Review: Love story so well told, it made me cry!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 30, 2013
Lavinia Kent is an author I started to read from her first début in 2009 with `Talent for Sin' [here are my thoughts on that series and my review of 'What a Duke Wants'].She has impressed me with her grasp of regency society, her smart plotting and entertaining dialogue. Her books are sensual and never overtly sexual, while her characterization of every player she introduces are three-dimensional and intriguing, and so `in my face' that I tend to get very emotional while reading. If an author writes a character or a situation which engages my emotions, I think they achieved their goal. Even in the situations where I could wring a heroine's neck for acting stupid!This book, the first in her Desire Trilogy, she opens the heroine's story with her at the edge of the cliff looking at her husband's dead body down below...and I was hooked!From the first scene, this story grabs you and never lets you breathe easyIn Lily St. Aubin, Countess of Worthington, she gives us a heroine that is complex and yet easily liked. Her life's story is hinted at from the start, but once she voices it, we are struck dumb by the rawness of her ordeal and our rage at her enemy.Arthur Alexander DeWolf, the eighth Duke of Westlake is a man born and bred to his heritage. He's exactly what his father wanted him to be: strong of will and reserved in his emotions. Honor is always something he'll put front and center and love, affection are only words that he's long forgotten the emotions that go with them. He doesn't suffer fools gladly; is revered and respect by one and all, and when he meets Lily, he's filled with boredom of what his life has become. He never expected that one person would come to mean to him so much that he'd forgo everything he'd ever stood for.There's so much to recommend this book and I'll start with the love story that was so well told, it made me cry! There's plenty of intrigue and mystery, some really well written sensual scenes, villains galore, and secondary characters that'll make you laugh out loud, especially Lady Smythe-Burke, Gertrude and Nanny.One other thing I noticed with this book. At the time I got it, it was FREE [regularly priced at $1.99] and I assumed it was a short novella but once I got it I noticed it had 4899 locations. That in no way is `short'! Worth more than its price and I am frankly baffled by it...Mel for b2bFREE through Amazon.