Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑 
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥
Humor: Yes
Perspective: Third person for both characters (fairly balanced)

Should I read in order?
It’s not totally necessary, but I think at least reading the second book in the series prior to this one will be helpful. (The Virgin and the Viscount) There is quite a bit of character overlap between those two, and some events are referenced that happen in the second book.

Basic plot:
Emma is stuck. Widowed and caretaker to her brother, she is under her step son’s control and desperately trying to find a way out. She latches onto the possibility of being able to sail to America and sell her father’s books in exchange for helping teach the newly titled Beau how to interact with society.

Give this a try if you want:
- Instructor/student feel – heroine gives lessons to the hero about propriety
- Lower steam – one full scene, plenty of kisses and some fade to black/alluded to scenes
- Regency time period (1813)
- London setting
- Nuerodivergent side character – heroine’s younger brother is autistic (content warning for some ableism/hurtful comments)
- Marriage of convenience (more of necessity and it occurs about halfway through)

Ages:
- Heroine is 23, hero is 27/28


My thoughts:
Gosh there is something about Charis Michaels writing that just stuns me. I have to pause after certain passages just thinking about how utterly poetic and beautiful it is. I love her writing, so so much.

This book was my favorite of the series. I read the first two awhile ago so I can’t recall as many details, but in this one I felt the tension more, I cared about the characters more, and I thought it was more romantic.

Something Michaels does amazingly well is rescue plots. They are so satisfying to me, and I love that her heroine’s absolutely aren’t helpless. They aren’t waiting for something to save them. I adore her heroines, I always am left wanting to be best friends with them. But she also has these wonderful heroes that step up and assist the heroine, support her, befriend her, and help. They don’t take over so the heroine feels she’s left without choices.

In this one, Emma is being monitored by her step son – he is hoping to get his hands on their fortune. She takes care of her lovely brother Teddy, who is the heir to their family’s fortune made from selling books. Teddy doesn’t talk much, is fascinated by birds and books, and doesn’t like loud noises or areas like balls. He’s an absolute dear and their relationship really touched my heart.

Beau is our hero that never wanted the title, but is being given it anyway after finding his brother is illegitimate. He does a lot of growing in this story. A lot. And parts of it were a touch painful, possibly even disappointing, but so raw and real. And he comes through in the end, when I was getting a bit worried about it all.

I do think this book could have been cut a bit. It had a decent amount going on it it and I think with a bit less of that and a little bit deeper focus on other parts it would have been perfection. As it is, I really enjoyed it. Her kisses and tension are some of my favorite.


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

Just beautiful

“Beau,” she said. “Either you enjoy me or you don’t, but I think I deserve more than the fraught, empty excuses with which you ply your other conquests. If my inexperience is unappealing to you, say it. I understand -”
He groaned and yanked her to him. She dropped her hat. “Your inexperienced,” he hissed, “is bloody irresistible to me. Stop talking for five seconds and feel the evidence of how much I want you.” He kissed hard. “Even through the layers of that terrible gray skirt - “
“Your repeated insults of my attire are as rude as they are unnecessary. I’ve told you I have no choice in the mat-”
He cut her off with a roll of his hips, one quick, meaningful thrust, and she gasped. Her eyes flew to his face.
“Do not tell me I don’t want you, Emma,” he said quietly into her ear. “I have wanted you since the first time you lifted that bloody veil and blinked at me with those big brown eyes. I lie awake at night, fantasizing about all the ways I might possibly contrive to have you.” He rolled his hips again, and she sucked in a breath.
He swallowed hard. “You are wrong about the other women. I’ll tell you, and freely so, that I love everything about the way you look and feel. Your hair, your mouth, your eyes. But I have known beautiful women before. With you, Emma...with you, there is more.” He paused, breathing in the scent of her hair. It smelled like vanilla and lemons and her.
She made a whimpering sound, and he dragged his beard across her jaw and kissed her again. When he came up for breath, he continued, forcing out the words. “I am not put off by your innocence. I am struggling to protect it.”

I adore Beau

“I was thinking that we might suggest a meal together in honor of the...occassion,” Emmaline tried, pushing the curtain aside to look out the window. “It’s too late in the day for a wedding breakfast, obviously, but it was such a collective effort, wasn’t it? It feels almost rude to remove ourselves now.”
“No meal,” he said, sitting back on the opposite seat. “It’s not the slightest bit rude. Come here.”
Emmaline dropped the curtain and looked up. “You’re not hungry?”
“Yes, I am, in fact. Quite hungry. I said, come here.”

Content Warnings:

Almost drowning (on page)
Judgments against mental ability
Risk of being forced into mental institution against will
Fire with injuries remembered

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

Pg 132 – kiss
Pg 186 – kiss
Pg 210 – kiss
Pg 274 – kisses
Pg 288 – sex scene, missionary
Pg 310 – fade to black sex
Pg 354 – fade to black sex