When Bertrice Small died a few weeks ago, Courtney Milan said on twitter that she’d never read any of Small’s books, and asked for which one to start with. In about 30 seconds, there were 8 people who suggested Skye O’Malley. I have read some Small before- one for this very website, and I did not like them very much. Adora was not good. But in honor of the giants we stand on, and because no one does crazy sauce like Small did, I read Skye.
There was a point where I sent Sarah an IM saying “Small did not skimp on the Franks Red Hot Crazy Sauce.”
(To which Sarah responded “She put that shit on everything” as is right and proper.)
IT WAS SO MUCH BETTER THAN ADORA AND YOU CAN TELL BECAUSE I FINISHED IT. Buckle up, cuz this is gonna take a while. (And if you haven’t read this book, and want to, this review is pretty spoilery for the whole plot, which is a LOT of PLOT. If you want to skip to the part that’s review and analysis, click this link right here.) (And mild trigger warnings because rape.)
It’s the mid 1500s, and Skye O’Malley is the fifth daughter of Dubhdara O’Malley, a minor Irish lord and trader. All of his other daughters are plain, but Skye is gorgeous with black hair and blue eyes, and he starts taking her on trading missions before she can walk because she’s his favorite. His wife dies in childbirth, and he marries a much younger woman who punches out a couple of sons for him. He arranges a marriage for Skye with a neighboring lord’s son, Dom. Dom is a dick.
Before her wedding (which she’s not into) Skye meet Niall, the son and heir of a more powerful lord that Skye’s father owes allegiance to, as does Dom’s father. They fall in love right away, and make out, but don’t seal the deal. Skye and Niall want to marry, but it’s three days before Skye’s wedding, and her stepmother says that she’ll plead Skye’s case to Skye’s father, but inconveniently goes into labor and spends three days crapping out a baby so she doesn’t get a chance.
Skye is married, but Niall claims droit de signeur (Which confuses like, EVERYONE) and he and Skye bang all night long. Bang, bang, bang. They plan to demand that Skye and Dom’s marriage be annulled, but Niall gets kidnapped by Skye’s father and sent on his way because the alliance between Skye and Dom’s family is more valuable? IDK.
Skye is sent to live at her sister’s convent until it’s sure that she’s not going to have a baby (which is, like, the only time her super fertility doesn’t work- SPOILER ALERT), and then once she’s brought back to Dom’s castle, he rapes her a lot, and everything is terrible. She has two sons, and is the only person trying to run the estate like a sane person. Dom has a sister, Claire, who is a terrible person but not interested in marriage, and we find out that’s because she’s been fucking her brother since she was 12. When Skye finds them, Claire and Dom rape her together, and then Dom falls down the stairs and breaks his back. Skye tells him to fuck off and takes her sons and goes home.
(During all of this, Niall married some other woman, but they don’t get on well, and she wants to be a nun, so after years with bad sex and no children, they call it quits.)
Skye’s father is dying, and declares her to be the best and smartest of all of his children and declares her to become The O’Malley (well, his sons are like 6, so they can’t run the family). Skye takes over the trading business, and before long, Dom dies because caring for a paraplegic in a medieval society isn’t really a recipe for long life, and Niall and Skye get betrothed. But before they can actually get married, they need to make a trading run to Algiers, and Skye needs to go with the ships for Reasons, and, because this is only like 18% of the way through the book, things happen.
Like pirates. Pirates attack their ship and Skye gets captures and faints when she sees Niall get shot in the chest. She is brought to Algiers, to the home of Khalid el Bey, the whoremaster of Algiers. Because there’s Frank’s Red Hot Crazy Sauce, Skye has amnesia, and can remember languages, her name, but nothing else about who she is or where she came from. Khalid’s original plan was to make her the greatest courtesan ever, because she is incredibly responsive and gorgeous as all get out, and no memory equals no inhibitions.
However, he asks Yasmin, the head of his most exclusive brothel to oversee her training, and Skye is not cool with being touched by a woman or the eunuch who’s helping her. Khalid decides there is nothing for it except marrying Skye, which is a train of thought I’m still not following. Yasmin is pisssssssssed because SHE wanted to be Khalid’s first wife, and now he only plans to have one. She starts conniving with the Turkish captain-general-something of Algiers (who wants Skye for himself, because her Magic Hoo-Hoo is JUST. THAT. MAGIC), and they concoct a plan for Yasmin to murder (a pregnant, natch) Skye in her bed. But the Captain-General-Something tricks Yasmin into murdering Khalid instead. Yasmin kills herself and rats out her accomplice.
Skye teams up with Khalid’s business partner, an Englishman name Robbie, uses the mourning period to sell off Khalid’s business interests, and flees to Devon where Robbie has a castle because of course he does. They come up with a respectable life story for her, so no one knows she was almost an enslaved prostitute. She gives birth to her daughter, Willow (because she’s born into sorrow, get it?) and hangs out for a while. (She is not banging Robbie, they’re just friends.) They decide to go to London for reasons, and Skye gets a townhouse that is next door to the Earl of Lynmouth, Geoffrey. He’s married to a woman who only gave him daughters (and it’s totes her fault because he’s got a whole bunch of bastard sons all over England), sees Skye in her garden and his formerly free-range dick is suddenly a one hoo-hoo show.
He’s kind of shady and makes a bet with another lord that he’ll be the one to bag Skye as his mistress, and then he does by being charming and shit, she gets pregnant, because she’s the most fertile person imaginable (as are many of Small’s heroines, but I digress). She runs into Queen Elizabeth, because sure, and Geoffrey is one of Bess’s favorites, and Elizabeth just thinks Skye is the awesomest. But Skye gets pregnant, and Geoffrey’s wife and some of his daughters die of disease, and Geoffrey is just so enamored of Skye and her magic Hoo Hoo that he marries her without the Queen’s permission.
Of course, while all this is happening, we also need to check in on Niall. Did you think he was dead? Of course not. That’s not crazy enough! No, he was just wounded, and ends up recuperating on Majorca, under the care of the conde there. The conde, as all good condes do, has a daughter, a sweet virginal thing who the conde hates because his wife was kidnapped by Moors and held for several weeks while waiting for ransom. Now, the virginal daughter was born full term six months later, so her paternity was not in doubt, just her mother’s virtue.
Niall falls in love with the daughter, deflowers her in a field, and marries her. He writes to his father and lets him know that Skye is dead, he’s married a Spanish girl, and he’s going to hang in London for a while? I don’t know why, other than to answer the question of if Plot A’s train leaves the station and 11:20, and Plot B’s train leaves the opposing station at 12:17, when will the plot collision occur and where?
So Niall shows up to Court, and when Skye and Geoffrey show up (after having been forgiven for wedding without Bess’ say-so) and Niall’s like “whaaaaat that’s Skye!” but she doesn’t recognize him nor react to any of the hints he dropped about his Skye, and she feeds him the life story they concocted, so he spends a good long time trying to figure out if Skye is just a bastard her father scattered around or what, and it’s exhausting. But Robbie finally tells him to put the audience out of their misery. Skye is married, though, and so is Niall, so that’s that.
Except not, because Niall’s wife Constanza needs more sexing than Niall can give her (so she starts fucking her groom), and then even more than Niall and her groom can give her. She hooks up with the mistress of a brothel, and sets herself up as “The Book Lady” a highborn woman who has a copy of something like the Kama Sutra, and men get to pick a page and she’ll do that. She’s also got a lover, and he recognizes her in the brothel, and Niall challenges him to a duel. (Oh, and the mistress of the brothel is Dom’s sister who raped Skye that one time and is delighted at the idea of getting back at Niall for humiliating her brother.)
Shit hits the fan, and Niall gets stabbed (lightly) in the same spot he was shot when Skye was taken, and that brings back all of her memories just like the doctors said! But she’s still married and she loves her husband, and Niall is still married (but not for long, because his wife is going to die of the pox soon enough). Things go on as they do, with Skye letting her family in Ireland know that she’s alive, but not going there. She pops out ANOTHER kid (that’s five, if you’re keeping track), and the Geoffrey and one of her sons dies of the morbid sore throat.
We’re only 2/3 through the book at this point, by the way.
Elizabeth, in an effort to keep her favorite, Robert Dudley, dangling on a string, gives him the guardianship of Skye’s son by Geoffrey, and essentially gives him rights over Skye. So he rapes her a whole bunch (yet still gets responses out of her, which makes her even more pissed) (legit). When Skye goes to Elizabeth about it, Elizabeth just says “Look, that’s the price of doing business.”
So Skye goes all pirate to punish Elizabeth for her role in Skye’s degradation. She meets up with her uncle, who was running the O’Malley trading interests, sets up a plan to attack English ships, while covering her ass and protecting her children. It involves banging the lord of an island that makes for a good hideaway. Dudley comes to visit, and rapes Skye in front of his men, until the island lord comes to her rescue. He points out that she really needs to marry again, but not him. So she marries Niall, finally.
She gets pregnant SUPER FAST AGAIN (that’s six) and then Elizabeth has her arrested for suspicions of piracy. After 8 months in the Tower, and the birth of Niall’s daughter, Niall and the island lord and Skye’s uncle and Robbie all conspire to fake proof of Skye’s innocence, and Skye and Niall go home to have a bunch more babies and live happily ever after or whatever.
I’m exhausted.
So the important thing to remember about Bertrice Small is just what Sarah said in her tribute last month: all those taboos the erotica writers are thinking they’re the first to break? Someday, they will find Ms. Small, and she will laugh gently and say, “Oh, darling, these butt plugs? They’re vintage.” There quite a lot of kinky sex in this book, and there are strengths and weaknesses to that. First, Skye isn’t shamed for having had quite a lot of sex with seven men. No one shames her for being a rape victim. Enjoying a variety of consensual sexual experiences makes people happy! That’s great Buuuuuuut (and you knew there was a butt) (not a typo) the people who are into the butt stuff? They are bad bad people. There is a point where “insatiable sexuality” is a character flaw.
I do really appreciate that Skye has great love with three men, and that it’s examined. She worries that loving Geoffrey means that she didn’t really love Khalid, and she talks it out with trusted friends. They validate her feelings, and talk about them, and the book is firmly on the side of “Just because your first love is dead doesn’t mean you stop living and will never love again.” That’s refreshing.
Also, because of my love of detail, I was tickled by Small’s descriptions of Skye’s clothes. There’s a LOT, and I bet you everything I have in my pockets ($23 and a baggage claim ticket) that one of the books she had one her shelf was Tudor Costume and Fashion by Herbert Norris. The descriptions are really consistent with what I know of the research was being done in the 1970s. Small also talks about food, and, boy, does that make me happy. So happy. I want to see what was on this woman’s bookshelf.
It would have been nice for Skye to have female friends- she has some loyal and trusted servants, but they’re servants, not equals. She was sort of friendly with Elizabeth for a while, but Elizabeth chose keeping Dudley on a leash over not screwing over (literally) another woman, so.… I know that women being in competition with each other is a well-worn trope, but there’s been significant changes in that arena recently. It’s depressing that this was the case for so long, but here we are.
Someone else in the comments of the Adora review (or maybe it was the Purity’s Passion review?) also pointed out that there was a habit in this era of romance to write “women fucking through history” books. The difference between Skye O’Malley and those two other books is that the majority of the sex Skye has is consensual (although an argument can be made that every time she banged Khalid was shady because he knew she had no memory) (and yet there was no way for her to get her memory back, so…. ) I would be really interested in hearing what y’all have to say about that.
So a woman, with more agency than one might expect in a truly old skool book, is the heroine – of a series. Apparently there’s a sequel? How much more can happen? How many more times can Skye or Niall be fake-dead? HOW MANY. My bet is at least one more.
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I would have probably suggested The Kadin as a gateway drug into the crazy that is Bertrice Small. Skye O’Malley might be a bit much for someone who didn’t cut their teeth on Old-Skool. And the sequel is equally as nuts: more people who are supposed to be dead, but aren’t, more royal-sponsored rape and more sexual slavery.
I ran out of steam during the later books about Skye’s descendants and I think Small had run out as well, but the first four or five are glorious bags of hot, hot sex, scheming villains, food and costume porn and true love that overcomes all obstacles.
I think I picked up this book at my grandmother’s when I was around thirteen, and was absolutely transfixed. Things I liked about the O’Malley books: Skye has several lovers (and the odd one-night stand), not just One True Love Forever, and while she pops out kids the way a fairly fertile woman with no access to modern birth control might, her role as mother never negates her as a sexual being. The kids aren’t her Happy Ever After; they’re people who happen along the course of her life (albeit without ever giving her stretchmarks, affecting her tiny waist or her vast knockers. Hurray.) Things I had Issues with, even as a teenager: I could probably write a whole thesis on the fetishisation of the Orient, buttsex and the harem in Bertrice Small’s books. (Also, the Muslim lords who knock up the heroines in her books always conveniently have Northern European mothers or grandmothers, so you know, they’re not actually dark-skinned. Just EXOTIC.)
This is my first introduction to the special flavor of Bertrice Small crazy sauce. I recently joined Sarah MacLean’s fb book club celebrating old school romances. Given the passing of Ms. Small we chose Sky as our March book club choice. I admit that I had not gotten past Khalid because holy plot twists Batman, that’s a lot to process. I simply didn’t have the stamina right now. I’m glad for the run down. Still not sure if I’ll actually finish this book, but now I have a really clear view of what people are talking about when they reference “old school crazy sauce”. Thanks for the review!
I’ve never read Beatrice Small, but I was very tempted to buy Sky after all the recommendations. Now I’m kind of glad that my book budget was already busted for that month. This sounds like the kind of book I’d never finish because I’d be angry about the rape and frustrated with the crazy, even if that same crazy makes for one hell of an entertaining summery/review.
I just read this plot summary out loud to my husband, and he is red-faced and wheezing, not to mention still doesn’t believe that this book actually exists.
Library, don’t fail me now!
Oh, that brings back memories! I read several of Ms Small’s books back in the day and finally burned out when I realized that all of the heroines ended up kidnapped and in harems. I guess she wasn’t going to let her research go to waste.
No one today even comes close to writing like Bertrice Small. Not enough CrazySauce left to do the job.
This brought back memories for me as well. I tore through her books. Several times. Because no one else wrote like she did. Crazy Sauce for the win.
Back in my teen days (80/90s), my friends and I loved old skool romances, and some of us worked in the local library. We thought it hilarious that The Joy of Sex was kept in a “reserved collection”, yet everything that Ms. Small wrote…and she wrote manymanymanymany books. We also figured out the plot formula: implausibly lovely woman + several different/foreign handsome guys (some will be a-holes) add a dash of kinky sex + a side of rape, stir well, and eventually fantastic sex will heal all traumas.
I started reading romances back in the Old Skool days, so Crazy Sauce is sprinkled liberally on my reading DNA. Bertrice Small is not for everyone or the faint of heart, but I always loved her descriptions of clothing and meals, and of course, those plots that go all over the place. Redheadedgirl, your review hits all the right notes! Fortunately, or unfortunately, now I won’t be able to think of Skye O’Malley without thinking of her magic Hoo Hoo.
A visit with Skye was the antidote during some bad times in my life and I wore out a paperback copy of Skye O’Malley. I always admired her pirate spirit and her ability to survive whatever was thrown or thrust in her way.
Nope, don’t need to read this. But I loved the review!
All hail the Old Skool Sauce!
I was 16 when it was released and I remember reading it. I love it back then but I don’t have any interest in rereading it now.
I read the review of Adora and it was pretty fun! I loved that book back in the day too.
So I haven’t read this book yet, but I have read A Woman of Passion by Virginia Henley. And, the stories are similar to the point where I wonder if Ms Henley wasn’t strongly influenced by this book.
I’ll be skipping this one, since it sounds like it pushes some of my rage buttons (hot-blooded Spaniard is sweet and virginal and convent-bred until deflowered and then becomes whore, whereas nice Anglo-Saxon girl is conveniently not slut-shamed…grrr). I know I’ll regret asking this question but…does this happen in a parallel universe where the Reformation didn’t happen and everything is peachy-keen between England and Ireland and England and Spain? Because an Irish lord “recovering” on Mallorca and then returning to the English court in London with a Spanish wife is the era’s political equivalent of an Iranian-born American citizen disappearing presumed dead and then showing up in Washington DC hanging around as a lobbyist and saying “oh, yeah, I was hanging around in the Swat Valley and by the way here’s my wife who’s the daughter of the nice Afghan warlord who took care of me there. What? Why are you looking at me strangely?” I know Google has made life a lot easier for historical novelists, and I know Bertrice Small is famous for researching costumes. But I don’t care how accurate the underwear is if a main character is going to do something that WILDLY TSTL because the author hasn’t bothered to do basic political history research.
Thank you, RHG. This may be my favorite Old Skool review yet. I started reading romance in the early 70s, so I went thru some crazy books (yep, all of the Angelique books), but somehow missed out on Small. I actually do have some in my collection, and doubt I’ll ever get around to them now, but this review is a hilariously fabulous stand in for the real thing.
This is the book that got me to finally enjoy Old Skool romance; it has all the over the top action and pulp, but the heroes stay just on the right side of “loveable dick” and don’t go full Rosemary Rogers on us. Skye may be a Mary Sue, but she’s my Mary Sue.
I just… don’t even… wow.
Bertrice Small was one of the very first gateway authors I read as a precocious tween (I basically snuck into my older sister’s room, stole her books, and read them in secret). They left me wide eyed and wanting more. Her books were like a magical fairy land…on crack. Almost 15 years later and I still enjoy reading them!
Always love RedHeadedGirl’s reviews, so hilarious and I always want to read the books just to see if they really are that crazy. With this one though, I can’t get past the fact that there is a character called Khalid. To me, Khalid will always be a half-elf fighter married to Jaheira in the Baldur’s Gate games. Just me?
I was reading Skye about the same time I was reading Rosemary Rogers couple Steve and Genny. Crazy sauce was the name of the game back then and I was right in line asking for “more please, sir”
@Mira:
That is my favorite sentence today. Right on.
@Tami,
Just you. Khalid (or Khaled) is a pretty common Arabic name. I know of one personally, and Wikipedia offers an impressive and doubtless incomplete list of famous ones.
“Bey” on the other hand is not a name originally but a title, roughly “governor.” The bey of Algiers was appointed by the Ottoman Sultan, I believe, until the French invasion. There’s a brief section in Don Quixote about the bey of Algiers, but since Cervantes was writing about a real place he’d been to he bothered to get the name right.
@Rebecca
I did not know that, thank you. Just spent an informative few hours on Wikipedia 🙂
Holy crap. When I need a pick me up, all I need to do is read one of your reviews. So funny – love the way you string words together. My love of romances started way back in the late 70’s with Shanna and the other Woodiwiss books and then I discovered Bertrice Small. When you’re a teenager, this crazy sauce was intoxicating stuff, way over the top, and pure escapism. I need to go back and re-read it. I’m sure I read Skye O’Malley when it first came out and haven’t touched it since!
First, RIP, Bertrice–I didn’t know that she had died.
Second, you are so right about her special brand of Crazy Sauce. My first experience of it was “Love Wild and Fair.” I read it in my early twenties and I can still remember saying aloud “Jesus Christ, Cat, does everybody fuck you in this book?” However, that was not really preparation for the vat of Crazy Sauce that is “Skye O’Malley.” I was literally laughing out loud while reading it because it was just so insane. I continued reading Bertrice for a while but lost interest pretty much after “Darling Jasmine.” But damn, now I want to read “Skye” again for the lulz.
I read this book out of curiosity for the oevre of Bertrice Small. I still do not know what really to think of it. It reminded me strongly of Angelique and Catherine which I read as a teenager and absolutely adored. However there was so much happening with Skye O’Malley too fast without characters evolving. She is supposed to love all three men in the course of her live, which is absolutely fine, but I never found out how that love developed. Niall is her love at first sight, but with Khalid she just goes for it because there is nothing else to do, when stranded without memory in an oriental place. Also, with Khalid I would have liked to see the story about the escape after his death evolving or a bit more dramatical (remember Angelique’s escape from the sultan through the desert?). Nope, Skye O’Malley is just so clever she can escape within three pages of a book.
Geoffrey, the next one (and I do like him a lot), she just thinks and says “I can’t bang you because I loved my husband” twice just to change her mind to “I love you” within three pages. Geoffrey turns from asshole to perfect lover, husband and father just for her, but I will admit, I fall for reformed rakes.
Niall is a character whom I pitied very much. His timing is horrible, he suffers all the crazy tragic and demented females and does not seem to have a life of his own. He is just the guy hopelessly in love. Even Skye’s rescue from the tower is plotted and operated by other men. Poor Niall, I hope in the sequel he is allowed to stand up for himself, live in his own house and have some success apart of being the husband of Skye.
Now Skye, I love her in the last part of the book, when she gets her revenge on the Queen. However I cannot see much of this “pirate” spirit during her suffering Dom, waiting for Niall, living like a puppet with Khalid or being courtier and dutiful wife of Geoffrey. But that last part made up for a lot of it.
I do appreciate the work writers like Bertrice Small did but I don’t think I will pick up her other books.
Might as well try if Angelique still works with me. Or Catherine by Juliette Benzoni…
Your review is right on target and I laughed my way through it. I loved Skye O’Malley and all those Bertrice Small stories — sexy, unapologetically sexy, and old school. I remember meeting her for the first time at an RT convention when THE LOVE SLAVE was new and I blushed while she laughed.
I, too, would have suggested THE KADIN to start…or her later reincarnation story A MOMENT IN TIME…. But they are just classic romances to me.
BTW – I was thrilled when I began writing and Bertrice gave me a quote on my third book….
Oh, this brings back the memories!
I think I was in ninth grade when I first read Skye O’Malley but I do know that I actually got my copy of it a used book sale held at…wait for it… AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!!! It was a library copy but had the original cover art intact.
It was … and eye-opener, that’s for certain.
It’s been many decades since I first read it, but some things still stick with me. Like crazy sauce on a bowl of hot wings (which your excellent review missed).
Like how Niall deflowered his bride-to-be after they watched his stallion mount her mare JUST BECAUSE.
Like how when first husband Dom rapes Skye – he tells her got get on her hands and knees, because that how her dog takes the bitches in his kennel.
Like how when Dudley and his friends invade Skye’s home and start raping everyone, they get a serving girl on her hands and knees and are about to have a bull mastiff (or some other large dog) rape her.
Clearly, Ms. Small had a thing for animal sex (I think there were scenes in some of her other books that used the bull and cow metaphor as well as dogs and horses).
There was a direct sequel to So’M, and while I don’t remember the name of the book, some of the so-called plot still clings to my brain…
Niall is supposedly captured by pirates and sold into sexual slavery – an all-male harem. Skye rushes to the rescue, gets herself sold into slavery and made the queen of the harem. There are scenes where she’s raped with a dildo, pony-play, she’s raped by other members of the harem, including her friend, forced to take opium before performing a sensual veil dance, and raped by her servant.
And eventually Niall is rescued, only he dies from a heart attack – or maybe the old chest wound.
It just goes on and on and on and on.
I think, irc, Skye goes back to England, continues her vengeance against Queen Elizabeth and gets raped many more times.
Which is sort of the plot of every Beatrice Small novel.
Somebody just donated a copy of Skye O’Malley and a ton of other Bernice Small books to my library and I had to try to explain this summary to one of our reference assistants so he’d get why I was laughing at the book sale shelf.
Thank you so much for the Cliff’s notes to this book. I seriously am on Part 2 Algiers and I have given up. I cannot read it. I have been frustrated at every turn in this book. So your breakdown of what happens is enough for me and I can return it to the library because I just cant anymore! Thank you!
OMG! I have not laughed that hard in a lonnng time! Thank you for that! In the mid-80s, I belonged to the Doubleday Book Club and didn’t send the card back so I ended up with both “Skye O’Malley” and the sequel “All the Sweet Tomorrows.” When I moved to NY from CA, I packed them up and took them with me. Got laid up with the flu and was bedridden. Picked up SO’M and that was it! I was hooked! My first historical romance and it did not disappoint. That being said, I recently re-read it for the first time in about 10-15 years. It hasn’t aged that badly and is more palatable than some newer series. If someone were to ask me where to start, I would definitely recommend this book. I agree, however, with other reviewers, Ms Small did run out of steam about 10 years on. I think the last book I bought from her was about her granddaughters in the Stuart court. Repetitive and stale. But that eventually seems to happen to all the established romance writers who churn out a book or two every year. There’s nothing under the sun…
Legit THE MOST hilarious book review I have EVER read. I love the Skye O’Malley books, and this review had me laughing all the way through.
Of all the Small books, it is unfortunate you started with Adora. I didn’t enjoy it at all, but read The Kadin many years ago when I was in Junior High, and the book first came out. I have always wondered about supporting character. What did Niall really die of? Did Hamal marry Turkhan. What happened to the widow if the brother in Hellion.
I sneaked this book out of my mother’s collection of old school romance novels when I was about 14. I have read it multiple times since then. I love the crazy sauce that was in most of Ms. Small’s books. I loved the multiple lovers and every time a woman gets on a ship I just wait for the pirates to come kidnap her. They were great but a long read.
And I thought I was the only young teen (15) to find this book in his Mother’s book bin. I never actually read the book, but I had a vague idea of the plot. I mostly just skipped to the hot parts. It was the first graphic depiction of sex I ever read and for better or worse, to me, this book was the essence of trashy romance books. I was so sad when Bertrice Small passed, even though I never actually finished any of her books.
Skye series is my all time favorite series. I read them all. I have many book series I love, this is still the best. Beatrice Small was ahead of her time! I found so many books that lacked intrigue, lust and being a powerful women in the 70s! Thank you Beatrice for the memories!
I have an interesting edition of this book. It’s a dark green leather-ish hardcover with pink and gold designs printed on all three sides and a pink ribbon bookmark.
The cover says “The Classics of Romance”, and inside there’s an autograph page (signed by the author) that says it’s a special edition, and a full color reprint of the original cover facing the title page.
Copyright date is 1996 and the publisher info says “Classics of Romance, Shelton, Connecticut”. Anybody know more about “Classics of Romance” and if more titles were published?
I was a classic underachiever in high school, and managed to get the top verbal SAT score in my class. Mrs. R, my 11th grade English teacher pulled me aside and asked what I read in my off time, since “readers” were known to get the best scores.
I told her about Skye O’Malley and the rest of the romances I scored from my mother’s stash in the linen closet. She was familiar with Rosemary Rogers, Kathleen Woodiwiss, etc., but she had never heard of Bertrice Small.
She smirked as she wrote down the titles.
Mrs R, wherever you are, I realize now we were kindred spirits.