Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Humor: A touch
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine

Should I read in order?
It’s not totally necessary – most of the focus is on the main couple. BUT the hero has a decent amount of page time in the prior book (Scoundrel of My Heart) so I’d read that first, and that one is really a continuation of book Beauty Tempts the Beast, which is book 6 in the Sins for All Seasons series and they really flow together (and some couples are mentioned here) so you might as well go back 50 books and just start at the beginning of Heath’s chronological works lol. (I kid! But if you are a completionist, Beyond Scandal and Desire is the first book of the Sins for All Seasons series where I think all of this starts

Basic plot:
Penelope has been in love with the duke for a number of years. Handling his affairs as his secretary, her hardest task is to be helping him select a wife to be his duchess when it’s the one place she longs to be.

Give this a try if you want:
- Victorian time period (1874)
- London setting
- a touch of road trip – they travel for a small section of the story
- class difference – hero is a duke, heroine working class
- work place romance feel – the heroine is the hero’s secretary (and has worked for him for 8 years or so)
- unrequited love (from both!)
- Celibate hero (it’s been a year)
- hero nurses heroine back to health
- consent is established
- medium steam – there are 4 full scenes, one is a bit short. Some of Heath’s prose is on the poetic instead of the explicit
- heroine has a secret

Ages:
- Heroine is 28, hero is 34

My thoughts:
So, I think when I next try Heath, I will actually read her instead of listening to audio. I usually like Kate Reading for the most part, but I had a disconnect with this book and the prior in the series (both on audio) but when I skimmed through parts of the e-book to take quotes, I was more captivated than before. Perhaps it’s my mood – but I may have to reread this some day and see if my rating changes.

As it is, I wasn’t in love with this one. I generally thought most of it was okay – I liked Penelope and I liked King. But I think I struggled a bit with him looking for a different wife almost the whole book. Being romance I knew it would work out okay but it just left me with a bit of a grossed out feeling as their relationship moved forward. It just didn’t tug on my heart and I felt lukewarm about the whole thing. I knew I was reading (listening) emotional things...I know. My heart is dead and I’m awful. I also didn’t like some of his reactions and thoughts when we find out the heroine’s secret towards the end.

So yeah I think it was just me with this book – if you are a fan of unrequited love especially, I think you will adore this novel. There’s so much pining for each other and they spend a lot of time together and thinking about each other.

Quotes/thoughts:

This is so cute


King had the enviable skill of concentrating on more than one thing at a time, so as Lancaster waxed on about his inventioned – a clock that would emit an alarm at a particular time designated by its owner – he appeared to be giving his full attention to the inventor while out of the corner of his eye, he admired Pettypeace’s new frock.

---
I have heard this a time or two, but honestly I only fell for it hard with Adam in Karen Marie Moning’s The Immortal Highlander lol.

A hunger no woman had stirred within him in a good long while, if ever. The potency of it nearly dropped him to his knees, and he was a man who never went to his knees, not for anyone.

But he also makes it amazing at the end

He lowered himself to a knee.
Through the thundering in her ears, she barely heard the gasps and mumbles. “What are you doing?”
“For you, Penelope, I will go to a knee. I’ll go down on both if you prefer.”

Content warnings:

- Hero visits a mistress but nothing happens because he can’t get the heroine out of his mind
- Heroine’s past (view spoiler)

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes: (this is hoopla audio and might vary from other formats)

14% - mention of heroine masturbating in the carriage
54% - kisses
59% - 🔥 kisses, oral for her, missionary in the duke’s bedchamber
72% - 🔥 kisses, fingering for her in a carriage
81% - 🔥 outdoor sex against a tree
99% - 🔥 kisses, missionary (epilogue sex)