It is not a good sign when you lose track of the story and start paying attention to something else. A short way into Guarding a Notorious Lady by Olivia Parker, I was less interested in whether Lady Rosalind and Lord Nicholas Kincaid would hook up and live HEA than I was in whether Rosalind would find yet another way to stumble into sexually suggestive contact with her hero.

By my count, Rosalind manages to have such an convenient accident no less than eight times in 200 pages. She falls off a ladder onto him, out of a tree onto him (in backstory), into his lap such that her brooch gets stuck to his cravat pin (?!?), she falls across her desk and her clothing arranges itself so that her “thinly covered bottom [was] exposed to the cool night air . . . and Nicholas’s gaze.” She falls off a footbridge and Nicholas has to rescue her, she gets frightened by a fish while swimming and jumps into his arms.  Okay, to be precise, one time, it is Nicholas who stumbles through a door and conveniently lands on a bed with Rosalind under him. But you get the idea.

Now, I’ve read books with endearingly clumsy heroines. It can be a cute little character trait. But Lady Rosalind isn’t presented as anything less than a graceful, self-possessed sister of a Duke. No one comments on her inability to maintain her balance or her incredible bad luck with footbridges and fish. These improbable incidents just happen. And happen.

I liked Rosalind and Nicholas well enough, and the story was serviceable, though no new ground was covered. Rosalind’s older brother, a Duke bound for his honeymoon, enlists his best friend Nicholas to guard Rosalind, who is the ton’s hot ticket this season. Nicholas, of course, has loved her for years, but cannot admit it because of the tragic role loved played in his father’s life. Rosalind has loved Nicholas for years but cannot admit it . . . well, because she can’t.

So throughout the season, Nicholas protects Rosalind from the cads and rakes who might compromise her to gain her hand in marriage and simultaneously battles his own attraction to her. Of course, those repeated stumbles, falls, and frights bringing them into physical contact play hell with his resolve.
I loved some of the secondary characters, especially Nicholas’s two tiny nieces, whose part in the story was much too brief, and Rosalind’s younger brother, Tristan, a loveable, witty man about town.

If you’re looking for a beach read, one that moves quickly and with a plot that doesn’t require much effort from the reader, Guarding a Notorious Lady might be your cup of tea. But if you need a story that will stay with you and main characters you want to invite over for a visit, I’d keep looking.

~ Donna