Series: Would-Be Wallflowers, #2
Traits & Tropes: ruined heroine; starched hero; titled hero; opposites attract
Publication Date: 11.29.22
Genre/Setting: Historical; Regency; London, England, 1816
Heat Level: 4
Rating: 4/5
Giles Renwick, the Earl of Lilford, has always carried himself with stiff propriety. Believing himself incapable of deep emotions, he has never truly given in to pursuit of a woman and determined never to do so, but that all goes out the window when he meets Lady Yasmin Regnier. She’s too much a lady to be his mistress but too scandalous to be a proper wife. Their mutual discord precludes them even being friends.
He abhors her provocative style of dress and her tendency to engage in vapid gossip. She lacks decorum, is only even half English and makes no real attempt to hide her mother’s scandalous affair with Napoleon. Despite all the marks against her, Giles still can’t seem to help himself and proposes to Yasmin anyway. He has no idea what he’ll do if she says yes, or even worse, no.
I’ve been looking forward to this story since I read the epilogue of the previous book. Yasmin and Giles were obviously meant to be together, but they did make for such an odd pairing that I was hard pressed at times to envision how this would work. Yasmin was a genuinely kind person, but she’d been taken advantage of and scorned by society, labeled as loose for no real reason. Giles was rather starched, a high stickler for propriety thanks to his parents who dragged their family name through the mud with scandal. He’d convinced himself he could never have Yasmin thanks to her scandalous reputation, causing him to treat her less than cordially. This, of course, created difficulties when Giles could no longer resist his feelings for Yasmin and wanted to court her in earnest; she was understandably skeptical of his true intentions. These two had a rather tumultuous, hot then cold relationship, but I enjoyed how character driven their story was and how inevitable it felt that they would eventually be together.
Yasmin stood up for herself and demanded to be loved for who she was or not at all, refusing to squeeze herself into some societal mold, and I loved that. There was also a villain in this story that I think many readers will enjoy rooting against and I cannot wait to see what sort of comeuppance is dished out in that quarter in a later book. I think perhaps my favorite relationship here was actually the one between Yasmin and her grandfather. Having lost my own grandfather six months ago, their interactions were bittersweet for me, but I loved them nonetheless. His unconditional support of Yasmin was everything. I enjoyed the way things worked out for Yasmin and Giles and I look forward to the next book in this series.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
https://www.bookbub.com/reviews/4255146746
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4781001999
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