Review Posted on HarlequinJunkie.com

Zafar Nejem is making his way from the Bedouin camps he’s called home most of his life to the palace where he is to take over the throne of his kingdom. Tragedy struck the young prince when his parents were brutally murdered in front of him and his uncle took over as ruler. He was exiled, but now that his uncle, a tyrannical and classist Sheikh has died, Zafar has vowed to return – if only to restore Al Sabah to its former glory. Read More ( )

Originally published on Tales to Tide You Over

I haven’t read a sheikh romance in a long while, but I tend to enjoy them because of the desert environment, which though exotic to most is where I spent much of my childhood. The stories, however, tend to fall along the same lines, and the deviations are small.

All that went out the window with Forged in the Desert Heat.

The story is anything but the traditional lines of strong, dominant sheikh who sweeps pale Western woman off her feet for control or political reasons. Those elements are there, but it’s almost like seeing their shadow dance, or maybe their reflection where expectations are turned on their head.

In Forged in the Desert Heat, Zafar is indeed the powerful sheikh, except his power lies outside of the throne with the Bedouin who sheltered him after he was banished to the desert at fifteen. He’s only now returning to his throne with his corrupt uncle’s death, a troubled, tortured man determined to do better for all his people than the fifteen-year-old boy who made a mistake that cost both him and the country everything.

Ana is certainly pale and Western. An American heiress who lives for her father’s love ever since her mother left them both, she’s pledged herself in marriage to a neighboring sheikh whose oil interests match nicely with her father’s business. She likes Tariq, thinks she loves him, but wanted one last, or first, adventure before being consigned to a public role from which she could not escape.

The story begins with desert marauders using the kidnapped Ana as a bargaining chip against the newly made sheikh of Al Sabah. He takes her only reluctantly, struggling for a way to resolve this situation without provoking a war with Tariq’s country, a situation that’s already shaky thanks to his uncle. That they are attracted to each other comes as no surprise based on the genre, yes, but also because they are both broken people, and broken in similar ways. They each need to heal, and it’s easier to see a problem in another person than it is to accept it in yourself.

While there were parts of outside story I would have liked to see more resolution for, like the kidnapping, which I kept expecting to be a complex plot because it was too pat, this story is focused on two people who need to accept themselves and their pasts in all the flawed frailty that means. In the provided space, there wasn’t time for more than a brush look at the complicated political situation Zafar found himself in, not when trying to show how Zafar and Ana were drawn together despite the very real reasons to hold themselves apart. What starts as a powerful physical attraction, with times when their control slips (for those looking for sex scenes), turns into an impossible love.

Unlike many romances where that aspect is held as assumed, because this love is tied into their healing, we get to see the moment when understanding dawns, when they have to choose for the bigger picture, and when love conquers all obstacles. It’s beautiful, different than I expected, and compelling. I read romances for the people. That’s the niche in my reading these novels fill. This one does so admirably, with lessons to those letting the past haunt them tucked into an at times tense, at others sexy, novel about acceptance and the healing power of love.

P.S. I received this title from the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review. ( )