lucyp21 's review for:

And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander

3.0

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Actual rating 3.5 stars

This isn't the first Lady Emily book I read, since I read all the ones I had in the library first before buying this one on Kindle. Unfortunately, this was not my favourite. I'm not sure whether it's because I knew

Colin had nothing to do with Phillip's death and was actually the good guy

but I found myself getting very impatient with the plot and Emily herself. It was fairly easy to guess who the villain of the story was and when that happened, there was still 30% of the plot left and it dragged a little.

Emily becomes a widow very soon after she is married and isn't too upset about it at first considering she didn't particularly know her husband all that well, it was just a chance to move away from her domineering mother. Through her late husband's diary entries she finds herself falling in love with him, though I wasn't entirely sure why considering Philip talked about Ancient Greece, hunting and how pretty Lady Emily is, nothing particularly groundbreaking. If Emily had been mourning for the lost potential of their marriage, losing Philip before she had even gotten to know him, I would have found that more believable than her mourning a man from his diary entries.

This isn't my favourite of the Lady Emily series but I liked it well enough and I look forward to book 2!