Dark Desires Did it For Me

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Zebra (November 1, 2005)
Language: English
I decided to review Dark Desires first as Eve Silver is a new author and because I actually enjoyed this book, best to start out on a positive note.
Dark Desires is a gothic romance. Set in London, it focuses on Darcie, a young girl who comes to the front step of Dr.Damien Cole, seeking employment. A romance develops between the two when Darcie is elevated from the servant to assistant of the good doctor. But it is not clear to Darcie if Damien is all he appears to be, she is warned to steer clear of him by various people from the butler to her sister.
After reading a series of duds, this was the first romance that I could truly just sink into and I am very grateful to Eve Silver for that. There are quite a few things that I loved in this book. Firstly, I just loved the language. It was so rich and it just transported me back into the past onto the dirty streets of London, where brothels were common, and ladies wore beautiful gowns on a regular basis. One phrase that I loved which I think really caught the Dr.Jekly, Mr.Hyde vibe in this book was ‘His eyes were bleak and cold, his expression chilly as ice-kissed granite’. Isn’t that gorgeous? ‘Ice-kissed granite’.

Throughout the book I really liked the different aspects of Damien’s character. He is very unaware of the people around him, in the sense that he doesn’t seem to notice how his actions might be perceived by others. Damien is involved in plenty of obscure incidents in the book, and he never seems to think that an explanation is needed. I also like the ambiguity of his character. At times he shows so much kindness, and then he can be so cold. We never really know whether he is truly good or not until the end of the book, and you know what, it works. Though some people might have trouble with that since this is a romance novel and there can only really be one ending, can’t there?

Something which I will always remember about this book is the sexual tension between Dr.Damien and Darcie. It was so palpable, that I found it was safer not to read it in public. They struggled to resist their passion for quite a while, the first love scene didn’t occur until about half-way through the book.

But I’m afraid that is where the problem for me lies. After they made love, I lost interest. Not enough to leave the book unfinished. But enough to feel that I wasn’t really bothered if I finished or not. The love scenes were okay, romantic but not out of this world. And after the first love scene the sexual tension seemed to disappear, but I suppose that can be very common in books.

Another problem I had with this book, not a major turn-off, but something that irritated me was that despite all the warnings Darcie still became romantically involved with the doctor. And this little irritation, I think, prevented me from liking Darcie as much as I like Damien. But this is really my problem, because this is a romance novel, and she did resist him for quite a while and the sexual tension between the two was very strong.

And, one more thing that might bother some people is that it is not entirely clear what time period this book is set in. But that didn’t bother me one tiny bit.

For me I think the author’s biggest achievement in Dark Desires is keeping me in suspense about Damien’s true nature. And that suspense kept me reading until the very last page.

Buy this book here and on a very cold, horrible day, read it in front of the fire with a steaming cup of hot chocolate.

Rating: 38/50
Happy reading!
Maria