Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋 (Bennett’s scenes are a touch on the poetic and emotional side versus explicit)
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥🔥 (some are on the lighter side but I counted them all)
Humor: Yes, a bit
Perspective: Third person from both hero and heroine

Should I read in order?
You’ll get more enjoyment of the series in order, but I don’t think it’s necessary here. There’s some minor mention of Hazel and her husband, the characters from book 1, and Poppy has some minor page time in that book but nothing you would be missing if you picked this one up alone!

Basic plot:
When Poppy finds a man washed up on her beach that thinks he’s a duke, she’s thinking he hit his head a bit too hard. But they strike a bargain and band together to solve a mystery.

Give this a try if you want:
- Beach side country setting in England – Get out of London!
- Fisherwoman heroine
- Duke hero
- Bargain – the hero is willing to pay the heroine an obscene amount of money to shelter him and hide his identity while he tries to figure out who attempted to do him in
- Masquerade
- One bed
- The couple working together to solve a bit of a mystery
- Low angst
- Protective hero that’s all in from the beginning


Ages:
- Heroine is 23, didn’’t see hero but would guess late 20s to early 30s

My thoughts:
This story has so much sweetness in it and I liked it more than the first book in the series.

Our hero, Keane, is very dependable and protective. He’s all in for the heroine basically upon meeting her and I really loved that aspect to it. I enjoyed the two of them working together to solve the mystery of who is trying to hurt Keane.

But, somehow this book was super low on the feels for me. That might be because I love angst and this was lacking that a bit. It also had some villain activity and I’m just bored with villains. I want only romance all the time. Of course this won’t bother most people and is nothing wrong with the book.

Quotes/thoughts:

“Keane.” He recognized the sensuously husky, slightly irritated voice at once and pried one eye open. She stood a yard away, holding a lantern in the space between them. The thick auburn braid that hung over her shoulder glowed like a gemstone, and her simple cotton dress was the color of springtime grass.
“Let me guess,” he said wryly. “This is your beach too.”
“No.” She tossed a scuffed, water-logged boot onto the ground beside him. “But I found this tangled in my net. I thought you might need it.
“How’d you know where to find me?”
“It was hard to miss your trail. It looks as though someone dragged you across the beach by your hair.”
---
“Precisely,” he said frowning. “The question is, how do we determine his whereabouts on the night I was attacked?”
Poppy gaped at him. “I thought you had a plan.”
“I did. My plan was to come here, with you, and figure out what to do.”
---
Heat crept up her neck, and she resisted the impulse to look away. “What am I, Keane?”
He gazed at her and rubbed his chin, as though he was seriously pondering the question. “You,” he said at last, “are a beam of sunlight. A breath of air. A force of nature.”

---
I found this so refreshing in a hero!!!!

“You trust her?”
“Absolutely,” she said, emphatic.
“Then I trust her, too.”

---
Yaaaaaay I always love a hero protecting the heroine!

And then, the earl was suddenly yanked backward. Someone grabbed him by the jacket and spun him around.
“Hawking?” Tottenshire spat.
“In the flesh,” Keane said, seething.
 

Content warnings:

- Remembered scenes and on page scenes of attempted murder of the hero
- Mention of the hero’s father dying at the age of 50 (they did not have a good relationship) two years ago
- Mention of the hero losing his nanny when she died in childbirth (and lost the baby too)
- The hero is taken advantage of by a woman that pretends to be her sister the hero had feelings for. She initiates a sexual relationship with him even though she’s married to someone else
- Heroine and her family has grief over the loss of her mom
- Sexual and physical harassment of the heroine by a villain
- Suicide risk of a side characterr

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
34% - kisses
46% - 🔥 hero bathes the heroine, kisses, oral for her, followed by a hand job for him
56% - 🔥 kisses, missionary sex on the beach
80% - 🔥 kisses, blow job (incomplete and brief), her on top
96% - 🔥 kisses, laying spooning in bed sex (it’s pretty short)