Overall: 3.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥
Humor: A bit
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine

Should I read in order?
Ideally yes! Heath’s series can wind together and this book is a direct relation to the ending of her Sins for All Seasons series. The first part of this novel takes place prior to Beauty Temps the Beast (book 6 of Sins for All Seasons series) so I would at least read that one first.

Basic plot:
Kathryn must marry a titled gentleman to get her cottage inheritance. Too bad her friend she is attracted to is only the spare.

Give this a try if you want:
- Victorian time period (1873 for the first part, and 1874 for the second part)
- London setting
- Best friends brother
- Unrequited love (especially from the hero but a bit from both)
- Heroine nurses hero back to the health
- Losing nobility status
- Huge hero, tiny heroine (heroine barely reaches hero’s shoulders)
- Medium steam – 3 full scenes

Ages:
- Hero is 27, heroine 24

My thoughts:
There is so much sweetness in this book!!!! Seriously if unrequited love is your jam, Griffith will have your heart. He is just so, so sweet. He remembers what Kathryn is wearing the first time they meet. He steals her hair ribbon and keeps it forever. He is SO IN LOVE with her.

I really enjoyed Kathryn through this book. She is rather quiet, but strong, and I like how she doesn’t let anyone lead her astray from what she wants in life.

Something did prevent me from loving this book the whole way through. Maybe it was the bit of separation? I’m not too sure, but when we got to part II, I was getting a little bored with some things. We have to wait for a lot of the steam too which maybe wasn’t right for my mood at the time. Overall this was a super sweet, adorable book with plenty of romance that I appreciated. I’m not sure if I would reread it though.

Also there’s a bit of a love triangle with Kathryn trying to marry a lord to get her cottage property. I feel like a number of Heath’s books Ive read have some kind of love triangle thing going on and honestly it’s not for me. That usually ends up driving me bonkers. Though it wasn’t too bad here, probably because I know the other love interest will get his own story in the next book. (which is on my TBR!)

Quotes/thoughts:

I looooove that he wants this.

She signed, heavily. “What do you want?”
Reaching behind her, he took hold of her plaited hair, and draped it over her shoulder. The one nearest to him.
“Your hair. Unraveled. Like Rapunzel.”


The fact that Griff wrote basically a love letter to her in the form of an application to be the bride of another man, was just giving me goosebumps!

“A quick wit, a biting tongue, and a sharp mind. Her mere presence will cause a man to yearn the intimacy of her htoughts. Her secret desires. Her touch. Like the finest of wines, she is bold, full bodied and tantalizing. Never disappointing yet never the same. Always offering another aspect to be discovered. A lifetime in her company will never be long enough.”
 

Content warnings:

- Mention of treason and hero’s father being sentenced to death and hung
- Cheroot smoking/lessons
- Brief scenes of danger and death

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
33% - kiss
39% - brief kiss with another man
45% - kiss
57% - kiss
68% - 🔥 kisses, fingering for her, breast play, oral for her
85% - 🔥 kisses, missionary
96% - 🔥 kisses, breast play, blow job (incomplete), her on top (in a cove on the beach)
99% - kiss and implied sex