katherine_grant 's review for:

The Secret Pearl by Mary Balogh

4.0

dark emotional sad medium-paced

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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I'm used to quiet, sedate Mary Balogh books. This one is a lot darker. It starts with a gentleman taking a prostitute for the night, only to discover she was a virgin. He feels so bad that he hires her as a governess, and from there, they slowly fall in love. There were a lot of red flags for me that this was treading on dangerous territory, but I think Balogh was successful in accurately depicting trauma, in building a slow-simmer romance without making it feel like the duke was forcing himself on his employee, and in adding enough intrigue at the end to give us pay-off for why Fleur was driven to such desperate circumstances in the first place. That said, this comes with some major trigger warnings, and I'm curious to hear from other readers if I have some blind spots that made this acceptable to me but not to them.