Review: My Highest Recommendation!!!!!!!! Read it
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 4, 2013
I have been waiting for this book with all the anticipation of a child waiting for Christmas morning - and it was so worth the wait! The book was an absolute delight. I loved it. The first book in this series, The Duke' Tattoo, opened with the most memorable scene and dialogue ever - and remains distinctive in that it's the only book that ever made me laugh out loud. The teaser for this book kept me on tenterhooks, so I was thrilled to stumble onto it finally published. It was like a Christmas gift in February!Genuine humor is a hard thing for any writer to achieve, and so often attempts at humor come off as contrived, stiff or simply not funny. This author takes humor to a whole new level - and this book is a lovely illustration of that. The style of the book is lighthearted, witty and simply charming! It transcends laugh-out-loud and makes for a truly enjoyable love story that is a wonderfully entertaining, emotionally satisfying read.The hero and heroine are people you root for and sincerely want to find their happy ending. They approach love and marriage from polar opposite viewpoints and the collision of these views is the crux of the story. The hunky hero is the product of a marriage based on love, which quickly soured and left a family in bitter turmoil - turning him into a staunch advocate of arranged, emotionless, businesslike convenience marriages. The heroine, conversely, is the child of a marriage where the partners loved until parted by death - turning her into an equally staunch defender of romantic, fairy-tale, take your breath away, love engendered unions.They are betrothed - as in an arranged, bloodless contractual settlement. He is delighted, she is chagrined. The book details their relationship. Here's where it gets interesting and you really see the author's incredible talent. It could have been farcical - it was instead poignant. Worse yet, it could have been a dreary `big misunderstanding' - it was definitely not that. It was an engaging, enchanting story that I enjoyed every minute of.I loved the characters, plot, dialogue, style, pace, writing and the ending. I loved the fact that the heroine acted precisely the way I wanted her to act and the epilogue was all I hoped for. I'm so invested in these characters, and can hardly wait until the next book is published. Well done - VERY WELL DONE!!!