Pretty good. Lacks the beautiful writing of JAL's later books, not as gripping as some either. I read it in several sittings over a couple of weeks, which is rare for me and shows I wasn't exactly enthralled. Hero and heroine not unlikable but all a little underdeveloped and kind of stereotypical romance novel-y, not a ton of depth. Heroine is kind of standard naive innocent, hero is standard debauched aristocrat. From a lot of writers I'd probably consider this fine, but JAL's Palace of Rogues series is SO good and beautifully written and has such wonderful characters, this definitely isn't up to that standard. There were glimpses of it in their conversations, hints of more depth that I wish we'd seen more of. Like the hero's father lost everything and he had to rebuild it from scratch - but we get little detail about that. He went to war and came home a poet - but that's fairly glossed over too. We mainly see him in his current form as a fairly typical scandalous earl with only allusions to that much more interesting past and not a lot of reflection or access to his inner life or how those things shaped him. He does show some depth and reflection when it's revealed that his past actions unknowingly harmed the heroine and her family. The last section dealing with that was probably the most interesting part of the book. Overall fine but nothing special like JAL's later books have led me to expect. ( )

Ooh I really like the beginning of this book. The way Lord Rawden is described, dark hair with light blue eyes and wearing a great coat; great combo. I am personally a huge fan of great coats but that aside Long has done a great job of giving her leading male character a powerful presence. I don't even know his first name yet but boy howdy do I want to get to know him.
Hot damn this is the kind of story I expected from Long after reading the first in this series. I absolutely love how it's being set up with Rhys (the hunk in the overcoat I mentioned earlier) and Sabrina to be in competition; the competitive game- seduction. Bring on all the witty comebacks, startling discoveries, lingering looks, and loving I can handle Ms. Long!
I know the storyline seems like one we've all heard before, rake seduces virgin, but kudos to Long for putting a fresh spin on it. This story felt very new and the main characters relationship felt like nothing I have read before.
There are definitely some toe curling moments. One of my favorites involved these two lines: “It wasn’t I who lost control, Lord Rawden. I believe it was I, in fact, who had it the entire time.”
She watched him as the truth of this sank in. Rhys froze, realizing it."
This is what you call saying the right thing at the right moment.
I was little troubled?, disappointed? At how easily Sabrina accepted Rhys going to London and leaving her constantly without even a goodbye to her. Thank god for Mrs. Bailey though, great character! :)
This story really turned around for me from being a fun romp to being a serious heartfelt story after Rhys and Sabrina come together in the library (the sex scene not the kissing one). I felt Rhys' struggle to not love his wife and Sabrina's yearning for more than she is getting from him. Long did a wonderful job with taking their relationship slow and infusing it with beautiful emotional writing.
The scene where Rhys is with Wyndham at "The Velvet Glove" playing cards and he thinks back to the last conversation he had with Sabrina where she said "You just take" was superb. The atmosphere Long describes in contrast to Rhys inner thinking had my eyes watering for some reason. Maybe I got so emotional when I read this part because I was utterly connected to Rhys and his floundering discovery of his love for his wife but didn't know exactly what to do with his personal emotions or hers.
The connection of Rhys and the continuing story of how Sabrina and her sisters were divided up was ok but the last half almost felt like another book. I appreciate the creativeness of Long to connect and wrap everything up, but I honestly could have done without it.
The last two lines of this story had me grinning like a fool and I refuse to put them here because you just positively have to read them yourselves.
As far as commenting on the series as a whole, the first and third books are frickinfantastic and the second one should never have existed. I loved the original storyline in the first and where I thought it could go, however, the big mystery is solved in the first book. The second book maybe has a chapter discussing the original storyline, nothing really needed there. The third book deals with the problem of trying to locate the girl's mother Anna Holt and like I said before this part made it feel like a whole other book, like the author just tagged it on to make it fit into the series. Anyway read the first and third book and you will understand all you need to for this series. This book was a keeper for me and I just might go back and make the first book a keeper also.
Ok so final rant, what the hell happened to John Carr (from the first book)!?! I hate when authors introduce awesome characters and then never explain what happened to them! There had better be a book coming out with John being the center of attention.

A ( )

headless woman cover

This book surprised me. It started off staid and slow, and I thought I was going to end up reading another crappy historical romance, but it picked up and had some really witty/heated verbal exchanges between the heroine and hero. Just the sort of thing I love. I guess it's the universal P&P lure of two people who dislike each other and have thrilling, but scathing exchanges with each other. What's good is this author actually didn't disappoint which is why I gave 4 stars. I skipped all the parts about the long lost sisters - it was unnecessary. I think it was supposed to link to previous books. ( )