Before reading this book,nora roberts was one of my fav writers,not anymore.I never thought anybody could use a romantic fiction novel to badmouth Islam.i wish i could list the absolutely wrong things that she has written about Muslims,but i m afraid the list is too long.All that i want to say is that i have been utterly disgusted by this novel,and am amazed that somebody christian with good faith n values,as i suppose she is,could insult any religion like that..when iam sure all she knows is stories she overheard from here n there,n has no first hand knowledge or experience in this regard .I just hope that authors like her dont endup polluting the minds n thinking of simple innocent people,and im sure like me,alot of people after reading this novel,would never read any of Nora Roberts'novels again.I pray to God to give her n all other people like her the wisdom to see the truth.

This is a fun-to-read adventure. The thief character is fully developed, engrossing, & interesting. You root for her. Her mother, who finds herself trapped in a harem, adds another layer of emotion and intrigue. The plot takes the reader all over the world and moves quickly.

I absolutely loved this book! The fantasy fairytale of the prince and the beauty drew me in instantly. I almost didn't buy it because I'm not much of a "jewel thief" book fan, but this is soooo much more! I was so drawn to the lead character and her story that I couldn't bring myself to put it down.

The first part of this book is the set up and background story of Adrianne and Philip. You learn about their childhoods and I felt it was really interesting and well-written. I kept thinking wow, I'm really going to feel for this couple because I feel like I "know" them. Well, when it finally got to the parts where the hero/heroine interact I wasn't feeling much at all. The chemistry wasn't there for me and I just thought it was kind of boring. I've read 5 Nora Roberts books so far and this is the one I like the least. I will keep on reading them though because I know what she is capable of.

This was my very first Nora Roberts book. I read it when I was thirteen or fourteen, having just read Sidney Sheldon's If Tomorrow Comes, and was on a thief-as-heroine kick. This book began a long love affair with Nora's books, as she was just beginning to break away from the Silhouette serial format and perfect the Nora formula--very strong heroines far from the romance novel stereotype, beautiful, witty, main characters who you'd love to have as your friends, alternative family structures when biological families fail (the heroine's "Aunt Phoebe"), and the suspense plot (the paranormal and Irish element would not begin to dominate her books for a few years).

Those are the things I love about Roberts. However, one of her big flaws is here too. Nora's prolific writing habits result in a diversity of settings and professions for her books, but no human being could know enough to portray the complexity of all of her subject matter in a competent way. I have often been annoyed at her unrealistic portrayal of people in a variety of professions at the top of their fields at impossibly young ages, but that, of course, is part of the fantasy. Here, the absence of complexity is a more disturbing and damaging, because the depiction of the despotic, harem-owning, Middle-Eastern leader is pretty over-the-top (the frequent over-the-top villain is another one of her less than fabulous plot features). Please don't write this off as a "PC" critique. This is only a warning for people who, like the reader from Alabama, comments that this teaches her about the the Middle East, or for readers like the one who picked the book up and was understandably offended by the cartoonish depiction of the evil Arab father. I am not denying that there is misogyny in the Middle East (there is all over the world). But there's no doubt that this feeds into a representation of the Middle East that, if we read more widely, is far from the the complex histories and social structures in a variety of different countries.

As my first Nora, it holds a special place in my heart, but it does not hold up for me almost twenty years later because of the stereotyping.