REVIEW: Bound By Your Touch by Meredith Duran

ISBN 978-1-4165-9263-1
Genre: Historical Romance
(c) July 2009, Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster
Meredith Duran's website 

Rating: 4 stars

Buy Link: Book Depository

"Wonderful romance and a great read! Not to be missed!"

I was charmed by Meredith Duran's The Duke of Shadows. It is no wonder then that I come to read Bound By Your Touch with a lot of expectations, the least of which is that I should love this book, too.

Bound By Your Touch started with our heroine, Miss Lydia Boyce, being embarrassed in her presumptions of a gentleman's feelings who, in fact, had developed a tendre for her sister without her knowing about it. The prologue has such promise--a sympathetic heroine whom I can't help but root for, and I also anticipate the comeuppance that is sure to befall her um, "evil" sister. (However, there's no comeuppance, because Lydia is a much better person than I am.)

In the four years hence, Lydia developed a strong sense of self, all of which is tied up in her work for her father. She is clear in her feelings toward her family, in that one doesn't shy away from love when it becomes painful. Hence, it's possible to be hurt by a family member yet still continue to love him/her just the same. She has overcome certain desires (for a husband and family) when she believes she will remain a spinster and it is so wondrous to see all these get revived when she starts to fall for James, who gives her hope.

James, who portrays himself as a wastrel and lives to anger his father, is captivated by Lydia. He couldn't understand Lydia's devotion to and faith in her father, despite there being suspicions of her father being involved in a crime, as his own father had let him down very badly years ago. Yet in her, he finds himself learning about faith, and in her he finds his freedom and what he could be.

We also see a wonderful kind of parallelism between the two characters and their situations: Quiet, retiring Lydia and the effervescent playboy James, Lydia who loved her father and James who hated his, and some other stuff which are discussed in other blogs/review sites. I won't repeat them here, and all I can say is that for all the tender scenes between James and Lydia, this book is worth a read. I especially like the one wherein Lydia was declaring her father's innocence and yet, despite herself, doubt was creeping in. To prove her claim, she has to break a stone figure with a hammer. There was a wordless communication between the two of them--with James knowing somehow what was going on in her head, and Lydia knew this--and with every strike, she finds it harder and harder to hold onto her faith at the same time her physical body was tiring. Until finally, James came behind her and lent her his strength, that they were going to do it "together". It was a powerful scene in terms of the emotions it evoked in me.

Bound By Your Touch has its own appeal over The Duke of Shadows, and in my opinion, BBYT could be better than DoS overall because of the heroine. Then again, I was only charmed in the first half of DoS.

Buy Link (paper): Book Depository