Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥 (There’s more scenes that are on the shorter/poetic side so this might feel hotter to you with more scenes :) )
Humor: Yes! Niven’s writing is really delightful in the humor woven throughout.
Perspective: Third person from the hero, heroine and some side characters including Roger Siddons and the Marchioness of Painswick but these are at the beginning and don’t happen again.
Cliffhanger: No
Epilogue: Yes, it starts 3 days later but continues over the next weeks and months later

Should I read in order?
It’s not totally necessary, but fun all the same! (You can get the prequel novella as a newsletter grab! And book 1 is Convergence of Desire and is delightful)

Basic plot:
Catherine thinks her love filled days are over, but she can’t get the friend of her daughter’s suitor out of her mind...

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (1818/1819)
- widow heroine (5 years widowed)
- Marquess hero, heir to a dukedom
- age gap (older heroine)
- instalust
- spy/government work
- actress heroine
- tall hero/short heroine

there is a scene where he has her stand on a stool so he can fuck her standing up and she’s still almost too short 

- epistolary siege, as the hero coins it
- touch of class difference
- 

emotionally strong hero (hero cries) 

- hero loves first
- medium steam – at least 2 full scenes, plus extra (some I didn’t count but you might!)

Ages:
- Hero is 28, heroine is 45 I believe (”You should know that I last played Viola when I was nineteen. The company had difficulty finding a short-enough man to play my twin Sebastian and make the role-swapping and mistaken identity convincing. That was the end of my time in the part. You were two then, were you not?”

First line:
There were two sets of the plans.

My thoughts:
There is so much delight to be found in Niven’s prose! I really love her writing style. It’s just special and unlike anything else I’ve read. Something about her actually gives me Mary Balogh vibes, but also not. She’s just really fun!

These characters in this novel were really delightful. James has been involved in government work, but when he meets Catherine, he just falls for her so fast. And my heart wrenched for his chase of her and Catherine’s returning blossoming love. Catherine struggles with believing in being worthy of a relationship at all, but especially with a man so young. I enjoy age gap romance, especially with an ‘older’ heroine.

The thing I struggled with in this romance, and this is purely a personal thing for me, was I wanted them together more. I felt at the beginning I was waiting forever for them to be on page together (from about 3% to 14% they are apart) and when they were together I enjoyed it but then they would part again. They had a lot of time apart in this book (I counted and they are on page/writing letters to each other for about 58% of the book. This probably won’t bother anyone else I’m just...it’s my thing. I need them together. If they aren’t, I whine about it. I think I noticed it more too because some of the time they were together was spent in dangerous situations or with other people present and I really just wanted the two of them to be able to focus on each other.

Niven has some interesting author notes at the end of her book that are really fun. I also appreciated

that they couldn’t decide what to name their baby. My husband and I had a similar issue and my son actually had ‘no name’ written on all his Christmas presents by my mom because she was so impatient for us to pick one haha. (We didn’t wait as long as our hero and heroine though). 

I’ll definitely be completing this series because I really loved Dr. Andrews is book 1 and am super curious how it will go! Also, very VERY excited for her new series to be released!

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:

Twenty-eight. Older than she had thought but still far, far, far too young.
Far too young. Far too silly. Far too drunk.
And she was far, far, far too aroused by him. Already, she could hear the alarms in her head.
 

Content warnings:

- death of family
- remembrance of an abusive relationship and facing said abuser
- fire, gunshot wounds, and death on page
- suicide

Author listed content warnings 

steamy sexual material, course language, physical and sexual assault 

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
5% - the start of a scene between James and another woman
19% - heroine masturbation (a bit short)
24% - kiss
45% - 🔥 kisses at the inn, blow job (incomplete), fingering for her, missionary followed after by a her on top scene
59% - 🔥 her standing on a stool and holding a bedpost followed by a fingering scene
80% - missionary (a bit short and lacking on details)
90% - kisses and sex – a more vague and poetic scene than explicit

 


Amount of time mains are together on page (with overcounting a bit and including letters written to each other)

 
1%-3% 3
14%-18% 5
23%-26% 4
28%-34% 7
39%-42% 4
44%-49% 6 (29%)
53%-59% 7 (36%)
61% 1 (37%)
64%-65% 2 (39%)
70%-74% 5 (44%)
79%-92% 14 (58%)