The Sixth Surrender

by Hana Samek Norton

Reviewed by Coral

Alienor of Aquitaine is desperately trying to help her son, John, keep the English crown. With his enemies’ power growing, Alienor uses everything at her disposal to win John allies. This includes forcing young Juliana de Charnais – who will lose her inheritance without a husband – to marry Guerin de Lasalle, a coarse mercenary with a bloody past.

I will assume that somewhere along the way as Juliana and Guerin scheme and spy for Alienor they will eventually fall in love, but I couldn’t even make it through 100 pages of this book.

The author’s style of writing did not draw me into the book at all and the short choppy feeling chapters did not help.

Guerin’s introductory chapter where he threatens a woman who has no standing to protect herself against him did not endear him to me as a romantic lead for the novel. In the chapters that deal with the early part of their marriage – which were the only chapters I read – I also hated how he treated Juliana and hated the idea that Juliana would eventually come to love him, because that is how these books always seem to end up. His backstory was also awful, though I suspect the book would eventually reveal that what happened wasn’t his fault or that nothing was as it seemed, but I didn’t care enough about him to find out..

Grade: N/A