ISBN-10: 0758269102
ISBN-13: 978-0758269102
Publisher: Kensington
Line: Brava
Release Date: July 30, 2013
Pages: 352
Retail Price: 9.95
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Genre: Historical
Heat Level: Hot
Rating:
Lady Imaculata Ann Egremont has appeared in the scandalous pages of the London List often enough. The reading public is so bored with her nonsense, she couldn't make news now unless she took a vow of chastity. But behind her naughty hijinks is a terrible fear. Its time the list helped her. With a quick scan through its job postings and a few whacks at her ridiculous name, she's off to keep house for a bachelor veteran as plain Anne Mont.
Major Gareth Ripton-Jones is dangerously young and handsome on the face of it, but after losing his love and his arm in short order, he is also too deep in his cups to notice that his suspiciously young housekeeper is suspiciously terrible at keeping house. Until, that is, her sharp tongue and her burnt coffee penetrate even his misery - and the charm underneath surprises them both. Trust the worst cook in Wales to propose a most unexpected solution to his troubles...
Review
The latest in Robinson’s London List series features an unconventional hero and silver spoon heroine put at odds.
Lady Immaculate Anne Egremont is looking for a place to hide and what better place than a far off household for a war hero. Major Gareth Ripton-Jones has lost his housekeeper to an illness and no one in the village will take up the job. His post to the London List gives him a woman who is younger than the average housekeeper and couldn’t cook if her life depended on it. They are both hiding secrets. The only question is can they trust each other with those secrets long enough to solve both their problems.
The characters are flawed and that’s part of Robinson’s magic. Lady Anne is innocent under her skirts, but to the ton she’s probably the most scandalous of all. Anne is an extremely complex character with little tidbits woven in at the perfect moments to reveal her scandalous past. Gareth is just as multifaceted with his own weave of troubles and horror; add in the fact that he only has one arm and things get more exciting. The interesting part is somehow the damages both characters have experienced make them an even better couple, eager to fight against the odds together.
The other side of the coin is the underlying mystery plot that gives the novel a gothic feel, with mysterious fires and hidden nooks and crannies in a dark, damp house. I literally waited for the ghosts to jump out at any time. Add in a well-paced romantic development and the secondary villain via Lady Anne’s father, the action segment of the story was well done.
To say it’s my favorite story from Robinson is untrue, but I did love how she took a damaged war hero and a daughter of the ton and paired them together. This story was filled with surprises from how the hero loses his arm to the sordid history that Lady Anne is running from.
But I wasn’t impressed with the ending, and several points in the story made me disbelieve in the notion that Gareth was a true hero. He did earn himself back in my eyes a little, at the very end, but after a certain point in the story I expected him to have grown beyond is key issues. That growth wasn’t present and created a convenient path for conflict when I felt the conflict could have reached deeper.
Overall, fans of Maggie Robinson will enjoy this tale. It has Robinson’s flair for unlikely pairings and her creative way of allowing our H/H a happily ever after that’s believable.
Reviewed by Landra