Overall: 3.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥
Humor: Yes, a decent amount, especially with the side characters

Should I read in order?
It would be pleasant to read in order, as characters from the 2 previous books do make appearances. There are a few short scenes with this hero in the prior books too. Still, you would probably be fine picking this one up on its own.

Basic plot:
Brandon is determined to find out what’s going on with the plot to take some of his land by moving land borders. He goes undercover to the map makers house and applies for a footman position to collect information.

Give this a try if you want:
- I’m assuming this is Regency around 1816-1818? I didn’t see a date but I have book 2 marked as 1816
- Medium steam – there’s 3 full scenes and plenty of kisses, but it didn’t quite hold the heat of some of her other novels I’ve read
- Diversity lifted up – an Arab hero that shares his culture, family and food customs throughout the story – I also loved that the heroine had Arab heritage with her grandparents
- Class difference/forbidden love feel – the hero is the heroine’s footman at first, but really the heroine is a tradeswoman and the hero a marquess
- Secret identity trope
- Working women – heroine is a cartographer


My thoughts:
Sadly, this book had a few plot devices that really aren’t my thing, and they ended up bothering me a bit. But I liked this book more than book 2 (Book 1 is still my favorite of the series). I am loving the general world building here and the family members interacting together.

In this story, there are quite a few secrets going on. And the heroine is with her husband (who is NOT the hero) for a good 30% of the book before things start to unravel (and it wasn’t how I was expecting it to go! So that was refreshing, in a way).

Brandon is being tricked out of some important land when a map is commissioned on the property lines – there’s been some strategic changes that remove a water sources important for his tenants and property. Instead of causing a scene, he goes undercover and applies to be a footman in the house of the mapmaker. It leads to some funny scenarios, like the heroine having to brush out her own skirts after he does it because as a Marquess, he has no idea how to do footman duties.

Rose has such a unique talent and career – she’s a  cartographer and draws and creates maps. Of course in this world run by men, she cannot even claim her talents as her own and has even turned control of her shop over to her husband for the most part.

I loved Rose in the beginning. She was strong and I so was rooting for her to gain independence from her husband and be able to fully embrace her talents and not have to hide them.

As the story went on though, I was weighed down. Waiting a very long time for the drama with her husband to be resolved diminished the romance between Brandon and Rose for me. There are a lot of secrets. And hurt, and hiding, and accusing. And I thought it was unfair, really both of them made bad decisions but it just drug on a bit too long for me. Rose’s character kind of took a turn I wasn’t expecting. She spent a lot of time feeling sorry for herself and angry at Brandon and it got frustrating after awhile (I’m all for the needed breakdown after an event like that – she just seemed like such a go-getter though I wasn’t expecting this from her character I guess)

I was also really disappointed in the intimate scenes here. I’m not sure what happened for me, but there was something about them that just didn’t have that passion and emotional grab that I found in the first book.

I adore the cover and think it’s lovely.



Here’s a few random parts that I wanted to note from the book

“As my wife’s footman,” Roger addressed Alex, “you will attend to her needs.”
Rose sense Alex shifting behind her. “Yes, sir.”

*Wiggles eyebrows

It broke my heart that it was mentioned how Brandon’s mother didn’t speak Arabic to her children and tried to do what she could to ‘erase’ their heritage so they could better fit in. So so sad, I think about all the culture and history lost in these experiences and it just hurts.

This I wasn’t in love with – sorry that just sounds sad!

He put the map aside and took her into his arms. “I hope you bury me.”
“What? Why would I do that?”
He kissed her nose. “It’s something my mother used to say to my father. But I never truly understood its meaning until now, with you.”
“What does it mean?”
“Literally, that I hope you outlive me so that I will never have to know the pain of living in this world without you.”
“That is lovely.” Tenderness shone in her eyes.

Content Warnings:

Some mentions/remembrances of prejudice/racism
Infidelity (not by the hero, but committed against the heroine with her husband)
Lying/hiding things from a spouse
Mention of fire happening with injuries

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

10% - an alluded to scene that heroine mastubates
28% - chaste forehead kiss
45% - kiss
46% - kisses and breast play
51% - 🔥 kisses, missionary sex (heroine has a bit of shame here from her experiences with Roger – he (Roger/her ex-husband) implied she was too forward in bed)
54% - 🔥 kisses, sex
57% - kisses
63% - 🔥 kisses, oral orgasm for her, her on top sex
83% - kisses
96% - sex (on the short side and incomplete, fades to black at the end)