Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥 (there are some additional short/vague scenes so it might feel hotter to others)
Humor: A bit
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine
Cliffhanger: No
Format: borrowed audiobook from Hoopla

Should I read in order?
I did read book 1 and don’t think it’s necessary to read in order here.

Basic plot:
After Grace saves Dylan’s life, he hasn’t been able to get her out of his head. When their paths cross again, he finds an opportunity to have her stay with him as his daughter’s governess.

Give this a try if you want:
- Late Georgian (1832)
- London and country setting
- musically inclined mains
- widow/governess heroine
- child in the story
- lower steam – 1 full scene but some additional shorter/vague scenes

My thoughts:
I wanted to love this one so badly! I really enjoyed the first book of the series. But this one was a trial for me to get through and overall I wasn’t a big fan.

I didn’t find myself liking either character for the most part, but especially the hero. It’s a bit of a heavier book to me – the hero deals with thoughts of suicide and really suffered from mood swings. The heroine has a lot of emotional baggage from her past.

We through in a child in the story, which isn’t my favorite on a good day, and I found the relationship itself got a bit lost for me in all of this.

There were a few really cute/sweet scenes I appreciated. And I definitely got my heart engaged a bit at the end with the all is lost moment – but ultimately this happened at the VERY END of the book and I had to slog through it to get there. And the fact that it was all happening at the very end made their HEA feel unsatisfying to me. It left me doubting that everything was resolved with them. Overall this is not one I would reread or return to.

Content warnings:

- hero faces thoughts of suicide with an almost scene on page
- hero suffers from insomnia and tinnitus as a result from a horse accident
- mention of the hero possibly having tons of bastards
- heroine was in a bit of an emotionally abusive relationship with her husband

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

Safe sex:

Can't recall if anything is mentioned but I don't believe so - they are having an affair and are not married

8% - kiss
25% - kiss
45% - kisses
63% - kiss
79% - 🔥 kisses, fingering for her, her on top
83% - remembrance of scenes together (too short/vague to count)
85% - very short and vague scene