I am not proud to admit this. I was reading the worst book ever! I will not name said book. However, I will say I was furious for letting it steal my time. Then I ran across Cara Elliott’s To Sin With a Scoundrel. And I felt much better.
My faith in a heroine’s ability to redeem her flaws sat much better with Ciara, scholar/scientist/alchemist and her Circle of Sins friends. She had a difficult task in keeping her dead husband’s family goal of landing her at the end of a hangman’s noose and letting them steal her child’s fortune and life.
Enter Mad, Bad, Had-ley. A scoundrel whose name in the gossip sheets were well earned. But the bad-der they are, the Had-ley-er they fall. And isn’t that what we love in our hero? With affection for an uncle he did not let most people see, said uncle—scholar—needs Ciara’s help in deciphering an ancient manuscript. When Hadley meets Ciara, he found it quite disappointing she turned out not to be the repressed and ugly murdering female he’d expected.
They strike up a deal. She helps decipher the manuscript for his uncle and he pretends an engagement to ward off her money-hungry dead husband’s treacherous family who are determined to see her hang.
A very fun read. -Kathy L Wheeler