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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
They really be out here in regency era having raw unprotected sex in an orangery in the middle of a ball, 5 minutes after meeting each other for the first time. I'm-
You Should Read This If You Want: a lite historical, enemies to lovers, romance for beginners who have never read historical romances before. There is lots of sexual tension, a case of mistaken identity, jealousy, passion, and lots of smut. You don’t have to read the other books in the series to read this one.
Despite how much I despise lite historical romances that don’t follow historic conventions to a T, I actually quite enjoyed this book. This book is a story within a story, opening in the present timeline with Jason and Haley, characters from the author’s previous works in this series, celebrating their 5 year anniversary. This acts as the set up to then explain the family tradition of the men hand making necklaces for their wives on their 5th anniversary: a tradition that can be traced back all the way to their ancestors in the regency period where our story begins.
The good: I liked the rivalry between Elizabeth and Robert. What started out as childhood antagonism soon develops into a passionate adulthood tryst. I’m not going to lie, the sexual tension almost killed me. These two basically set the room on fire any time they made eye contact with each other! It was the perfect kind of fluff I was looking to read. But I still had a lot of issues with this book.
The bad: I know this was a lite historical romance and the author wasn’t really going to stick with the conventions a whole lot. But I still cannot believe they had sex in an orangery, in full view of the house without a single care for Elizabeth’s reputation. Reputation was EVERYTHING in this time period! She could have been completely and utterly ruined! And yet, no one seems to care about this till well after the fact.
There is also so much unnecessary body shaming in this book. From casual comments about mothers being “rotund” and how her daughters might be too unappealing if they follow in her footsteps. To comments about how Elizabeth’s sister stopped getting marriage proposals when she got fat.
But my biggest issue is about the misunderstanding as an excuse for violence trope that's so common in these kinds of books.
*deep sigh* I'm just going to rant about this for a second because I fucking hate this trope in romance novels where the guy gets into a slight misunderstanding and suddenly starts being a paranoid butt hurt little fucker. Suddenly his lover is a scheming calculating manipulative bitch who has it out for him and he cannot wait to use that as an excuse to be unspeakably cruel to her. And yes this, more often than not, includes violence. In this book, it was restricted to verbal abuse. Robert gets angry, cold, and takes pleasure in hurting Elizabeth when she clearly is in a lot of mental and physical pain.
I'm so sick and tired of men in these novels using jealousy and misunderstandings as an excuse to be horrid to the women in their lives. Only to realise in the aftermath, after considerable mental (and sometimes physical) trauma has already been inflicted on them, that their worries were unfounded. It's used to show the strength of their affections for the women and reaffirm their love. But it's just so disgustingly vile and violent and just plain horrid. I would be in constant fear of my life if I were to be with this kind of guy. My mind would not automatically forget what he's like when he's pissed and I would try to not piss him off again. But not knowing what triggered him in the first place this would be a horrifying ordeal to deal with.
Violence is not fucking sexy for the love of God stop using it as such!!
Anyways, if you ignore those issues and just read this for some fun, sexy times it’s not half bad. A solid 3.5 Stars. I liked this one much better than the author’s contemporary romance novels.
You Should Read This If You Want: a lite historical, enemies to lovers, romance for beginners who have never read historical romances before. There is lots of sexual tension, a case of mistaken identity, jealousy, passion, and lots of smut. You don’t have to read the other books in the series to read this one.
Despite how much I despise lite historical romances that don’t follow historic conventions to a T, I actually quite enjoyed this book. This book is a story within a story, opening in the present timeline with Jason and Haley, characters from the author’s previous works in this series, celebrating their 5 year anniversary. This acts as the set up to then explain the family tradition of the men hand making necklaces for their wives on their 5th anniversary: a tradition that can be traced back all the way to their ancestors in the regency period where our story begins.
The good: I liked the rivalry between Elizabeth and Robert. What started out as childhood antagonism soon develops into a passionate adulthood tryst. I’m not going to lie, the sexual tension almost killed me. These two basically set the room on fire any time they made eye contact with each other! It was the perfect kind of fluff I was looking to read. But I still had a lot of issues with this book.
The bad: I know this was a lite historical romance and the author wasn’t really going to stick with the conventions a whole lot. But I still cannot believe they had sex in an orangery, in full view of the house without a single care for Elizabeth’s reputation. Reputation was EVERYTHING in this time period! She could have been completely and utterly ruined! And yet, no one seems to care about this till well after the fact.
There is also so much unnecessary body shaming in this book. From casual comments about mothers being “rotund” and how her daughters might be too unappealing if they follow in her footsteps. To comments about how Elizabeth’s sister stopped getting marriage proposals when she got fat.
But my biggest issue is about the misunderstanding as an excuse for violence trope that's so common in these kinds of books.
*deep sigh* I'm just going to rant about this for a second because I fucking hate this trope in romance novels where the guy gets into a slight misunderstanding and suddenly starts being a paranoid butt hurt little fucker. Suddenly his lover is a scheming calculating manipulative bitch who has it out for him and he cannot wait to use that as an excuse to be unspeakably cruel to her. And yes this, more often than not, includes violence. In this book, it was restricted to verbal abuse. Robert gets angry, cold, and takes pleasure in hurting Elizabeth when she clearly is in a lot of mental and physical pain.
I'm so sick and tired of men in these novels using jealousy and misunderstandings as an excuse to be horrid to the women in their lives. Only to realise in the aftermath, after considerable mental (and sometimes physical) trauma has already been inflicted on them, that their worries were unfounded. It's used to show the strength of their affections for the women and reaffirm their love. But it's just so disgustingly vile and violent and just plain horrid. I would be in constant fear of my life if I were to be with this kind of guy. My mind would not automatically forget what he's like when he's pissed and I would try to not piss him off again. But not knowing what triggered him in the first place this would be a horrifying ordeal to deal with.
Violence is not fucking sexy for the love of God stop using it as such!!
Anyways, if you ignore those issues and just read this for some fun, sexy times it’s not half bad. A solid 3.5 Stars. I liked this one much better than the author’s contemporary romance novels.
What a great book! I was really surprised by this one. The blurb tells you that if you don't like historical romance then you won't like this. Well I'm here to say that if you don't like historical romance you will still like this! It didn't feel like a historical at all and was still funny and sweet. I actually liked this one much more than the third book of the series.
it was super cute - but i prefer present day lol. kinda gave me a lot of bridgeton vibes so much so that i couldn't over look it.
Always love reading about Haley and Jason so that was a pleasant surprise :)
OMG! I loved this book.
The only bad thing is that I felt it was way too short :(
The only bad thing is that I felt it was way too short :(
3.5 rating, I was originally hesitant due to the "Historical" element of the book but I was happy to find it did not detract from my enjoyment of the book. It has all the classic features of a NFH book and the added bonus of seeing how it all began for The Bradford Men.
Even if you don't like historical you will love this one. It made me laugh so much I almost cried. The most amazing storyteller has done it again! I couldn't put this down even if I tried, which I didn't. I enjoyed learning about the origin of the Bradford's and their insane appetite. Truly another great book!! Well worth the wait.