Tina's Reading Books

There is lot to recommend this book...

...Hot sex. I'll get that right out of the way. Sylvia Day was the very first writer I'd ever read where I noticed that some historical romances were getting much more explicitly sexual. She always manages to write hot sexy scenes without them sounding, well, over the top crude.

...Great heroine back-story. Jessica, the heroine, was physically abused, is barren and likes to drink a little too much.

...Great hero back-story. Alistair the hero is the (bastard) fourth son of a Duke. His mother, the Duchess, had an affair that resulted in his birth. He was acknowledged publicly, yet privately his (non)father hates him and refused to support him. Alistair became a high class gigolo of sorts to support himself. With that comes a whole raft of self loathing.

...And yet they aren't all angsty and tortured. With all that, you'd think this would be some emotionally tortuous story about two damaged souls finding love. Not really. They are damaged but their romance is really quite sweet.

...Oh yeah, the romance was pretty awesome. They fall in love pretty early in the book. The conflict at first comes from each of them being pretty guarded until they admit they are hopelessly in love and then the conflict comes from a believable external source.

...More hot sex.

...Interesting supporting cast. Now, the secondary (non) romance between Jessica's sister and her dead husband's brother was a nice counterpoint. Now that romance is destined to be angsty and tortured.

Really good book.