mctclover

4.5 stars.

A huge winner for Tessa Dare. There was romance, there was tenderness, there was passion, there was humor - and how, always with Dare's sly subtlety that lets you know she admires her readers' intelligence & ability to 'get it' without conking them over the head with it.

The review is kind of vague, since the book doesn't come out for another few weeks, but I didn't want to have any spoilers. I plan a quote-filled love-fest at my blog when the book releases.

Dare infuses little bits of backstory and detail into the storyline that melt your heart for both Colin and Minerva. Sometimes if you blink you miss them, but they add such texture, such depth of character that you definitely want to slow down and savor every word.

As always, she is a genius with the written word. Her prose is gorgeous, always just right for the characters. She'll write these beautiful scenes, full of delight and wonder and emotion and follow it up with an exasperated "For the love of tits." Pretty sure I personified a romance cliche when I "barked with laughter" at that one.

Dare's heroes have that ability to say the most romantic things. To convey with a single, simple, powerful sentence what others take pages to say. They are men you want to cuddle and hold tight, and Colin is no exception.

Dare heroines are frequently super smart, daring and bring the hero to his knees completely unintentionally, but they own him nonetheless. Minerva is just such a heroine.

This received a 4.5 instead of a 5 because there were a few chapters about 2/3 of the way through that slowed down the book a bit for me. But the whirlwind romance picked right back up after that.

Because I received this as an ARC from the author, and my copy will disappear from my ereader in a week or so, I plan to have this delivered to my house on release day. I will want to read it again to savor all those yummy little details. It just made me feel good not just after I closed the book, but while I was reading it. You always want the opportunity to reread a book that makes you feel that way.

Somehow I missed the first book in this series, but I picked it up this weekend. So more happy reading for me.