Review – Duke of Midnight by Elizabeth Hoyt

Oh boy did I fall behind in November, but I had some fantastic (and some mundane) adventures during all that radio silence, and I read a lot of books.  One of those books was Elizabeth Hoyt’s Duke of Midnight, which filled me with happy.

Cover image, Duke of Midnight by Elizabeth Hoyt

The blurb, courtesy of Goodreads…

WHEN A MASKED MAN . . .

Twenty years ago Maximus Batten witnessed the brutal murders of his parents. Now the autocratic Duke of Wakefield, he spends his days ruling Parliament. But by night, disguised as the Ghost of St. Giles, he prowls the grim alleys of St. Giles, ever on the hunt for the murderer. One night he finds a fiery woman who meets him toe-to-toe—and won’t back down . . .

MEETS HIS MATCH . . .

Artemis Greaves toils as a lady’s companion, but hiding beneath the plain brown serge of her dress is the heart of a huntress. When the Ghost of St. Giles rescues her from footpads, she recognizes a kindred spirit-and is intrigued. She’s even more intrigued when she realizes who exactly the notorious Ghost is by day . . .

DESIRE IGNITES A DANGEROUS PASSION

Artemis makes a bold move: she demands that Maximus use his influence to free her imprisoned brother-or she will expose him as the Ghost. But blackmailing a powerful duke isn’t without risks. Now that she has the tiger by the tail, can she withstand his ire-or the temptation of his embrace?

Batman pretty much wins when it comes to vaguely creepy masked vigilante characters, right? I mean, he’s a complete package: traumatic yet humanizing back story, honestly-earned grit, determination, physical strength, *almost* super human agility, etc, as well as a dank man cave in which he stores his vigilante gear (hopefully sans nipples) and keeps his body well honed.  That’s loads more compelling than a humanoid alien whose body responds well to earth’s gravity or a scientist who gets bitten by a spider or some dude who finds a magic lantern.

Duke of Midnight is Elizabeth Hoyt’s historical romance nod to Batman canon, and it is equally compelling.

As the sixth (sixth!) book in her Maiden Lane series, I expected it to feel a bit tired, but it isn’t.  Actually, I got the feeling reading it that Hoyt has been looking forward to telling this story for quite a while, and her excitement in (finally) writing it translates well to the reader.  The characters are interesting and the story is as gripping as you’d expect a superhero story to be.

In fact, there were only a couple of things that I was a little bit bummed about (and one thing I was a lot bummed about):

1. One of my favorite things about Hoyt’s novels is that she always weaves a legend throughout the story at the beginning of each chapter.  The legend in this one wasn’t quite as compelling (to me) as previous ones.
2. The ending felt a bit deus ex machina to me.  One of the things that always happens to superheroes is that they’re forced to choose between saving a loved one and saving the masses. Seriously… it’s in like every superhero story.  This book made it just a wee bit too easy on our intrepid hero to win both counts (although I did like how he made his choice so unequivocally…).

Finally, I was a lot bummed about Penelope.  She’s a fairly awful secondary character who was quite unpleasant throughout the previous five books, but I always had a bit of a soft spot for her and held a hope that she’d find her redemption at some point.  After all, even silly, spoiled girls eventually grow up, right? (I’m one of those people who believes even Lydia Bennet, eventually, developed a sense of self-reflection.)  I was, therefore, rather heartbroken to see Penelope utterly outdo all her former awfulness in an epic display of poor character.

Maybe it’s not too late — maybe Penelope can still redeem herself — but it made me sad.  I hate how women in fiction (even fiction written by women) are so often cast as either good or evil, and I liked how Penelope was a blend… too selfish to be truly good but too good-hearted to be truly evil.  But after the way she behaves at the end of this book, her blend seems skewed towards the evil…

But, hey! That’s just me.  All told, I had a blast reading the book and, though I haven’t talked about it at all in this review, I loved the romance between Maximus and Artemis, loved that Artemis was his equal in more ways than one, and I loved that the narrative didn’t ignore the ways in which they were unequal.  Finally, I liked that they got to make a happy ending of it.  (If a man had written it, Artemis would have been blown to bits so that Maximus could be super sad and continue being a vigilante. Thank God for Elizabeth Hoyt!)

Duke of Midnight was released on October 15, 2013 as an e-book and paperback by Forever.  For more information about the book, please click on the cover image above to visit its page on Goodreads.  For information on Elizabeth Hoyt, please check out her website or Twitter.

*FTC Disclosure – I received an e-galley of this book from Forever via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*

Review, author interview, and giveaway – Lord of Darkness by Elizabeth Hoyt

Cover image, Lord of Darkness by Elizabeth Hoyt

I’ve mentioned a few times how much I enjoy Elizabeth Hoyt’s books.  I dig the Georgian setting (with modern sensibilities), the less-than-perfect characters, the ethical questions that are explored.  I abso-freaking-lutely adore the way Hoyt arranges the story so that it weaves around a legend that introduces the book’s main themes–and that those themes differ in each book.  (I hadn’t realized it before, but those legends, which are told throughout the chapter introductions), are rather like the Opening Collects of all sorts of liturgies.)  Anyway, I just love these books, and it’s always a fine day when I sit down to read one.

The blurb, courtesy of Goodreads:

When Strangers In The Night

He lives in the shadows. As the mysterious masked avenger known as the Ghost of St. Giles, Godric St. John’s only goal is to protect the innocent of London. Until the night he confronts a fearless young lady pointing a pistol at his head—and realizes she is his wife.

Become Lovers…

Lady Margaret Reading has vowed to kill the Ghost of St. Giles—the man who murdered her one true love. Returning to London, and to the man she hasn’t seen since their wedding day, Margaret does not recognize the man behind the mask. Fierce, commanding, and dangerous, the notorious Ghost of St. Giles is everything she feared he would be—and so much more.

Desire Is The Ultimate Danger

When passion flares, these two intimate strangers can’t keep from revealing more of themselves than they had ever planned. But when Margaret learns the truth—that the Ghost is her husband—the game is up and the players must surrender…to the temptation that could destroy them both.

My review

I love a good courtship story, but I also get a real kick out of stories that are basically about a couple of strangers who are married (or otherwise tied to one another) for whatever reason and have to muddle through the muck and mire of interpersonal nonsense in order to reach their happily ever after.  These stories are refreshing (to me) because (1) the author doesn’t have to spend time dreaming up ways to throw the characters in company–they’re stuck together– (2) they fly counter to the idea that marriage (or even an engagement) is an end unto itself, a guaranteed happily ever after, and (3) they occasionally contain darker or deeper themes than courtship stories (the characters marry, and suddenly the heroine isn’t just herself, she’s also “wife,” and that added identity can make it more difficult for hero and heroine (also husband and wife) to develop a relationship as individuals outside their marital roles.).

Anyway, Lord of Darkness is a fun twist on the strangers married story type.  Not only are Margaret and Godric (got to love a romance hero named Godric, right?) pretty much a pair of married strangers, but they also have to work through an added layer of difficulty–Godric’s secret identity.  Also, both characters show up with the emotional baggage of a former love (Marianne Dashwood would be horrified), and Margaret’s biological clock ticks at a deafening volume.  I love me some deep-seated emotional issues, so I was a very happy reader as Godric and Margaret each worked through their grief and guilt with emotional poignancy and occasional humor.

As usual, my favorite thing about the story was the legend that was told throughout the chapter introductions, calling attention to the book’s main theme (between the characters, at least), the restoring power of love.  Beyond that theme, the book also discussed social justice, vigilantism, depression (in a way) and family, among other things.

I’m not saying that I loved everything about the story.  The intrigue plot felt like a little bit of a redo, and it seemed (to me) as though Margaret took Godric’s news way too well.  But on the whole, I enjoyed this book, and I’m super excited to read the next one.  I highly recommend this series (and all of Hoyt’s books) to anyone looking for romances with interesting characters set in Georgian England (but with modern sensibilities and language) that explore deeper themes than just person A meets person B; they boink.  (Actually, that would be a fun story to read…)

Interview with Elizabeth Hoyt

I want to start by thanking Elizabeth for coming on the blog today to answer some questions about her newest release.  As those of you who have been following this blog for a while know, I’m a bit of a fan, and I clapped my hands like a little girl when I found out I had the opportunity to host an interview with her on the blog and offer a giveaway of her current series.  (Seriously… I was in public when I read the email… my husband was pretty embarrassed.)

1.  RwA: Is there any historical example for the Ghost of St. Giles, a real-life vigilante?  

Hoyt: I don’t know of any real-life examples (there are of course plenty of fictional ones.) I do know about an example of a historical urban legend that worked kind of like the rumors that swirl around the Ghost. In the late nineteenth century several newspapers reported on a figure called Spring-Heeled Jack, a sort of satanic figure with glowing red eyes who popped up and scared people. He was supposed to make inhuman leaps, hence his name.

2.  RwA: When I read this book, I noticed some parallels (possibly of my own imagination) between the individual ghosts and some modern vigilante archetypes.  Did my imagination get away from me, or are there parallels?

Hoyt: You mean fictional characters? My Ghost was definitely influenced by the modern Batman films, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Scaramouche, and an obscure 1970s Disney film, Dr. Syn, Alias the Scarcrow.

3.  RwA: What illness did Clara St. John have?

Hoyt: LOL! No one has ever asked me that. I think she had some type of cancer or tuberculosis.

4.  RwA: Is it difficult to bridge the gap between a modern audience’s understanding of medical matters and a historical setting wherein many medical matters are unknown and mysterious (and in which the practice of medicine bears almost no resemblance to modern procedures)?

Hoyt: Actually, yes. It’s hard because we all know about germ theory and the importance of hygiene, especially around wounds, but really they had no idea back then. A lot of “medicine” consisted of wine or other spirits and herbs that might have no effect at all. But, oddly enough, people did survive horrific wounds that by all rights should’ve killed them either outright or by infection.

I did quite a bit of research into Godric’s arm injury in Lord of Darkness and the bulky, awkward splint the doctor uses is historically accurate—as is the fear of being crippled for life from a simple break. Bonesetting was an important art.

5.  RwA: During this book, some of the male characters have a discussion about a law attempting to regulate the flow of gin in St. Giles.  What is the significance of this law?

Hoyt: Overall there were seven gin acts put into law over twenty years trying to control gin in London during this time—most of which either didn’t have any effect or actually made matters worse. The act the characters are talking about in Lord of Darkness had to do with trying to arrest unlicensed gin sellers. Unfortunately, the act resulted in a lot of poor people who were selling gin out of wheelbarrows and carts getting arrested. It didn’t stop the bigger sellers (who paid bribes) or the overall distribution of gin. And there were several bloody riots with informers being lynched.

6.  RwA: Most readers of historical romance have a familiarity with Regency England as a historical setting. What are some of the cultural differences between the Georgian period in which you set your books and the later Regency period?

Hoyt: The Georgian period is more earthy, more opulent, and slightly freer. Also, lady’s underwear hadn’t been invented yet. 😉

 7.  RwA: Lady Penelope is a delightfully awful character.  Is there any chance that she’ll get to star in her own story?  (I have my fingers crossed… she’s one of my favorite characters.)

No, but never fear, she does get her own happy ending. 😉

Thank you for having me on Reading with Analysis! Readers can learn more about my Maiden Lane series and Lord of Darkness at my website: www.elizabethhoyt.com. You can also chat with me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/ElizabethHoyt), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ElizabethHoytBooks?ref=search&sid=1033016156.428653851), Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16202.Elizabeth_Hoyt), and Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/elizabethhoyt/)

Giveaway epicness!

FOREVER Romance has generously agreed to host this epic giveaway and will send one print copy of all five books in the Maiden Lane series (Wicked Intentions, Notorious Pleasures, Scandalous Desires, Thief of Shadows, and Lord of Darkness) to one lucky commenter, chosen at random (thank you, random.org).  There are, of course, some rules:

1. This giveaway is limited to US residents only (sorry!).
2. You must be 13 years of age or older to enter.
3. You must comment on this post in order to qualify.  Don’t worry, I’ll give you a topic.
4. You must be willing to provide your mailing address in order to receive your copy of the book.
5. The giveaway will run through 11:59 PM pacific time on Thursday, March 14.  I will announce the super lucky winner on Friday, March 15.

Please leave a comment about vigilantism in literature (including comics), movies, and/or real life.  Many of us enjoy stories about dashing heroes taking justice into their own hands, but would you really want to meet one?  What is the draw?  Feel free to ignore my arbitrarily chosen topic in favor of one that is more interesting to you. 🙂

Lord of Darkness was released on February 26, 2013 as a mass market and e-book from Forever.

* FTC Disclaimer – I received an e-galley of this book from Forever through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. *

Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane Series (Book 3)

This post is seriously overdue.  I read these books in August!  Quite a while ago, I wrote a post about the first two books in this series, and now I’m finally attempting to catch up.  My thoughts on book 4 are still to come (I know, right? Bated breath.).  If you’re one of those weird people (oh, you weird people) who cares about things like plot spoilers and surprise reveals, and you’re actually planning on reading these books, I suggest you stop reading this post and get to (but keep in mind that you ought not be put off by book 1 – it’s annoying, but the other books are quite good.  If annoying isn’t your speed: skip book 1 entirely.).

If you’re still reading, I’m just going to assume that you, like yours truly, don’t give two hoots or a holler about surprise reveals with dramatic music.  Or, well, not much.

A publisher’s blurb might actually be helpful here.  From Goodreads:

Can a pirate learn that the only true treasure lies in a woman’s heart?

Widowed Silence Hollingbrook is impoverished, lovely, and kind—and nine months ago she made a horrible mistake. She went to a river pirate for help in saving her husband and in the process made a bargain that cost her her marriage. That night wounded her so terribly that she hides in the foundling home she helps run with her brother. Except now that same river pirate is back . . . and he’s asking for her help.

“Charming” Mickey O’Connor is the most ruthless river pirate in London. Devastatingly handsome and fearsomely intelligent, he clawed his way up through London’s criminal underworld. Mickey has no use for tender emotions like compassion and love, and he sees people as pawns to be manipulated. And yet he’s never been able to forget the naive captain’s wife who came to him for help—and spent one memorable night in his bed . . . talking.

When his bastard baby girl was dumped in his lap—her mother having died—Mickey couldn’t resist the Machiavellian urge to leave the baby on Silence’s doorstep. The baby would be hidden from his enemies and he’d also bind Silence to him by her love for his daughter.

After telling Silence Hollingbrook’s back story over the course of the first two novels of this series, Hoyt finally gave Silence her own story.  She is married at the beginning of the series and just loves her husband all to pieces but feels vaguely disappointed in herself all the time.  She burns dinner and feels awful about it.  She wants fun sexy sexy times with her husband, but he’s somewhat reserved about that sort of thing (only in the dark, dear… Let’s think of England…), and she feels ashamed of her desire.  When her husband’s life and career are threatened after the notorious river pirate steals all the cargo from the ship he (the husband) captains, Silence goes to the pirate’s lair to ask that he return the loot (naive much?).  He agrees, with one stipulation: she must spend the night with him–talking–and must depart on foot the next morning in a disheveled state.  While it appears that she spent the night selling herself in exchange for her husband’s cargo, she didn’t.  Silence naively expects that her husband will believe her when she tells the truth about what happened, but, of course, he doesn’t.  No one does.  Instead, she becomes a ‘fallen woman,’ and her husband, ashamed of himself for not protecting his wife, ashamed of his wife for being defiled and for seeking to protect him (such a reversal of gender roles, that), leaves without ever resolving the issue.  Eventually he dies.

He had to die, right?  If they had experienced a healthy sexual relationship before he left, it might have been interesting to have him do the Angel Clare transformation (I know, I know… Tess of the d’Urbervilles, again?! Yes.  Much as I hated that book, it is an appropriate foil for many romances…) and come back to earn his wife’s trust, once freely given.  But they didn’t, and it wouldn’t be just, in a romance novel world, to  reward an interesting character with unsatisfying sex for the rest of her life.  In the interest of justice, then, Silence gets Mickey O’Connor.

Initially, I loved this book for being an entertaining, quick, and enjoyable read.  Silence’s blend of vulnerability and strength is engaging, and I enjoyed her bond with and attachment to Mary Darling, possibly because I have a child about Mary’s age and possibly because Mary Darling is a very well-written character, for a toddler.  Mickey O’Connor is a fairly solid anti-hero-turned-good-guy, and I thought he had a pretty good back story.  I’m not entirely sure why, but I liked Mickey O’Connor.  If I met someone like him in person, I’m fairly certain I’d take an instant dislike to him, but in what is essentially a fantasy novel, it’s safe to be drawn to personalities you’d normally despise, or, perhaps Mickey just reminds me a bit of myself.  Mickey self-represents as a Machiavellian dickhead, but he’s charming, and he’s a heck of a lot more interesting than Silence’s late husband.   While I expected the chemistry between these two characters to be a source of irritation to me, considering the harm Mickey did Silence in the previous books, I appreciated Hoyt’s take on the situation: her insistence that Mickey did not really harm Silence at all (and he didn’t).  In fact, it was Silence’s untrusting husband, family, society, etc. that actually harmed her.  In other words, all the people who had sworn to love and protect Silence ended up being the ones doing her harm with all their victim shaming.

Months after finishing the book, when I sat down to write a post about it, I discovered a giant pile of ambivalence had replaced my original, unconsidered “yup, I liked it.” response to the book.  I find that I am not completely content that Silence ended up with the man who was the architect of her betrayal.  Mickey acted in a remarkably selfish manner, and Silence ended up hurt.  It’s true that it was her husband and family who actually hurt her, but Mickey, bothered by Silence’s contentment with a life that was somewhat beneath her, acted to test that contentment, and Silence paid the price.  By giving Silence an HEA with Mickey, Hoyt forces me to ask some squirrelly questions about justice that don’t have any clear answers.  Was it really wrong for Mickey to test Silence’s husband’s love?  After all, if the husband had come up to snuff, had actually loved Silence (rather than an idea of ‘wife’), it would all be moot, a non-issue.  But he didn’t come up to snuff, and I’m tempted to blame Mickey for everything that came after, and that’s not right either.  Mickey poked at society’s view towards women, and it’s awful that he did so knowing how it would go, knowing that Silence would be unjustly punished and shamed by everyone, but shouldn’t my ruffled feathers and blame, as a reader, be directed against that society that shames victims and cares more about its wounded sensibilities than it cares about victims and what they might need?

If Silence’s story went a different direction, if she either continued on by herself (a respectable option, I think) or found someone else to love, it would be so easy to look back on Mickey O’Connor and consider him the true villain of the piece.  Instead, Silence finds happiness with Mickey (and he finds happiness with her), and the question of whether Mickey was right or wrong (or a mixture of the two) is forced to the forefront.  Maybe I liked this book so much because I enjoy uncomfortable conversations about difficult topics.  The more difficult and awkward the subject is, the more I want to talk about it, the more I think we need to talk about it.  But I digress.

I like adventures, stories with dastardly villains, and stories with the misunderstood hero trope (especially when he’s misunderstood by himself), and this book has all three.  That last is a bit of a conundrum, because I don’t tend to like stories where the heroine ‘saves’ the hero from his own dastardly self (he can change, ladies: keep the dream alive.); however, I want a hero character to go on a bit of an internal journey during the story, and an easy way to achieve that is to have the hero start out kind of a douche and, over the course of the story, discover that there is a value to changing his behavior.  Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough.  The point is, I like this book, even though I thought the ending was way too convenient (no consequences for a lifetime of crime? Really?) and even though I had to work through my own ruffled feathers in order to like it.

Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series (1 and 2)

A few weeks ago, my friend Kim over at Reflections of a Book Addict suggested that we should read some books together–since we have outrageously similar taste in books, and all–and I suggested this series.  So far, there are 4 books released in this series, and we are now rabidly awaiting book # 5 (see here for an excerpt hosted on the author’s page), due out in February 2013.

I initially intended to write about all four books in one post, but I just want you to think for a moment about how unbelievably long that post would be (and boring to everyone, really…).  Right.  So I plan to discuss the first two books in this post, and the second two books in a later post.

Cover image, Wicked Intentions by Elizabeth Hoyt

The only of Hoyt’s series that I’ve read in full was The Prince series, and that’s really just three independent stories that share a very casual link.  The Legend of the Four Soldiers series was much more connected, but I still haven’t read the first book (never got around to it…).  With Wicked Intentions, I felt that so much of it was setting up the world and characters for the other books in the series, and it isn’t as good as a stand alone story as a result.  That was kind of a disappointment to me, but maybe that’s how it always is with a series’ first book…

What I loved: Lazarus is delicious as the tormented-by-his-own-demons hero.  I loved his poetry translating and all that darkness.  You know how it is; sometimes you just want a good anti-hero to root for.  The book dabbles in some pretty heavy themes – love, infidelity, trust, shame, gender roles (specifically what happens when a prescribed role is not followed to a T), etc. – and it gives them due weight.  As I’ve come to expect from Hoyt’s writing, the characters are complex and develop over the course of the story, and their decisions always make sense in light of their motivations.  This story also has a neat little mystery (or two) that serves to bring Lazarus and Temperance together, and it helps to keep the plot moving along.

What I didn’t love so much: I really wanted to know what caused Lazarus’ touch issues, but it isn’t divulged either because Lazarus himself doesn’t know (fair) or because it’s not really important to the story (boo, but probably fair).  I adored the bit with Silence, but it was left unresolved.  I assume later books in the series will deal with it, but it left a slightly frayed edge to me.  The ending felt rushed (not quite Northanger Abbey rushed, to be fair – that book has an etch-a-sketch ending if ever I saw one).  For a book with so many heavy themes, the happily ever after was a tad slapdash.  Temperance and Lazarus each resolve their random issues, but the resolution seems almost magical and rather too convenient.

But, you know what?  It’s still worth it to read this story, because the books that follow are amazing and are made better by the world building that occurs in book 1.

Cover image, Notorious Pleasures by Elizabeth Hoyt

Notorious Pleasures benefits from all the world building that was accomplished in Wicked Intentions.  You might very well wonder, eh?  There’s world building a romance novel?  Isn’t it usually reserved for fantasy or science fiction novels that actually have a unique world to build?  The thing is that historical romance novels are actually kind of a subgenre of fantasy novels.  Tangent: in a way, all novels are fantasy novels /tangent.  Successful/good historical romance authors do lots and lots of research and then tweak the circumstances slightly to give their story and characters some plausibility.  Let’s face it: strong female characters who have some autonomy over their lives are a bit of an anachronism.  So are stories with young, handsome dukes that marry commoners or *gasp* Americans.

The Maiden Lane series is set in Georgian England (early-ish eighteenth century), and a lot of the action takes place in St. Giles, a gin-soaked slum.  The setting is remarkably atypical for the historical romance genre.  It is gritty, and although Notorious Pleasures features considerably more ballroom scenes than the other books, the focus of the book remains set on St. Giles.  I enjoyed that Hoyt was willing to ask a few moral questions about justice and leave them unanswered.  In Wicked Intentions, there were a few such questions–e.g. is it right or wrong for an orphanage to pay a procuress a hefty sum of money to save one child from a life of childhood prostitution, knowing that the procuress has a nearly endless supply of children to sell and the orphanage has a finite amount of money to use towards feeding and clothing the children it has already saved?–and Hoyt was right back to that gritty line between fantasy and reality in this book.  Is it right or wrong for a man to save his family by illegal means?

Of the four stories I’ve read in this series, I found the love story between Lady Hero and Griffin to be the least compelling (which, to be clear, is not to say that I didn’t find it compelling… it’s just that the other three stories had so much more to offer by way of characterization).  I think this might be a case of my holding Elizabeth Hoyt up to a far stricter standard than I use for everyone else (because she’s just that awesome).  My real issue with Lady Hero and Griffin is that it sticks too closely to the Perfect Lady paired with a Perfect Scoundrel trope.  You pretty much know how it will be in their first scene together when Griffin dubs Hero “Lady Perfect”…

To be honest, the strangest parts of this book were all the random We Interrupt This Novel for a Public Service Announcement about Silence Hollingbrook and How She’s Doing episodes.  They made sense in the first book because they directly tied into Temperance’s story – Silence and Temperance being sisters, after all – and helped fuel Temperance’s emotional journey.  In this story, the episodes behaved as interruptions, and I couldn’t figure out exactly why I was supposed to care so much about Silence’s woes within the context of Hero and Griffin’s story.  Silence gets her own story in book 3, and I was glad, while I read it, that it wasn’t weighted down with a butt-ton of back story, but that doesn’t mean that I completely enjoyed having all the necessary back story play out real-time as an interruption to another unrelated story.

Other than all that, the story is well-paced and gripping; there’s a bit of mystery and drama, and a rather evil villain was thrown in to keep things interesting.  The end, thank heavens, was satisfying, and I jumped right in to book 3 (Scandalous Desires).  But I’ll write more about that in another post.