The Scarred Heart by Denise Patrick
Samhain Publishing
Historical
ISBN: 978-1-60928-873-0
Reviewed by Vanessa




Lionel aka Lion has been looking for his runaway wife and son off and on for five years now.  He hasn’t been able to locate her until he stumbles upon her at a friend’s house party.  Lionel hasn’t seen Emma since he made a disparaging remark about what he truly believed of her.  When he had originally left his three-month-old son and wife, he had gone off to fight in the war and felt that his parents and older brother would look after his responsibilities.  After hearing what she had been doing while he was away, he comes home for a brief time and discovers she is pregnant with a child that can’t possibly be his, and he was NOT willing to let Emma explain anything.  After nearly taking the cowardly way out and unable to live with the betrayal of her husband and family, Emma barely escapes with her life.  She felt she couldn’t resolve anything, and so she took her son and ran with no intention of ever coming back!  Now Lionel has to try to convince Emma that he is ready to hear her side of things and hopefully make up for the past hurts that she had been made to endure.  However, will Lionel ever be able to heal The Scarred Heart when he discovers just how far he and his family had betrayed his wife?

The Scarred Heart was a thoroughly entertaining read that made you want to get to the bottom of the mystery involving these sweethearts.  How could their love have gone so wrong after being so happy before?  The Scarred Heart showed that Emma truly felt she had no choice in all that was going on with her life and in the decisions she made before she ran.  I even enjoyed the fact that it was pointed out that just because some things responded as normal, it didn’t mean that the individual truly wanted that.  I didn’t agree with her life-altering decision for one, but I felt that she couldn’t handle the ramifications of staying in the situation in The Scarred Heart, and I felt it was more a means of self-protection for her.

Things were difficult for Lionel in The Scarred Heart because Emma wasn’t too keen on discussing what had happened all those years ago and why she is unwilling to return.  She comes across as very cold and calloused toward him and all he has to go on is the word of another.  Emma, Lion, and his family were played and played well by the actions of another and their overwhelming obsession in The Scarred Heart.

Some characters in The Scarred Heart seemed glossed over and cardboard-like to me.  I wanted to know what they knew for sure, but was left with the impression that they were a bit off their rockers in the end.  It did irritate me that Emma didn’t speak up sooner, especially when she claimed that she would but, in the end, I understood why.  I truly felt that in the end of The Scarred Heart, that both Lion and Emma had a shot at a HEA, but they needed to get away from that crazy person before things were inflicted upon the next generation.

There seemed to be a discrepancy with the time line of her torture and torment, while Lion was away fighting in the war in The Scarred Heart and this confused me.  Also, I couldn’t understand how The Scarred Heart could claim that Emma was an orphan at one point then state that she had an older brother, and then further say that said brother had an uncle!  Either she is an orphan with no one or she isn’t.  I also wanted to know more about what Lion was doing while he was estranged from Emma in The Scarred Heart.