Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥+
Humor: A touch
Perspective: third person from both hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? plot
How did the speed of the story feel? medium
When mains are first on page together: very soon in
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes
Format: listened to the audiobook from the library (Hoopla)
Why I chose this book: I saw the bookset on Hoopla and have wanted to try Golden Angel forever!
Mains: This is a M/F relationship between a cishet hero and heroine

Should I read in order?
I personally think it’s probably best to read her Domestic Discipline Quartet first – this is like a spin off of that and my first Golden Angel – I felt like I was being told a lot of background about events and characters I didn’t care about because I didn’t read those books – I also wonder if I would have gotten to know Philip more in those books? So I can’t say it’s totally necessary but I personally wished I had started there after reading this one.

Basic plot:
Philip and Cordelia fall into married life and learn to manage her stepdaughter and hidden passions.

Give this a try if you want:
- historical romance – didn’t catch a year
- Marquess hero
- widow heroine
- heroine has a step-daughter
- kink elements include a domestic discipline and spanking
- higher steam – 6ish full scenes

Ages:
- didn’t catch either but think the heroine is mid 20s?

First line:
Happily married.

My thoughts:
I struggled with this one almost from the beginning because it felt like there was a lot of recap and telling and not showing the story. It left me wishing I had started with the Domestic Discipline Quartet because I didn’t know the side characters who were talked about frequently and also felt like the story started really abruptly and maybe I would have known at least Philip more if I had read that series? It was just a hard start for me.

And I never grew to love it because my annoyance with Gabrielle – I just really struggle with toxic family members being a big plot point (I lived it for too long and it’s definitely just a me thing!) so I was ready for her to go away. I did like both mains overall but the relationship and story just didn’t grab me. Also I was listening to the audio and I think it sounded quite echoey to me for some reason so that was harder for me and a bit distracting.

I’ll definitely be trying more Golden Angel but I’ll go back to another series and give it a go and I’ll probably read the next one to eliminate narrator disconnect.

Few random reading stats for this author
# of books read: This is my first
Average rating from me: 3 stars
Favorite book: This one by default

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

- remembrances of a bad relationship
Author content warnings? Didn’t hear any on audio

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes, safe sex aspects, consent, pregnancy/child in the story:

 
Safe sex: 

  No 

 
How’s the consent? 

  It’s good overall – it’s a domestic discipline relationship so there’s some level of punishment and dubious elements in that regard but we get a lot from the heroine’s POV that she is enjoying the events 

 
Pregnancy/children in story? 

  I don’t recall pregnancy but there may be a mention of possible future children – heroine has a stepdaughter that is a main character with decent page time 

 
Chapter 2 – 🔥kisses, missionary (followed by some more mentions of sex but nothing too developed)
Chapter 4 – 🔥spanking, missionary
Chapter 5 – 🔥spanking, fingering for her, bent over the desk sex
Chapter 8 – 🔥bj, followed a bit later by breast play, anal play (fingering), missionary
Chapter 10 – 🔥sex
Chapter 14 - 🔥anal
Total chapters: 18