Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞 (the paper flowers were really romantic to me)
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥
Humor: Yes
Perspective: third person perspective from both hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? slow to medium
When mains are first on page together: It takes a touch – about 11% in
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever
Epilogue: No
Format: voluntarily read an advanced reader copy through NetGalley in e-book form
Why I chose this book: I love Lorret’s writing and want to read all her books! She has a lot of my fave romances
Mains: This is a M/F romance between a cishet hero and heroine

Should I read in order?
Ideally yes, because the family is adorable and you get a feel for the whole family structure and their love for drama – there are some sections with mentions of previous events from prior books as well as page time with the other couples. BUT overall this romance does stand alone and I don’t think you will lose anything from their story necessarily to pick it up alone.

Basic plot:
Jasper and Althea keep meeting in clumsy encounters, but Althea quickly sees there’s more than meets the eye after a night with a highwayman.

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency?
- author/playwright heroine
- viscount hero
- highwayman
- pets – hero has a dog
- hero makes paper flowers
- he’s her muse
- size difference – this hero is huge
- secret identity
- heroine’s mother performs a play about Lord Turgid and Lady Content using puppets for sex education 😆
- celibate hero
- medium steam – 3ish scenes with a slower burn

Ages:
- hero is 24, didn’t catch heroine but would guess similar, or a bit younger

First line:
Althea Hartley didn’t need a miracle.

My thoughts:
So, I did like this one. But I just felt like it wasn’t as good as the other two in the series, or the many other of Lorret’s that I have adored.

It’s still funny, sweet, romantic, and heart pulling and I definitely recommend – but for me personally I felt like a lot of their interactions felt like the same thing the first 3-4 meetings and this made their relationship feel more stagnant and repetitive to me. I loved this more unique hero – he steps back a bit from the heroine, definitely letting her take the lead in many situations. But I found I wanted him more motivated and not always running away from her.

I also wasn’t super sold on the ending. I wish it had been just a touch different in a few ways.

Still I will always give Lorret a chance and this one was still a run read! It’s just not my favorite of the series.

Few random reading stats for this author
# of books read: 11
Average rating from me: 4.36 stars
Favorite book: maaaaybe Ten Kisses to Scandal? She has no many good ones.

Quotes any typos are my own! I am bad with typos, I apologize

“I must say, your misfortune is my great fortune,” Chedworth said for the third time that evening...to her breasts.
Her breast offered no reply, but secretly wished they were adorned in porcupine quills that could fire at will.
---
As any proper highwayman out, he masked his identity with a strip of a black silk over half his face. The only thing she could see beneath that broadbrimmed hat was the outline of his mouth and the incipient emergence of a night beard beneath the skin along his chiseled jaw. Below that was a dark neckcloth. And he must have been wearing black shirtsleeves as well because she saw no glimpse of white through the open collar of a caped greatcoat.
He said nothing as he held her against his large body. But she could feel the strong thud of his heart as his breath fanned across her cheek, warm and spicy. His strong hands were positioned beneath her arms in the manner that one would catch a child hurled through the air. And she did, indeed, feel small against him. Fragile, too. He seemed to take additional care to shift his hold to her back as if he feared breaking her.
---
Fast as a whip, the highwayman’s arm shot out. Fist closing around the thick branch, he tossed it aside as if it were nothing more than a twig. Then he took Abernathy by the throat and lifted him to his toes.
Yes, even with the villainous viscount thrashing and clawing, the highwayman held her with sureness, keeping her from harm. In the process, his arm had snaked completely around her waist and she was pressed so fully against him that her face ended up an inch away from the crook of his shoulder.
Well, when in Rome...she thought, and gave in to the impulse.
“Are you” – he turned his head, the stubble along his jaw rasping softly against her cheek and she went still, midbreath, like a rabbit caught eating the lettuces – “unharmed?”
She exhaled in relief, glad he didn’t ask if she’d been sniffing him like fresh linens on the clothesline.
---
Beside him, she shifted, arranging the fall of her skirt in a way that brought her arm closer to him. Her sleeve brushed his. He drew in a sharp breath, tasting her delicate floral perfume on his tongue. It made his mouth water.
His hands had been fisted over his thighs as if in self-preservation from the moment he sat down. But now a strange sort of madness bade him to open his palm, to slide his hand a fraction closer to that fall of blue silk. Unable to stop there, he arched one finger the slightest degree and brushed a knuckle against the fabric.
---
Her brow furrowed in perplexity. “How did you know my name?”
The boy was halfway through the door when he tossed over his shoulder, “You’re the only girl he ever talks about.”
---
Jasper knew she was sparking. He recognized the sounds by the way the consonants and vowels connected to form words. The only problem was, he forgot what words were.
Most of the blood in his brain had descended en masse to southern climes. And the small amount that remained in his skull was busy conjuring a vision of painting her entire body with jam then slowly licking it off. Very, very slowly.
“Mmm...this cheese is heavenly. St. James? Are you making paper flowers in your mind?”
---
He searched her gaze. “Then what happens?”
“Then it feels like the whole word just” – her breath hitched when he reached up and his fingertips dragged softly against her cheek, tucking an errant tendril behind her ear – “opens up, and I feel…”
His nose slid along hers and he closed his eyes as if the sensation needed to be savored.
---
Thea forgot that she wasn’t particularly fond of kissing.
As St. James moved his mouth over hers, she forgot about a lot of things, like how to breathe. How to think.
---
A pent-up exhale left him as he turned his head. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She sniffed. “I’m not looking at you in any particular way.”
“Aye, you are. Like I’ve burned your entire village to the ground, kicked your dog and now I’m just going to drive away and leave you to live in a potato sack beneath the bridge.”
---
Thea wasn’t entirely convinced. Truth be told, she’d assumed her mother had been exaggerating the size of Lord Turgid for shock value. Now she wondered if she’d minimized it to spare her daughters from the truth.
 

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

- narcissistic family member that is physically and sexually abusive to characters on page
- heroine is recovering from a toxic relationship where the man was very mentally and emotionally abusive to her
Author content warnings? None listed

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? 

  The risk of pregnancy is there and thoughts of possible pregnancy but no children or pregnancy on page 

41% - kisses
58% - kisses
67% - 🔥kisses, fingering for her
73% - 🔥kisses that eventually leads to oral for her, missionary
”So sweet,” he murmured, his eyes drifting closed, and added as if to himself, “all mine.”
81% - implied start of a bj
83% - 🔥kisses, her on top