I picked this up from my local half-price bookstore because I thought the cover was gorgeous and it was only a dollar. I can only say that I liked this book because the romance just didn't really do it for me. I think this is because the romance started out historically correct, rather than pandering to my modern romantic sensibilities. I can't help it. I want the romance (intellectual and emotional) to come before all the smexiness.

Julianne and Michael are brought together by an arranged marriage, and they start their familial duty of producing an heir for the duchy as soon as possible. Through their entanglements in bed and the pillow talk after, they realize that it just might be possible to have that long-sought-but-rarely-found sort of marriage within the aristocracy: a happy one.

What I found interesting was that both characters came from happy marriages, yet they didn't expect to have such luck themselves. I also kept looking for the reason why the book was titled "His Sinful Secret," and while the answer wasn't what I expected, I wish there had been a little more punch to it.

I can always count on Mary Jo Putney for an entertaining read. In this book, Jocelyn has a deadline to marry by the time she turns 25, or she won't get her inheritance. Her father made the stipulation upon his death because he knew Jocelyn would never turn to marriage willingly. Something in her past just made the whole idea an inconvenience at best, repulsive at worst.

Well, now that the wars with Napoleon are over, Jocelyn comes up with a brilliant, if ethically amoral, idea. Marry a dying major so she will be a widow by the time the deadline is up. Everything goes to plan, until the dying major's irate and protective younger sister show up. Oh, and then there's the fact that the captain doesn't die.

I think it's Putney's heroes that make me love her writing. Here we have David, who is very good at what he does, killing people efficiently to save his own skin. But the hardships of war didn't dull his sensitivities toward a Jocelyn, beautiful woman who shies away from marriage the way a horse shies from a snake. He might have been a major, but David is a wonderful beta hero who kept me smiling and wishing he were real so I could take him home to meet my mother.

I devoured this book. The chemistry between Emma and Nicholas was charming, scintillating, and sexy. Emma has the predicament of having to teach her students about their wifely duties. As a young widow, one might assume she knows a thing or two about this. And no doubt she would, if she were the widow she claimed to be. Enter the hero, Lord Nicholas "Bedchambers" Chambers, the lord next door with a penchant for artistry. Emma turns to him for instruction and guidance, getting that and more.

This was a great debut book. I feel as if Jane Eyre had been written today, it would have been this book. We have a spunky heroine who is determined to do right by her students, and a brooding lord who, while not having a crazy wife locked in the attic, has a few secrets of his own.

I think what I loved most about this book was that even though Nicholas could have completely taken advantage of Emma, he always gave her a choice. Now, he could have been a true gentleman and not required Emma to pose for him, but then the story wouldn't have been nearly as interesting. Talk about foreplay... the slow undressing of the heroine for months built up the tension between them like crazy.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. The story began slowly, and the description sometimes got in the way of the plot, I felt. At its heart, this is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. We have the beast, Jason Cameron, a elemental wizard who got too big for his britches and tried a spell he didn't know how to uncast. We have the beauty, an heiress who was working on her PhD when her father died and left her penniless.

Though the story moved slowly, I kept reading it because I loved Rosalind, the heroine. She doesn't know her own beauty, relies on her glasses to see anything, and is much smarter than she already looks. She is intrepid, clever, insightful, and sensitive. She's also bossy, which I love.

A decent retelling of a familiar and well-loved fairy tale, I wish there had been a little less world-building and a little more relationship-building.

While I managed to finish this book, I just didn't enjoy it as much as [b:The Bargain|115817|The Bargain (Regency #1)|Mary Jo Putney|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171714874s/115817.jpg|111539]. The hero and heroine are trying to hurt each other even as they fight their feelings for each other and struggle with the memories of their past romance. The way they hurt one another in the past was a series of traumatic events for the heroine that I just couldn't believe anyone would be able to get past it. I wanted to like this book more, but as it stands, it just gets an "OK" from me.

Favorite passage:

Maggie glanced away, not wanting to deal with what lay beneath [Robin's] teasing tone. "Before I return to England, I'm going to acquire an entire wardrobe of gowns that come up to my throat. It's tedious to have men always talking to one's chest rather than one's face."

I really enjoyed this book! I received a free copy ages ago with the promise to review it, and I had the chance on a cross-country flight. I finished this novella in the time it took to fly from Ohio to California, and I was hooked from the first page where the main character doesn't know who he is. Nolan impressed me with her characterization; this book didn't read like a novella and I felt I understood who the characters were, their relationships and history very well.

Next time I'm in the mood for a paranormal, Nolan is at the top of the list.

Once again, another fun read from Candace Camp. I love her stories because her heroines aren't helpless; they tend to be a little older, a little caustic, with lots of spunk. Irene is no exception: she won't get married because she doesn't want to "belong" to a man the way her mother belonged to her abusive father.

The hero in this book is great, too. Gideon doesn't really want to get married, he's doing it because he's expected to. The twist on the familiar trope is that he's marrying so his children, should he have any, will have more legitimacy, being that he has been the lost heir for the last, oh, twenty years. When Gideon meets Irene, of course they argue. He's rich because he worked his way up from being an abandoned child in London. She's rich because she was born to it. Their sensibilities, however, are very similar, even if their modes of expressing them are different.

Read this book for a hero who looks bad but isn't, a heroine who tells herself she won't ever marry, and a little mystery about how the hero came to be the lost heir returned.

This was an entertaining read, but I felt like the modern sensibilities of the author went a little too far in the main characters, who were very much not of their era.

On the one hand, this book made me laugh, there were some touching moments from the heroine's perspective, the hero suffers bad injuries in the line of duty, the action scenes were well-paced, the love scenes were scintillating... all of this was compelling enough to keep me reading to find out what happened.

On the other hand, the note from the author at the beginning of the book had me looking forward to the heroine using her powers, which she does almost never. When using her powers, reactions from the hero and his friend are so nonchalant that I was shocked. They just accepted it, with very little questioning! I felt there would have been something from men who spied on behalf of the queen. Fear, worry, wondering what all she could do, wondering how much influence she had over them, over their families, over the investigation...

This was before the Salem Witch Trials, yet after the witch trials of the continent. I mean, even people today will raise an eyebrow if they hear someone say, "I'm Wiccan." So unfortunately, I have to give this book three stars rather than four. Love conquers a lot, but in this case, it was just a little too easy.