Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥
Humor: A touch
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine, as well as some scenes from Valencia and Cordelia (the heroine’s friend and daughter)
Cliffhanger: No
Epilogue? Yes, 11 months later

Should I read in order?
This is the first book of Jordan’s new series, The Scandalous Ladies of London

Basic plot:
Tru is trapped in an unsatisfying marriage. The only thing that she lives for are her children, but her can’t stop seeing her daughter’s suitor in the wrong light.

Give this a try if you want:
- Late Regency (1821)
- Both mains are parents
- Class difference – heroine is a countess and hero is a working class hotel owner
- Taboo – heroine is married when she meets the hero (view spoiler)
- (view spoiler)
- Instalust
- Working class hero – he owns various inns and hotels
- Lower steam – I believe there’s only 1 full scene

Ages:
- Heroine is 37, hero is 33

My thoughts:
So, I do love the idea behind this one. I enjoy the thought of a group of established women finding their HEAs. These are women in their 30s and not new debutantes. Many are parents of young adults. It felt like a totally new read from my usual plot set ups.

But this one ended up not working for me. Basically, the hero felt rather skeevy to me and I never grew to love him. I felt bad for Tru and thought she deserved better. Also the steam was a bit disappointing in this one, but I do think it fit what was happening in the plot.

Specifics about what didn’t work for me – these are specific things that happen in the book and are spoilers!

So the hero never wanted to marry and had an affair with someone out in the stable because he couldn’t bring her into the inn. He cared too much that his mother slept there. But he did the right thing and got married when she got pregnant. This is the background we’re given on the hero. It just feels like he’s not the best from this. We find out he has a daughter too but she doesn’t have any page time so we don’t really know their relationship. It seems like it is important for him to find someone to help her with society and nurturing, but I wasn’t getting fabulous single dad vibes from either. So getting to know im, I feel like he didn’t have anything to offer my heart.

Then there’s a preview section of him looking for a wife and already sets his sites on Cordelia. But still he propositions Tru after he’s made this decision. Of course he doesn’t know who she is but he’s obviously fine with having fucks whenever and with whoever he wants.

THEN when he meets them all he says hes going to go forth with courting her daughter but still baits Tru. This is where he just couldn’t recover for me. It was like he found it funny, silly, endearing to get her all riled up. She’s protecting her child from a life with a skeevy man. She is currently living it – has been cheated on since the beginning – why wouldn’t she want better for her daughter? Why would she want a guy for her daughter that tried to spend the night with her mother and doesn’t seem to care or feel awkward about it? He was giving me vibes of smirking and basically tapping her on the nose saying ‘you’re so cute when you’re mad’.

As a reader, we know he doesn’t actually plan on pursuing a marriage with her daughter. But the fact that he found it enjoyable to basically torture her with this to make her emotional (so what, she would kiss him again? Bleh) just made me dislike him so much. He recovered a bit in the second half of the book but honestly it was just too little, too late. These two get together physically at almost 80% of the book and I’m still feeling like he’s using her. Some books I don’t believe in the HEA and this is one, sadly. I felt like Tru deserved so much better than she got.

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:

“Do not laugh at me, sirrah.”
He sobered. “My apologizes. It only strikes me that interest is such a mild word for the feelings you are inspiring in me.”
“What word would you use then?”
“Something not nearly as polite.”
Oh, he was indeed a rake.
He leaned forward then, all levity absent from his features as he looked her over solemnly. “What is the word for wanting to remove you from this place...take you to the nearest bed and strip you of that gown?”
---
She marveled that she could feel things everywhere when only their mouths melded. Every nerve ending was on fire, vibrating and singing and shooting sensation directly to the aching center between her legs.
It was too much.
One of her hands was still pinned against the wall. Her fingers curled, lacing with his. Her nails dug into his skin...clinging to him rather than shoving him away.
He growled into her mouth and opened his hand wider, locking, fusing, their palms together. Their hands, like their mouths, were bonded, and she relished every bit of it – the hard press of his length against her, the sink of him into her softness.

Content warnings:

- Scenes of an unhealthy marriage
- Infidelity – (view spoiler)
- Heroine slaps the hero for saying something inappropriate
- Death (view spoiler)
- Spousal abuse (view spoiler)

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
Safe sex? No? I don’t believe the hero pulls out the first time and she’s still married
Pg 146 – kiss
Pg 194 – kiss
Pg 214 – kiss
Pg 226 – kiss (during a house party game)
PG 229 – 🔥 kisses, fingering for her, missionary
Total pages: 281 (on my pdf version)