Book Review: The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer

Title: The Masqueraders
Author: Georgette Heyer
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: A clean read

When I was growing up, I knew a family with several sons and daughters. The sons in the family were all petite and small boned, while the daughters were tall and broad. In The Masqueraders, Prudence Tremaine and her brother Robin use the same situation to their advantage. Since their father played a part in the Jacobite revolution, they've had to change their identities, with Prudence becoming Mr. Peter Merriott and Robin assuming the role of his sister, Kate. They ingratiate themselves into London society, and the ruse works until they fall in love and are accused of murder, and somehow, they have to use all of the skills of trickery they learned from their father to come out on top.

The Masqueraders is a really interesting book on several fronts. First and foremost, I love Heyer's portrayal of Prudence/Peter and her love interest, Sir Anthony Fanshawe. Fanshawe admires Peter, and grows to love Prudence, not despite the fact that she's been disguised as a man, but for her strength. Instead of rescuing her, Fanshawe and Prudence work together to help her get through the situation she faces. I also adored the twist that comes late in the book when the Tremaine's father appears. It's genius. The Masqueraders is really fun and funny. It feels a lot like a Regency-era Shakespearean comedy, complete with mistaken identity, cross-dressing, and multiple marriages at the end.

Book Review: Bet Me by Jennifer Cruise

Title: Bet Me
Author: Jennifer Cruise
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A sexy read, for sure!

Minerva is a cranky actuary who's trying to drown her sorrows with girlfriends at a bar one night when she overhears her ex making a bet with Cal, the hottest guy in the bar: that even Cal can't get Min into bed by the end of 30 days. The wager? $10,000. Cal doesn't want to make the bet, but due to a series of misunderstandings, but Min and the ex think the bet is on. She's understandably even crankier, but somehow, Cal and Min manage to fall for each other, despite the fact that she is decidedly NOT sexy, despite the fact that she's starving herself to fit into a dress for her sister's wedding and won't eat anything, despite both of their horrible families. If you like sexual tension and find food erotic, this is the book for you. If you like sexual tension and a girl who finally starts to see herself as sexy, this is the book for you. If you like sexual tension and hot guys, this is the book for you. Basically, if you like sexual tension and just about anything, this is a great read.

I thought Bet Me was a whole lot of fun. I especially liked seeing Minerva grow into herself and start seeing that all of the things she saw as liabilities (especially her body), other people could see as assets. I was sad when Min and Cal's story ended, because they were great fun to get to hang around with for as long as it lasted.

Book Review: The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Title: The Royal We
Authors: Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: It's pretty sexy!

We all know the story of Will and Kate. Yes, that Will and Kate. They met in college, they fell in love, they broke up, they reunited, they got engaged, and married in front of more than a billion people. But what if Kate were Bex, an Iowan whose father is famous for inventing a couch that can keep your beer cold? In that case, you'd have The Royal We, which is blatantly Kate Middleton fan fic, and completely and totally fun and engrossing. Cocks and Morgan work together as a pretty great pair (unlike most writing pairs, it was hard to tell who wrote which pieces of the book), and they made Bex and Nick a totally adorable couple, with some interesting stumbling blocks in their relationship. If you're a fan of the royals, or if you grew up thinking that you'd go to England and Will would fall in love with you enough to overlook the fact that you were from the wrong side of the pond, or if you just like a totally engrossing, steamy, funny, (long) romance novel about two great characters, this is a perfect read. It's no longer beach season, but go run yourself a long bath, crack into this one, and pretend it's still summer.

Book Review: Spring Muslin by Georgette Heyer

Title: Sprig Muslin
Author: Georgette Heyer
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
Content Alert: A clean read

A bachelor in his thirties who lost his true love during their engagement a decade earlier, Sir Gareth Ludlow is on his way to propose to Lady Hester, a woman he admires but does not love. He gets sidetracked by Amanda, a young girl running away from her grandfather in hopes that her flight will somehow convince him that she should be allowed to marry the naval officer she loves. Amanda is full of stories and hijinks, and once Sir Gareth gets rejected by Lady Hester, he embarks on a quest to return Amanda safely to her family, which proves more difficult than he could ever have imagined.

While Georgette Heyer is the unrivaled champion of the Regency Romance, Sprig Muslin was not my favorite of her novels. Part of it was undoubtedly that I was listening while trying to get ready to go on vacation, so I kept walking out of the room and missing parts of the book. Part was that I was more annoyed than charmed by Amanda. Mostly, it was because I had very strong feelings about who Sir Gareth should end up with at the conclusion of the novel (NOT the sixteen-year-old he had run off to save) and I was seriously anxious that Heyer was going to take the story down the path of an April-September romance. I think I would enjoy the book a lot more upon a second read. The madcap ending reminded me of a Shakespearean comedy, with all of the silliness and all of the convenient matchmaking.

Book Review: The Wife Maker by Karey White

Title: The Wife Maker (The Husband Maker #3)
Author: Karey White
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
Content Alert: A clean read

When we last saw Charlotte and Angus, at the end of The Match Maker (the second book in Karey White's The Husband Maker series), Charlotte has finally realized that she's in love with Angus just in time for him to let her know that it's too late and they will never be a couple. In The Wife Maker, Angus moves from San Francisco to Kansas City for an orthopedic surgery residency/fellowship, and even though Charlotte's dream job, adoring family, and social life are all in the Bay Area, she takes a chance on love and follows him halfway across the country, despite his protestations.

In The Wife Maker, we finally hear Angus in his own voice (Angus and Charlotte take turns as the POV character). The two prior novels have been narrated entirely by Charlotte, and we as an audience could see her blindness to the fact that Angus was in love with her, even when she couldn't. Sometimes Charlotte was annoying in those first two books, and this time Angus has the opportunity to be annoying. If you've been in love with someone for a decade, and you haven't told her about your secret passion until a moment when you're both involved with other people, you can't blame her for taking a few weeks to think it over. And if you don't give her that time, or act like a sniveling baby when she comes back to you to tell you that she loves you too, then you're just being a brat. Angus continues to be a brat for most of The Wife Maker. If I hadn't liked him so much in the other books in the series, I would have been rooting for Charlotte to ditch his sorry self. As for Charlotte, she comes off pretty well in this book, although I really do think that most people would not be as up in arms if their daughter, a successful professional in her late twenties, decided to move out of the nest. Charlotte's mom seems to overreact a bit to the state of her life. (Maybe the fact that I moved to Belgium by myself when I was twenty and my parents didn't bat an eyelash colors my perspective, but thanks Mom and Dad, for knowing when not to hover). All of that said, I was very, very happy to see Angus eventually come to his senses. I would have rather seen a wedding as the way to end the book than the fast-forwarded career move that White gives us in her epilogue, but I would call The Wife Maker a successful, strong conclusion to the series. If there's a fourth book, please resist the urge to call it The Baby Maker, because that would just be gross. :)

Book Review: Painting Kisses by Melanie Jacobson

Title: Painting Kisses
Author: Melanie Jacobson
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean romance

In her former life, Lia was an up-and-coming New York artist who could command high prices for paintings in the best galleries. Married to the scion of a prominent family, she had all the right connections to ensure that her star would just keep rising. In her current life, Lia works as a waitress in a diner and helps her sister care for her niece. Her dating life is non-existent, and she hasn't picked up a paintbrush in years. Then a handsome construction worker starts coming to the diner, and the walls Lia has held in place since she left New York start to crumble.

As far as I'm concerned, no one writes clean, modern romances better than Melanie Jacobson. She has a knack for witty dialogue, and her heroines always have a depth to them that I often find lacking in romances. Both of these things are true about Painting Kisses. This is the first novel of hers that I've read where the characters aren't Mormon characters, which is interesting because I think it's also the first novel I've read that's set in Utah. I know that writing romances that aren't overtly "Mormon Romances" is the trend right now, and after reading romances by LDS authors for most of the last decade, I'm no longer a critic of that (I really do need to write an apology post one of these days about how I dived into reading Mormon lit with almost no understanding of the conventions of genre fiction). but in this case, I think that setting the book in Utah, the issue of whether someone was LDS or not would undoubtedly arise (especially with Aidan, who seems so Mormon). Another quibble-- I'm someone who likes to support local artists and my best friend is a visual artists, so we talk a lot about art. In Painting Kisses, Lia seems very judgmental of the tastes and motives of the people who buy her work, who want something as a decoration on their wall and don't fully understand the motivations behind her art. I wonder if this is an unrealistic expectation of a collector-- as a writer I don't expect the people who read my essays and stories to get everything out of them that I put into them, and while I know that Lia's life history contributes to her skittishness, I wonder if this view of the role of the artist was something that she might have worked through in the development of her character. But the fact that I'm worried about this shows that Painting Kisses made me think a whole heck of a lot, and a book that makes me do that is always a winner in my book.

Book Review: Sense and Sensibility: A Latter-Day Tale by Rebecca H. Jamison

Title: Sense and Sensibility: A Latter-day Tale

Author: Rebecca H. Jamison

Enjoyment Rating: ***

Source: Digital Copy

Content Alert: A clean read

Poor Elly and Maren have the weight of the world on their shoulders. Their father's software company went bankrupt, and he died shortly thereafter. Elly has coped by throwing herself headlong into work (for the rival company to her father's, which happens to be owned by her ex-fiance), while Maren can't seem to get out of bed. When the family has the chance to move from California to Maryland, it might be the solution to their financial turmoil, and both girls might even find love.

I think I've made it clear in the past that I am not big on Jane Austen remakes. In my opinion, what makes Austen's books enduring classics is the cultural commentary they provide, and not simply the romance (I mean, seriously, I'm not sure I'd want to end up with any of Austen's heroes, even Mr. Darcy). What I love when I read Austen is the way I get a window into the world in which she lived. And if a modern revision of the story doesn't do that, then the book doesn't work for me. However, this version of Sense and Sensibility does work. Jamison's story tackles hard things-- she writes about mental illness, women in STEM, mental health issues people can have when they return from war and multicultural marriages, all set against the backdrop of Mormon culture. There were certain plot details I didn't love (a death late in the novel seemed a little too convenient), and Maren's character drove me a little crazy (but then again, so does Marianne Dashwood's character), but overall I enjoyed the story, and think the modern adaptation was a pretty successful one. 

Book Review: Spirit of the Knight by Debbie Peterson

Title: Spirit of the Knight
Author: Debbie Peterson
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean read

I will admit my prejudice here and say that I fully expected to HATE Spirit of the Knight. The cover screamed "cheesy" and when I read the blurb that said that the story was about an artist who came to a Scottish castle and fell in love with a thousand-year-old ghost who haunted the place, I didn't hold out much hope. And when that knight, Cailen, started speaking with a Scottish brogue, I groaned and wanted to quit reading.

Despite all of these things, I persevered, and was surprised to find myself caught up in the story. I'm not as certain that I was captivated by the romance between Cailen and Mariah (the 21st-century artist) as I was to work out the mystery of the silent female ghosts who inhabited the castle (ghosts who Cailen never saw but Mariah saw regularly). This story was fascinating, and kept me hooked far longer than I expected I would be.

Book Review: Saving Grace by Michelle Paige Holmes

Title: Saving Grace
Author: Michelle Paige Holmes
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean read

When Grace Thatcher's mother married a drunken gambler, her father, the Duke of Salisbury, disowned her. Grace's mother ended up as a washerwoman, and then died when Grace was still a small girl, leaving Grace in charge of a brother and sister. When Grace's grandfather reinstated her inheritance, she became one of the most eligible maidens in England, but she's determined to reject all suitors to protect her younger brother and sister. All this courting takes its toll, and after being kicked out of the house of one nobleman, en route to the home of another, her carriage breaks down. She and her servants end up at the home of Nicholas Sutherland, and together they devise a scheme to thwart her father's plans to take her inheritance, and maybe even fall in love along the way.

I've been reading books by Michelle Paige Holmes for years, and this was one of my favorites. Grace was an engaging character who understood the confines of her position in society, who wanted to do right by her siblings at all costs, and who had enough spunk and intelligence to try to guard her position. I also liked Nicholas Sutherland's character, and loved seeing the change he went through at the course of the novel. This book has more plot than the romance, since Holmes spends significant time on the reconciliation between Sutherland and his brother-in-law (and a side romance takes place there). All in all, a fun read, and one I'd recommend to others.

Book Review: Ring on Her Finger by Lisa Swinton

Title: Ring on Her Finger
Author: Lisa Swinton
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: Alcohol-induced vomiting

Amanda's college graduation trip to Las Vegas is supposed to be the best week of her life. But when she wakes up on the final morning of her trip in a drunken haze with a wedding ring on her finger, it turns into a nightmare. Wealthy playboy Blake, the boy who broke her heart freshman year, is now her husband. His family kicks him out when they hear the news, and they have to live as man and wife, with her parents, until their annulment goes through. But Blake hopes that he can use this time to convince Amanda that he really is the man for her.

While the characters in Ring on Her Finger are very broadly drawn (Blake's family are evil rich people, Amanda's family are salt-of-the-earth, hardworking midwesterners), the plot will likely satisfy most romance readers. Amanda is worried about sacrificing her short-term goals of going to Africa, even if it means she can't have Blake in the long term. The ending seemed super rushed and hurried, and not especially believable and romantic, but other readers may feel differently.

Book Review: Prejudice Meets Pride by Rachael Anderson

Title: Prejudice Meets Pride
Author: Rachael Anderson
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital copy
Content Alert: A clean romance

Emma is accustomed to fending for herself. She managed to graduate from RISD, one of the country's best art schools, with little help from anyone. Then, she landed her dream job. But she has never had to take care of anyone else either. When her brother needs her to take his girls so he can get his life together, she moves them across the country to Colorado Springs (where a dead great-aunt left a house to her), Emma has to adjust to a lot, and self-sufficiency has quite a big learning curve. When the cute dentistnext door wants to help her by buying her groceries, mowing her lawn and offering her a job, every offer hurts Emma's pride.

Prejudice Meets Pride is a textbook romance novel. There's nothing offensive about it, and nothing really makes it stand out either. Emma and Kevin (the dentist) are just flawed enough to make them seem endearing, and they both have to grow and stretch a bit to find love. The story is predictable and ends happily, and readers who want to escape without being challenged too much would probably find it a satisfying read.

Book Review: Accidentally Married by Victorine Lieske

Title: Accidentally Married
Author: Victorine Lieske
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean romance

Madison is an actress looking for a steady job that will tide her over until she gets her big break. When she applies to be an administrative assistant for Jared, a CEO, he misunderstands and thinks she has shown up to be the girl he's paying to pretend to be his girlfriend for a family party. The fake girlfriend quickly becomes a fake fiancee when Jared and Madison learn that Jared's beloved aunt is dying. But it turns out that Jared and Madison aren't the only fakers in the family, and the couple turns out to be deeper than co-conspirators.

You know how in Shakespearean comedies everyone's always trying to trick people? I got the same sense in Accidentally Married, which is just about as screwball as the silliest Shakespearean comedy, minus the Shakespearean genius. The book is fine, silly, not especially believable, and I didn't feel a connection to any of the characters or really care if they got together, but fine. In fact, I sort of got the sense that Jared and Madison got what they deserved, for better or for worse.

Book Review: Spy by Night by Jordan McCollum

Title: Spy by Night
Author: Jordan McCollum
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean read with some violence

If you've read the Spy Another Day mystery/thriller books by Jordan McCollum, you won't be surprised to see Talia and Danny appearing in this prequel, which is the story of how the couple fell in love. Talia is a CIA agent working undercover as a lawyer in Canada. Danny is an aerospace engineer whose mother wants him to reunite with his crazy former fiance. The two met at (where else?) their LDS singles ward, and Talia isn't sure if she's willing to be vulnerable and let anyone else in, even if it's for a chance at love.

One of the things that makes Spy by Night unique is that McCollum tells the story from Talia and Danny's perspectives. While the Talia chapters focus mainly on tracking down a Russian spy ring, it's Danny's chapters that talk about how the couple falls in love. This is pretty unique in the romance genre (usually we get the girl's perspective) and I found it interesting and refreshing. I was not interested in the spy story at all, however. I think that knowing what happens to the couple after the events in this novel might be detrimental to this story-- I like Danny so much in this story, but find him a little whiny and tiresome in the other Spy Another Day books. All in all, a solid read, and fun to read one of these novels with a bit more romantic bent than the others.

Book Review: Porcelain Keys by Sarah Beard

Title: Porcelain Keys
Author: Sarah Beard
Enjoyment Rating: **
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: violence and abuse

Since Aria's mother, a Julliard-trained piano teacher, died several years ago, the teenager has been hiding her grief and caring for her alcoholic father, who beats her if he catches her playing the piano. So she's pretty miserable until she meets her new next door neighbor, Thomas, who helps her follow her passions and ignites some new ones. Then tragedy strikes, and Thomas disappears from her life. She has to pick up the pieces and try to reconstruct a new life without him in it.

Did you read If I Stay? What about the sequel Where She Went? If you take away the whole hovering-over-the-body aspect of those books and just focus on the Julliard-bound teen whose family died, and mash it up so it's actually the boyfriend's whole family who died, then basically you have Porcelain Keys. The book reminded me so much of If I Stay that I couldn't help but compare them at every turn, and it usually wasn't in favor of Porcelain Keys. The characters seem drawn with such broad strokes, and I wasn't sure that I wanted Aria and Thomas to get back together in the end, or believed that their relationship was portrayed as being strong enough to withstand the absence that Thomas took from Aria's life.

Book Review: Missing Lily by Annette K. Larsen

Title: Missing Lily
Author: Annette K. Larsen
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean romance

Princess Lylin is riding her horse in the forest when she finds herself separated from her entourage and her animal. Fortunately, before any ill befalls her, she finds a manor house. The servants and their lord take her in without knowing her true identity, and she develops an attachment to Lord Fallon that can't be denied, even when she returns to the castle to find life as she knew it turned upside down.

I didn't recognize that this was the second novel in a series, and that Just Ella (the previous book) dealt with many of the same characters and set up the action in Missing Lily. Although that may have made the book more enjoyable, I will admit my prejudice here-- historical romances from this time period really aren't my cup of tea, and neither are romances where the protagonist is basically a child. The book was written well enough, and the story would probably appeal to someone who loves fairy tales and fantasy, unfortunately that reader isn't me.

Book Review: Loving Lucianna by Joyce diPastena

Title: Loving Lucianna
Author: Joyce diPastena
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: a clean romance

Several years ago, when I was new to reading romance novels, I read Joyce diPastena's Illuminations of the Heart, and it seemed to reinforce everything I didn't think I liked about the genre. It felt clunky, with badly attempted medieval dialect and a convoluted plot, and if I remember right, the book felt a little rapey to me (it's been years, so I don't remember why, but I think her virtue was in question several times). So I wasn't thrilled when I saw Loving Lucianna was a continuation of the previous story. Lucianna is Siri's companion, a contemporary of her deceased mother, and she's engaged to be married to Sir Balduin de Soler, but events from her past and her own insecurities may prevent her from the love she has waited so long for.

All in all, I liked the book a lot more than I thought I would. The couple is already engaged at the beginning of the novel, so the question isn't as much whether they will end up falling in love, but whether they can overcome obstacles (both external and internal) that stand in the way of their marriage. I really liked the idea of focusing on an older character (although in early early 40s, she really isn't that old!), and found the internal conflict that plagued Lucianna to be fairly interesting. The book is a little confusing, with lots of names and languages, and I'm still not sure I'm a fan of the very old historical romances, but I think diPastena's craft has progressed nicely over the last five years.

Book Review: Paso Doble by Moriah Jovan

Title: Paso Doble
Author: Moriah Jovan
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: Language, a little violence, and lots of super sexy sex

Victoria is a Mormon college professor who returned to Spain, where she served her mission, partly to get away from her wealthy, stifling family, and partly to be able to watch the Spanish matador she fell in lust with during those mission days.

Emilio is an underemployed Chemistry PhD who supports his stepmother, brothers and sisters by working as a matador, but who pines for a jazz singer in a local club who (like Sia) he doesn't see, only hears. He also wants to teach at a university, but can't seem to get a job. Through their mutual acquaintance, Sebastian (the hero of another of Jovan's romances), the two come together, and wow, fireworks happen.

I've read a couple of Moriah Jovan's romances in the past, and I was both surprised and delighted to have the chance to read this one. These are not your typical "clean" romances favored by Mormon housewives. But maybe they're the kind of romances Mormon housewives should be reading. Jovan creates larger-than-life characters who encounter everyday kinds of problems. For example, Victoria and her bishop have several discussions over the course of the novel about how, if she wants to marry in Spain, she will likely marry outside the church. This is increasingly true for Mormon women throughout the world, and Jovan's treatment of the subject is something I haven't seen in Mormon fiction before, let alone in romantic fiction. Furthermore, Jovan doesn't shirk from sexy scenes. Holy cow, I feel like I'm getting an education every time I read one of her books, and I don't think that's a bad thing. These aren't books that every reader will love, but I certainly do.

Book Review: Infinity + One by Amy Harmon

Title: Infinity + One
Author: Amy Harmon
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: pretty clean, but implications of sex and some mild language

Bonnie Rae is the Taylor Swift of her day-- America's sweetheart, and a crossover artist who got her start in country music but has turned into a pop superstar. On the final night of her world tour, Finn Clyde (get it? Bonnie and Clyde?) finds her standing on the railing of a bridge over the Charles River in Boston, ready to plunge to her death. Without recognizing who she is, he tosses her in his car, and since she has no desire to return to her controlling grandmother/agent and her former life, she takes off on a cross-country trip with Finn. Her grandmother reports her as kidnapped, and pretty soon they're trying to escape detection as they go. Along the way, they learn that they're both suffering the loss of identical-twin siblings, and, despite their differences and all of the ways they're damaged, they fall in love.

I was pretty skeptical about Infinity + One. The whole premise of a superstar and an ex-con crossing the country seemed pretty flimsy, but I shouldn't have second-guessed Amy Harmon. She turns everything she writes into gold, and Infinity + One is no exception. Bonnie and Finn are interesting, rich characters, and I believed that they were falling in love. She also does a nice job weaving in the Bonnie and Clyde historical narrative (and all that it foreshadows) without it feeling heavy-handed.

Book Review: I'm With You by Taylor Dean

Title: I'm With You
Author: Taylor Dean
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean romance, but deals with the death of a child and adultery

Chloe seems to have a perfect life with her husband, her interior design business, and her first baby on the way. But when the baby is stillborn, everything in her life falls apart. All she wants to do is sit in the baby's room all day and cry, and her husband gradually disconnects, until one day he comes home to tell her that he's going on a six-week trip to the Caribbean with another man's wife.

When the jilted husband shows up on Chloe's doorstep. they commiserate over their fates. He's a lawyer, and he helps her start divorce proceedings. And gradually, their shared experience becomes a friendship, which turns to love, and Chloe finds herself living again for the first time since the death of her son.

I know that lots of people love I'm With You, but I'm not one of them. I felt that Dean was pretty heavy-handed with her depiction of the Bathseba who drew Chloe's husband away. Chloe is very clearly damaged and not handling the death of her child well, and I think it's a little facile to think that a romance will solve those deeper issues. All in all, this is a fine book, but not one of my favorites.

Book Review: Miss Armistead Makes Her Choice by Heidi Ashworth

Title: Miss Armistead Makes Her Choice
Author: Heidi Ashworth
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean romance

Miss Armistead, who has lived in India since her London season several years earlier, arrives in England to prepare for her upcoming marriage to Duncan, a blind Scotsman who captured her heart in India. Then Mr. Lloyd-Jones saves her and her mother from a problem with their carriage, and soon Miss Armistead and Mr. Lloyd-Jones are running into each other almost every day. If it weren't for Duncan, Miss Armistead might even say that she was falling for one of London's most eligible bachelors, but her sense of duty is strong, and she knows what she has to do.

I've read several of Heidi Ashworth's historical romances over the years, and they just keep getting stronger. I think Miss Armistead is her best so far. Although Miss Armistead is a fine character, it's Mr. Lloyd-Jones who shines in this novel, and I love the way that Ashworth creates an out (oops, spoiler!) so true love can prevail.