Ilze

If the book had stayed true to its beginning as a character-driven marriage of convenience story, I would have given it 4 stars, and I would have accepted the rather improbable setup for the rape of the heroine (which happened before this book starts) without any comments. But as it is - the book was ruined for me by the gross, badly-plotted and ridiculous blackmail plot, which uses the heroine's rape as its pretext.

One example of the crappy plotting: it's the final night of the hero and heroine's first big party at their home, and with him being a duke, the party is a big deal indeed. Just as she is heading downstairs to greet the guests, the heroine notices a note on her dressing table and reads it. Turns out the writer is threatening kidnapping and worse on 2 little girls who are the wards of the hero, and demands the heroine present herself at a gamekeeper's cottage in the woods not far from the house, right away. So what does the heroine do? Does she go to her husband (the duke) and show him the note, so they can get something organized and foil the dastardly plot? No, of course not. She just scampers off into the woods to the cottage without telling anyone where she's going or why! Blech. Why did the author have to do it?

One other problem with the book is the author's tendency to verbosity - why use one word when you use three or more to say the same thing? Used sparingly, this can add flavour and variety to a story, but used often, as this author tends to do, it bogs down the story with unnecessary verbiage. I almost put the book away in a few places where the characters were spouting things like "You will partake of sustenance while we plan our day."