Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥🔥 (at least. I combined 2 scenes together for a flame and it’s possible I missed one)
Humor: Yes a bit
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine
Cliffhanger: No
Epilogue: Yes, 5 years later

Should I read in order?
I think this might be a stand alone?

Basic plot:
Mina is desperate to help her brother and when an employment opportunity lands in her lap she can’t refuse.

Give this a try if you want:
- Victorian time period
- ruined heroine
- Earl hero
- heroine dresses as a man
- hero needs a wife (grandmother is pushing)
- work place romance (heroine is the hero’s secretary)
- duel
- hero gets books on the sensual arts so he can please her
-

hero isn’t overly experienced 

- medium to high steam – at least 4 scenes
- bluestocking hero and both mains enjoy discussing politics and making changes for a better society
- rags to riches
- heroine loves ice cream, and hero buys it for her repeatedly

Ages:
- heroine is 24, hero is 28

First line:
The only way to satisfy temptation is to yield to it.

My thoughts:
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You can all throw tomatoes at me for not loving this story :( This is my second full length Reid and I didn’t like either. I did listen to both so I’m going to try reading my next one and see if it was a narrator disconnect. For me, I just wasn’t into the story telling and I didn’t connect emotionally with much of anything in this story.

Adorable things happened. The characters were likable. But my heart was just not engaged in any way. I didn’t care about it and I’m sad about that. I can see why so many loved this story but overall I just was ready to be done. So I think it was just something personal for me going on, and nothing you should judge the book by.

Something that did frustrate me was how the heroine seemed to be perfect at everything. I loved the fencing plot line – she was fabulous at fencing and so good she took her brother’s place in the duel that starts the whole story. I loved that. But then she continued to be amazing at literally everything. She can take on highwaymen. She can beat the best chess master in the world. She is a gambling genius and increases her gambling earnings by 3000% the first time she tries. It was all tiring for me. I didn’t connect with the hero either. I think, I was told a lot of maybe how I should feel and what they were doing but I didn’t get to feel it. The sex too wasn’t emotional for me at all. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. 

Content warnings:

- Remembrance of physical abuse in heroine’s previous relationship
- Carriage abduction and threats of violence from highwaymen

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

- I could have missed some scenes, I tend to be lazy with audio

Safe sex: the hero pulls out

 
35% - kisses
48% - 🔥 kisses and fingering for her
55% - kiss
60% - 🔥 kisses, missionary (pulls out)
62% - against a wall sex (it’s pretty close to the last scene)
63% - remembrance of additional scenes
67% - kisses
72% - 🔥 oral for her, wall sex
92% - 🔥 her on top
99% - kiss
100% - starts a sex scene