Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡ (I feel like this book sadly had no tension for me – maybe it was the quick-ish jump into sex, but I didn’t feel it here)
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋 (I don’t love Balogh’s language for her intimate scenes. It’s more emotional and poetic than explicit but also a bit more...clinical feeling to me than actually grabbing? This is just subjective to me!)
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑 (maybe 2-3 – they are pretty short)
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥
Humor: Yes
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? medium
When mains are first on page together: It doesn’t take too long – about 9%, chapter 3 of 23
Cliffhanger: No, this is a happily ever after for the mains
Epilogue: No
Format: listened to an audiobook from the library (Hoopla)
Why I chose this book: I started the series years ago and never finished – I am trying to finish some of the series I have started.
Mains: This is a M/F relationship between a cishet hero and heroine

Should I read in order?
This one stands alone pretty well (the mains are on page together for most of the book without the family – but the series is very nice in order and I think it would be pleasant to do so and get to know the whole family.)

Basic plot:
Rachel and her 4 brothel working friends come across a naked and injured man. As he recovers and has no memory, he agrees to help Rachel gain her inheritance from her uncle with a fake marriage.

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (my assumption)
- diplomat/soldier hero
- she nurses him back to health
- fake marriage
- delicious side characters
- surprise virgin
- hero teaches her how to ride a horse and how to swim
- amnesia – hero loses his memory at the beginning of the story
- lower steam – 2ish full scenes that I counted but they are light and vague and on the short side

Ages:
- hero is about 25 and I think heroine is 22

First line:
Having spent almost all of his twenty-five years in England, and therefore isolated from most of the hostilities that had ravaged the rest of Europe since the rise to power of Napolean Boneparte, Lord Alleyne Bedwyn, third brother of the Duke of Bewcastle, had no personal experience of pitched battles.

My thoughts:
Okay I will admit it – I like Mary Balogh but I don’t love her. And I felt the same about this one. I still have lots to read so I’m sure I’ll find more that I do really like. Slightly Scandalous so far is the only book I really enjoyed and would come back to.

There was a lot that I liked about it – I did like the plot even though amnesia can be a bit...awkward...the side characters in this one were SO amazing. The 4 brothel worker female friends were just the highlight of this story for me. They were delightful and hilarious and fun. I did like the mains too. And I liked the plot – I enjoy fake relationship and this one was really well done and very immersive.

I think Balogh can be really, really romantic in her writing and feelings. But there were some things in this book I found really unromantic too. I didn’t like how the hero repeatedly tells the heroine after being intimate with her (and continuing to be intimate with her) that he might have a wife and family and children but he just can’t remember. We as readers know it is fine (that’s why we read romance right???) but it just felt icky to me and tainted their relationship.

I also just really dislike Balogh’s sex. At least in this novel. I know I’m never going to get super hot and explicit scenes, but there was just something here that didn’t grab me at all. But I’m sure that’s just me being picky. And I was like totally not ready for them to be intimate in this book when they were. It felt so out of place to me and it really destroyed any tension I was starting to feel.

So, those things brought it down for me a bit but I did enjoy listening to it overall. It’s not a fave of the series, but there were others I have liked less for sure.

Few random reading stats for this author
# of books read: 11
Average rating: 3.63 stars
Favorite book: Slightly Scandalous

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

- scenes of war, war injuries, recovering from a gunshot
- talk of robbing the war corpses, the hero has everything taken from him while unconscious
- we as the reader know it’s fine, but the hero has amnesia for almost the entire book. He fucks the heroine while openly admitting a few times that he could have a wife and family and not know it

Author content warnings? Didn’t catch anything

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes, safe sex aspects, consent, pregnancy/child in the story:

 
Safe sex: 

  No 

 
How’s the consent? 

  It’s good 

 
Pregnancy/children in story? 

  I think there might be talk of future babies?? But no pregnancy or kids in the story 

 
26% - 🔥fingering for her, sex (missionary?) It’s pretty short and the heroine is left very unimpressed
67% - 🔥kisses, fingering for her, missionary
79% - sex but no real details and it’s very short – a few sentences
I think there’s another scene towards the end that is a few sentences without details