Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖 (I think I struggled with this purely because this book is a bit darker in themes – sad feelings. And I am having a really rough couple weeks – purely personal and not the writing)
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥
Humor: A touch. I wouldn’t think of this as a humorous book, but there’s a few playful scenes
Perspective: third person perspective from both the hero and heroine
When mains are first on page together: Almost immediately 3%
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after.
Epilogue: Yes, 10 months later.
Format: voluntarily read an advanced reader copy from the author in e-book form

Should I read in order?
It’s not totally necessary if you’re a rebel reader, but I think book 1 at least would give a great setup for this story as there is some character and event cross over.

Basic plot:
Cybil and Will meet at a wedding and begin an affair...

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (1820)
- Scotland setting
- brother’s best friend
- hero has dimples!
- class difference – working class hero (he works at a mill) and baroness heroine
- instalust
- celibate hero
- pregnancy
- author heroine
- medium steam – 3 full scenes with some role playing

Ages:
- heroine is 35, didn’t catch hero

First line:
Cybil ventured into the forest looking for inspiration, and she found it.

My thoughts:
Mayberry is a master at really infusing historical romance with facts and characters that feel raw and real. This book has some heavier themes running through it, and tells the story of love overcoming some insurmountable odds.

Overall this book isn’t one I gravitate towards. I am not big on ‘unavailable’ mains that are married or engaged and tend to avoid pregnancies and children. But, there was something about this one that just gutted me. I had to know what would happen and how it would work out. And the ending really made my heart happy.

Something I loved about this one was that we get the beginning of their story too. Most of the book shows Will and Cybil as they have been in a relationship for 4 years. And Mayberry could have jumped there with some flashbacks but I was so, so glad she gave us The Past. It was sweet, funny, and gave me the best tingles as Will and Cybil circled each other and I found myself loving their love.

My struggles with this book were mostly purely personal and probably a bit in line with my moodiness the past few weeks. I found this book quite stressful and was also having some real life stress so I didn’t find myself eager to pick it up. But once I got back into it about the halfway mark, I was on edge wondering how it would all work out. I was frustrated with both mains at some points of the story. I didn’t feel like they were fair to each other at some points. Time was limited and they need to have some good, honest discussion about what their options were.

The fact that Cybil was trying to find a family (of strangers, basically) that would maybe take the baby, but was so angry at Will for find a way to keep the baby in his house was so sad to me. Why should Will be separated from the baby if she was going to hand it out for adoption? 

  Eventually they get there, but I was frustrated in the beginning of their journey there.

This is a pretty unique book in the HR world – just like I feel about her other books in the series too. I think I liked her steam the most in this one. I feel like Mayberry is really getting her confidence in the bedroom scenes. I adored the role playing aspect.

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

- mention of dangerous mill work
- mention of recovering from a bullet wound
- mention of slaughterhouse
- pregnancy
- remembrances of having to leave young children alone while the hero went to work
- thoughts of abortion
- mention of heroine suffering physical abuse
- abduction of heroine and forced drugging (not by hero)
- physical abuse of a child by a man (villain)
- heroine’s husband talks of forced breeding between heroine and a servant
- threats with a gun
- domestic violence (physical attack to the face) of the heroine from her husband (not the hero)

Author given content warnings: 

unhappy marriage, an illicit affair, unplanned pregnancy, discussion of abortion, physical and psychological abuse, infidelity and the terrible prospect of two parents being forcibly separated from their newborn child 

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
Safe sex: [First time hero pulls out, but then 4 years later the affair continues but the heroine is pregnant so obv something happened without safe sex (hide spoiler)]
9% - mention of hero masturbating
10% - 🔥kisses, role playing (from Effie and Ruthaven in The Vampyre), some levels of dominant hero behavior, roughness, mirror play, sex bent over the table
30% - 🔥 bath scene – blindfolded heroine, fingering for her, oral for her with light anal fingering,
46% - 🔥kisses in a cemetery leading to sex against a tree
96% - start of a scene