We all hear the horror stories of tourists being robbed in foreign countries. Of women being held at knife- or gun- point and being divested of cash, jewelry, and, sometimes, their self worth. Ms. Lanel uses that as her opening for Primitive Passion.

Sylvia Radcliff is a born and bred city girl. She likes the people, her job, and best of all, she likes the anonymity of living surrounded by other people. She likes her men the way she likes her city: smooth, fast talking, and beating feet by the second date. Why? Because she sees herself a prim and proper lady… who fantasizes about things that no prim and proper woman would even consider, much less dream of.

Sylvia heads to San Cristobal to meet her long-term pen pal Maria Alvarez and ends up being robbed and left in the middle of the Mexican jungle with nothing more than her wallet, passport, and the clothes on her back.

They say when God closes a door, he opens a window. And sometimes it’s a very tiny window indeed.

Heath has spent the last decade making what some would call a barbaric living in the jungles of Mexico. He's got a small house (shack), outdoor plumbing, and a horse that gets him where he needs to go. Thanks to the friendship of a local family, he doesn't have to go to town to trade his carvings for money. You see, Heath can't go to town. He suffers from a chronic phobia that rears its head every time he gets too close to a town or people in groups. His phobia manifested after a severe personal trauma, and he eventually ran away from everything that hurt him.

But he can't run away from the pretty city girl he found wandering the almost deserted road in Mexico. Something about Sylvia pulls at him in a way that nothing and no one has for ten years. He makes her a deal: three days she bows to his every whim, and he'll take her to town.

Desperate, Sylvia would make a deal with the devil himself, as long as he took her to town. What she didn't count on was Heath finding a way into her heart as easy as he found a way into her body.

Fate is not without a terrible sense of timing.

Ms. Lanel has given us a sweet love story with a lot of heat and plenty of "real life" thrown in. People don't just "fall in love", especially under stressful circumstances, like they do in fairy tales. The good and the bad are shown without any candy coating, and the trouble these two face makes the story that much better in the end.
 
 
Reviewed By Marissa
© September 2007