Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥 (2-3 – one scene was more unpleasant and I’m not sure everyone would count it)
Humor: Not much
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine

Should I read in order?
This is the first book in Sookoo’s The Storme Brothers series.

Basic plot:
Andrew Storme, the Earl of Hadleigh, takes himself off to the countryside after fighting with his brothers in London. Here, he meets impoverished Miss Sarah Copeland and a marriage of convenience blossoms.

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency time period (1817)
- countryside setting
- hero suffers from bouts of anxiety
- a bit of Cinderella vibes – heroine is a governess to her own family members
- bespectacled heroine that enjoys playing the flute
- celibate hero (hasn’t had a woman in his bed for a few years)
- emotionally strong hero (hero cries)
- medium steam – 2-3 full scenes (the first one, some might not count as it’s an unpleasant wedding night with some dubious consent)

Ages:
- Heroine is 34, hero is 40

My thoughts:
I struggled so hard with this book. Perhaps it was my mood, because honestly this whole week has been depressing for me and then everything in this book seemed depressing too.

I never grew to care about Andrew. I found him unpleasant. He seemed to be filled with self pity and self loathing and never became a strong enough person for me to care about. He has anxiety and anger issues, and seriously kudos to Sookoo for writing an anxiety ridden hero because I love seeing that represented especially in a man. But the bouts of anxiety weren’t developed enough for me – I wanted to understand his anxiety better. I just thought the fact that he blames himself for all the family’s problems because he didn’t deny war commissions a bit of a stretch for the attitude and problems the he had.

I liked Sarah all right, but I did think she was lacking a bit of depth. She’s a musician and her love is for the flute, but I wasn’t getting a musician’s heart from her. There was a lot of focus on the two of them, which I really appreciated, but it was more a lot of negativity, trying to get Andrew to deal with what has been dealt to him in life.

I would definitely try Sookoo again even though this one didn’t work the best for me.

Content warnings:

- scenes of anger, emotional anguish and anxiety
- a scene with some painful sex
- mention of brother struggling with suicidal thoughts and actions
- carriage accident on page (minor injuries and they land in water)

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

20% - kiss
33% - kiss
48% - kisses, hero turns the heroine away from him and takes her from behind over a bed. This scene – I’m not sure to count it as a flame because the heroine is in pain and not happy and the hero is filled with self loathing. So I added a range to the flame count
67% - kisses, missionary (bed)
92% - kisses, oral for her, blow job (incomplete), her on top (bed)