Review: Great Conclusion to Pleasure Wars
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 17, 2014
BEAUTY AND THE EARL is the third book in the Pleasure Wars series.  It concludes the feud that was first presented in TAKEN BY THE DUKE.  (There is a coda novella Beautiful Distraction whose events run concurrently to this novel, but this book concludes the main plot of the series).  Liam, the Earl of Winbury, is alone.  The woman he loved was killed almost two years ago and his beloved sister has married his mortal enemy.  In Bath, he meets (in one of the best meeting scenes ever) Violet Milford, a courtesan.  The two begin a sexual relationship that begins to heal Liam.  What he doesn't know is that Violet was sent to spy on him by his sister from whom he is estranged.  Violet wants to learn Liam'secret, but she doesn't anticipate that it will require giving up her own.I really liked the relationship between Liam and Violet.  It was sweeter than I expected.  The scene where they first meet was unexpected and hot.  The book was less about sex than I had thought it would be -- even though sex is pretty frequent between the two characters.  instead, the sex was less titillating and the real focus was on the growing emotional intimacy between Liam and Violet.  For these two solitary people, that is much more revealing and sexy than the tab a goes into slot b part of the story.There is another romance between secondary characters that will be told from their point of view in BEAUTIFUL DISTRACTION.  I loved seeing Christian and Ava again, getting an update on their romance and finally seeing Ava and Liam reconciled.Thus book is better if the reader has read at least the first book of the series TAKEN BY THE DUKE so that the relationships between the characters is clear.  While this book explains some of the background, the deep emotions behind the facts are better explained in the first book.