Tamsin Archer might just be having the worst year of her life. And that’s saying something, considering her father is dead, her mother was maimed at work, and her family regularly sleeps under London’s bridges. But when her younger siblings go missing, Tamsin decides it’s time to step up and fight.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Tamsin’s more than willing to take a few risks to reunite with her siblings. But while disguising herself to sneak into homes and steal from the rich, Tamsin is caught by Garret Kildare, the second son of an earl. Much to Tamsin’s surprise, Garret doesn’t want to turn her in. He wants to help her. Though Tamsin’s wary—she’s learned to never trust supposed “good luck”—the unlikely pair form an alliance, one that quickly muddles their class differences.
Garret knows he must be careful. Falling for a woman of a lower class could be the nail in the coffin for his family’s tenuous social standing, and there are eyes everywhere. Ignoring their attraction proves impossible, though, and soon the lines they’ve drawn around their partnership begin to blur. As more focus lands on Tamsin and Garret, they wonder if their red-hot connection means giving up everything—and everyone—they’ve ever known.
Release Date: Jun 9, 2026
Series: The Heiress Hunters
Book: 1
Heat Level: Sensual
Publisher: Penguin Group
Imprint: Berkley
Price: $10.99
Unexpected, in all the best ways.
Galen’s latest still has her signature style. Strong heroines who save themselves and heroes who fall for them. If you haven’t read Galen before, I do recommend you revisit this. She has a knack for a historical romance that contains a touch of action, adventure, and usually unconventional storylines. This latest book is no exception.
We have Tamsin Archer, a lower-class working girl. She’s doing whatever she can to ensure her mother and younger siblings can survive. But in a world where everything goes wrong, to Tamsin and her family, it has. Lost her father, lost her stepfather, a mother with a serious injury, and her siblings sold off by their landlord to a chimney sweep outfit. What’s a gal with no way out to do? Definitely not what you think… It’s rob the nobs. Her thieving brings her face-to-face with the second son of a lord who once upon a time did her a kindness. He’s gorgeous, and she’ll never see him again, so why not steal a kiss on top of everything else she’s thieving?
Garrett Kildare is an ex-Navy man. A mere ‘sir’ in the levels of nobility, but he still has a reputation to uphold, even if half of that has been built on how many mugs of ale he can stack. Garrett typically steers clear of anything to do with responsibility since escaping the horrors he suffered at sea (love me a bit of tortured hero). Until he meets Tamsin, until she steals a kiss, and until he finds himself unable to think of anything except finding her and making her pay for her thievery… erm, maybe more like finding out she’s thieving in the first place.
What comes from this is Garrett with a touch of hero complex and this deep desire to get Tamsin to look at him as if he’s hung the moon. Only she doesn’t need him, or does she? Temptation to be around the man she’s had a crush on for the last two years is hard to say no to. Especially when he wants to help her find a way to save her siblings. I thoroughly enjoyed the plot of this book, the characters, the gut-wrenching realities Tamsin and her family faced that were exposed, and how Garrett navigated falling for a woman so different from him.
What keeps this from being a five? The fact that the title and the cover were selected to imply rom-com when this story is so much deeper and not really a rom-com in the least. There were plenty of moments where I smiled, but no laughing out loud. The elements within the story are heavy, while the ultimate conflicts resolve into a low-stress ending, even a bit anticlimactic (which I’ll be honest, I quite enjoyed). Galen also leaves plenty of room to explore the rest of the Kildare family, three more brothers and a sister. I’m invested.
Overall, if you enjoy stories by Mimi Matthews and Courtney Milan, this one will be right up your alley.
~ Landra
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