?!? Get a grip on yourself dude! Then he only grovels for like a second and a half at the very, very end. That's unfortunate, but also thems the breaks! They kind of kicked him while he was down, which definitely sucked, and he thought she laughed at his pain which is for sure insult to injury- but they also tended to him, sent for his family, and handed him over without even a ransom! In *retribution* he enslaves her for an indefinite period of time, threatens her with absolutely horrid fates terrifying her witless, and repeatedly humiliates her in an attempt to break her spirit. So some strangers treated him moderately hostilely due to his unfortunately suspicious-seeming circumstances. All of these things robbed a fair amount of my enjoyment from the story.

And it ended up making him just seem fragile too, like the real injury was to his feelings rather than person, because she was a woman and women always coo over his beauty but she didn't. They kind of shrug it off and minimize it in the end, but the revenge-seeking had been considerable to my mind, even if largely psychological rather than physical. Putting that aside though, even if the misunderstood circumstance *had* been true, the punishment still seemed worse than the crime.

A whole scad of drama that could have been avoided with a conversation or two just isn't as much my sort of thing. It really seemed like the couple was allergic to talking through conflict and spent all their time just taking turns reacting to the other. Nearly the entire book is straight friction between two characters over kind of a flimsy misunderstanding.

Surrender my love by johanna lindsey