The Book: Dark, Dark My Lover's Eyes by Barbara FaithThe Particulars: Gothic romantic suspense, Silhouette Shadows #43, 1994, Out of Print
The Blurb:
Married to a stranger...Is It In Wendy's TBR?: Nope. Although I love me some gothic-y old school goodness....
Julie Fleming had come to tutor young Kico Vega, not marry his darkly fascinating father, Rafael. But somehow, in caring for his son, Julie had fallen under Rafael's spell. And now she was married to a man who people whispered had killed his first wife.
And once wed, her sense of danger increased. Julie found herself helpless to resist her husband, yet he held himself aloof from her. And the more she heard about Rafael's first wife, the more she began to wonder about how -- and why -- she had died. Because strange and deadly things were happening to Julie....
Any Reviews?: Other than a completely pointless Amazon customer review that's so brain-deadingly useless I'm not even going to highlight it? Uh, no. Sorry folks!
Anything Else?: Since it's Halloween I thought it would be fun to highlight a book from the Silhouette Shadows line. This was a "dark" category line that featured paranormals, romantic suspense and gothics - and it lasted all of three years in the early-mid 1990s. I thought the title of this book was great (it made my nostalgic gothic-lovin' heart go squee!), which is why I chose it. Little did I know that I'd hit the mother-lode when doing a bit of digging on this author, who I had never heard of.
Faith was the author of over 40 romance novels, and won the RITA (back then it was called the "Golden Medallion") in 1981 for The Sun Dancers. A nice career, to be sure - but not what makes her so full of awesome. No, it's our gal's personal life, which I swear sounds like it's ripped from the pages of a Harlequin Presents.
Faith's full name was Barbara Faith de Covarrubias, having married a retired bullfighter in 1970. She lived in Florida, California and finally settled for good in Mexico. Some of her books were set in exotic locales like Mexico, Spain and Morocco, and she had a fondness for Hispanic heroes (gee, wonder why?). Sadly she passed away in 1995, a month before her and her husband were to celebrate their 25th anniversary.
I know there is a small merry pocket of Silhouette Shadows fans floating around Romancelandia. Also, Faith left a big enough backlist (especially in category) that I'm betting some of you longtime romance readers may be familiar with her. What say you? Let's open the floor for comments and opinions!
5 comments:
Unfortunately I don't know this author's work but really great title. Somehow the plot synopsis sounds a whole heck of a lot like Rebecca. Was the villan a firstwife worshipping housekeeper by chance? Or, the other standard villaness, a disappointed cousin/neighbor/first wife's best friend who'd hope to marry the hero herself? Ah, some oldfashioned gothic goodness. My favorite oldtimey author was Elsie Lee who totally played the cliches and twisted them around. Light in supposedly deserted part of castle, does heroine take light to investigate? No, cause she thinks she's likely to get hit on the head so she just fills that wing with guests so no villans can use it as its no longer deserted.
I DO know how to spell villain but my typing fingers don't.
Joy: That's kind of the pitfall with gothics - about 90% of them sound like Rebecca :) I devoured them as a teen, although even back then it was kind of hard to find gothics that didn't have any woo-woo in them. Sigh.
And I really wish Blogger had an edit feature on their comments. Lord knows I could really use one!
I vaguely remember reading this book, and I remember the author's bio, too, because of how colorful her life sounded. She wrote another Silhouette Shadows book that was set in Venice. I remember that one as being creepy, dark and a good read. I was about 17/18 when I read it, though, so I don't know how it would stand up now.
On another note, I love those titles! After seeing some of the older category titles in the UBS, the new and unimaginative-sounding titles just annoy me more and more.
Lynn: That's why I'm almost afraid to go back and reread all those great gothics I devoured as a teen. I know I'd still enjoy them on a nostalgia level - but would they "hold up" as well now that I'm a "jaded" adult? Hmmmmmm.
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