Passion for the Gameby Sylvia Dayreviewed by Cybil SolynJune 2007, 320 pages, Publisher: Brava, ISBN: 0758217595 Back Cover Blurb: Christopher St. John and Maria, Lady Winter are infamous in Society for their misdeeds and their charming allures. Wherever they go, scandalized whispers and covetous glances follow. A ruthless pirate and a widow whose two husbands have met untimely deaths, the wickedly renowned figures are even more intriguing to the authorities. Now they've been set on the most provocative of tasks - St. John is released from prison to learn the "Wintry Widow's" intimate secrets, while Lady Winter is charged with performing a similar deception in reverse. One will succeed. One will hang.
With the fate of loved ones in the balance, the unlikely couple embarks upon a battle of wills and wits that takes them from glittering ballrooms to the depths of the underworld to the candlelit pleasures of the bedroom. As they fall helpless to a desire and startling affinity neither expected, the deadly web of their subterfuge closes in, forcing them to make a choice. Individual freedom? Or an audacious scheme to keep an impossible yet irresistible love…
I think Sylvia Day just became my favorite writer ... it's always hard to choose, but as I look at my nightstand I see a bunch of TBR books by much-loved authors languishing unread as I reread Passion For the Game over my boyfriend's shoulder. I just finished the book a week ago, and I'm jealous that he gets to read it, because I want to experience the passion again!
This is a story filled with dark desires, passion, death, and ultimately love. Lady Maria Winter is a notorious black widow. She is suspected of killing off her last two husbands for their money, but actually the cold hearted facade hides a woman beset by demons - familial ones. Maria's stepfather has hidden her younger sister, Amelia, from her. He uses Amelia's safety as leverage to get Maria to do his bidding. Although Maria didn't kill her husbands, she stood by and watch as her father did. Trained by her kindly first husband to take care of herself she uses her wits and strength to stay alive and survive her cruel life so that she may save her sister and finally kill her stepfather. Her life has no meaning beyond these two tasks until Christopher St. John steps in and shows her what two brilliant and ruthless minds can do.
The meeting of the minds in this book may have been the sexiest thing of all. In Maria and Christopher we have two equally matched people. Each is ruthless and driven by their own needs. Both are completely capable of taking care of themselves and outwitting any foe ... except maybe each other. The thing is, Maria and Christopher are too much a like for their own good. Both think the same so neither can get a jump on the other one. Which is just how it should be! As a romance reader we are rooting for them to get together, but for much of the novel we watch them try and get the best of each other. It's a very intense game to watch.
A Passion For The Game is an emotional roller coaster. I never knew which way this book was headed in both the plot and the romance. There were so many twists, turns, and hidden machinations. Our two characters can't trust one another, but without trust how is there love? Yet love is the last frontier for these two. Trust is the ultimate sacrifice, and it's the person who trusts first who loves and possibly loses first. By putting us into the characters' heads we know what is going on, what is driving our characters, but we have no idea what their final decisions will be. I was breathless as the final pieces of the game fell together. I knew our hero and heroine would get together, but up until the moment they did I had no idea how it could possibly happen.
And that's the best part of the novel. Day does nothing halfway, and that goes for the "goodness" of the characters. Our hero and heroine aren't necessarily good people. They use people, steal, cheat, lie, even murder, but as in all Day novels, you understand what motivates their actions. I get so sick of the fluffy "dark" heroes that are just "misunderstood." They are nice guys at the center of it all and have just been wronged. Well move over because Christopher St. John is a murdering, whoring, pirate and it's either his life or our heroine's. The exact same sentiments apply to our heroine. She wants to kill. She doesn't care who's hurt in the process. Her single-minded goal is to get her sister back, and if she has to trade in St. John so be it. What neither of them expect is that they will find their soul mate in the other.
Day uses the sex between Maria and St. John perfectly. Her characters aren't just fucking – the sex scenes are used to show character growth and moves the plot along. Maria and Christopher's sexual encounters emotionally change them. Although they are both used to using sex as a means to their own ends, the sexual act becomes more to them then just a meeting of flesh. It's what binds them together and shows them the true heart of the other.
Bottom Line: You have to be a very skilled writer to pack so much sex and intrigue into a story and still have the romance and characters take center stage. Sylvia Day is a rare talent, and this book is not to be missed.
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Cybil Solyn, csolyn@rakehell.com
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