Okay, ranking purely on vibes and did I enjoy the reading experience? Five stars, great prose! The sentences! Exquisite!

The romance though, wow that was a flop for me. Also the sex scenes were truly not sexy, beyond the dub-con of it all.

Loved loved loved the heroine Emma, or Miss Muffin, or one of her other great aliases. She's a former con-woman, she's run lots of games, she is pissed off that her male lamb was killed in a carriage accident (by the hero's carriage!!) and the path to her getting what's her due from that was exhilarating and hilarious.

but whew, the hero was a huge man baby, and he reminded me of a proto-kylo, and while he was super out there and extra I didn't find the power imbalance was addressed well in the romance at all.

His last speech/grovel was pretty okay though, so okay sure then!

CW: dub con, death of spouse (in the past), child abuse, implied domestic abuse and rape (in the past, hero's mother), animal death (lamb, on-page, grisly), gun violence, gun shot wound (in the past), racial slurs