elizabeth Finn book ended up being a pleasant one.