CBR18 Book 46: "Dominion" by Jean Kwok

Page count: 448 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR18 Bingo: 26 (published this year. This month, in fact)

Thank you to G.P. Putnam's Sons and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is on sale now.

Rubi is an azure, a group of displaced and badly treated refugees. In this fantasy world, there are four dominions, each with its own specialities. There is the Azure Dragon dominion, which can control plants and all things growing, and many of their people can shapeshift into animals; the Scarlet Phoenix dominion, which controls fire; the Silver Tyger (yes, that's how they spell the name of the magical animal) dominion, which can manipulate metal; and the Onyx Tortoise dominion, which controls water and ice. The various dominions also seem to have very different views on gender equality. The Scarlet Dominion is fully matriarchal; in the Azure Dominion, men and women seem to have been treated as equals; in the Silver Dominion, there is a strong bent towards misogyny, with the current king being extremely dismissive of his only child, a daughter. Finally, in the Onyx Dominion, women are entirely subservient to men, and their magic is used to fuel the male wielders. 

The azures became refugees and had to shelter among the other three dominions after something known as the Annihilation, which was supposed to be a joyous and special event, when the Crown Prince of the Azure Dominion wed the Crown Princess of the Scarlet Dominion in a rare love match. However, demons poured forth from the ground, killing and/or devouring a lot of the guests, including the bride, the Scarlet Crown Princess, and the King of the Onyx Dominion. The whole Azure royal family disappeared and is believed to also have been devoured by the demons. Because of this, all cross-dominion alliances are considered an impossibility, and the Azure people who have had to flee to other parts of the world are mostly seen as second-class citizens and set to do all the hardest jobs. 

Rubi lives in the woods with her foster mum. She was orphaned when fleeing from the Annihilation and has more or less total amnesia. Occasionally she has dreams where a woman's voice sings her a song with a prophecy, but she can never remember the woman's face when she wakes up. Rubi runs into Blake Axefire (yes, that's his name), also known as the Ambush Master, the king's chief enforcer, when he is in the woods near the cabin where she lives, looking for an escaped tyger. When trying to defend herself from said tyger, Rubi stabs it and is promptly arrested because it is a deadly offence to injure one of the king's magical tygers. Not only that, the tyger is basically the queen tyger, the only adult female able to bear cubs. The last queen tyger died after its mate died (they're bonded for life and can't live without their mate), along with its bonded rider, Blake's twin brother Zayden (yes, also that name) during the Annihilation. 

But of course, Rubi is our super special romantasy heroine, so despite the fact that azures can't bond with tygers, and that no female tyger has bonded with anyone for centuries, Flame, the current queen tyger, bonds with her. This does not sit well with a whole bunch of people, including the king, his bruthish nephew and heir, Ire, or the princess, Malissa. They pretty much all want Rubi killed, so Flame can bond with someone else. But queen tyger makes it very clear that she'll refuse to mate and have tyger babies if they kill her chosen mate, so now Rubi has to train to be a fighter with the elite silver tyger riders.

As if that wasn't enough, a divine messenger appears and announces that the Annihilation will seem like a child's birthday party unless all the various Dominions gather a band of champions each and work together to stop a potential apocalyptic event. Despite their differences and enmities, it's very important that all four Dominions are equally represented. There's a big public challenge about it, and obviously Rubi is one of the chosen warriors. So is her best friend, Quinn, who can shapeshift into a wolf. Rubi not only has amnesia, but she also seems to have very weak magic and is not able to shapeshift.

Also, Blake doesn't hate her at all, all his grumpiness at the beginning is apparently because he was trying to fight his attraction to her. He loves her, and Jace, the Captain of the King's guard, seems to be very into her as well. 

I don't like the term romantasy. I don't particularly like the new publishing trend that means so many of these books get churned out, and all feel like they are following the same checklist. In November 2024, my bookclub read Fourth Wing, which felt like it owed a LOT of debts to A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (heck, this entire sub-genre owes its popularity to Sarah J. Maas and her books. Most of them even have titles along the lines of "A noun of nouns and nouns".) This book had so many tropes from both of these books. Rubi injures a magical creature and is taken away by a brooding man because of it. Her life will never be the same. There is a super special girl who magically and implausibly bonds with the most impressive of all the magical animals. There's a tortured guy with a very dumb name who is obviously crazy about the heroine.

I know a lot of female authors who started writing about a decade or two ago were pretty much forced to market their books as young adult to get them sold, complete with being persuaded to insert love triangles into the plot because that was what sold back then. This felt like the opposite, a YA fantasy where the author just inserted a bunch of sex scenes in the second half of the book because romantasy has to have spicy scenes and fade to black just won't cut it. 

This book felt so derivative at first, and by about 40%, I decided that if the plot hadn't improved by the halfway point, I was going to just skip to the end and read the final chapters to see what happened. As it turns out, it did get a bit better in the second half, but a lot of the plot was still quite predictable, and oh so tropey. I was all set to give this book 3.5 stars, but then in the final three chapters or so, the author suddenly revealed a bunch of stuff that was surprising enough that I was forced to reevaluate my opinion and went from not being very bothered about seeing where this series is going, to suddenly being quite intrigued. Unfortunately, the twists came a bit too late to save my overall opinion of the book. I can't bring myself to rate something 3.75, though, so a grudging upgrade to 4 full stars it gets. I most likely will read the next book in the series, but I will get it from the library, unless I can score another ARC. 

Judging a book by its cover:

Not going to lie, the cover was one of the things that made me request this ARC. The defiant posture of the girl, the blue hair and swirling fabric (which I now know are Rubi's ribbons). The hint of the tiger in the background. The cover intrigued me, so well done, cover designers. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 46: "Listen for the Lie" by Amy Tintera

Page count: 384 pages

Audio book length: 9 hrs 17 mins

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Truth and Lies

CBR17 Bingo: Review (this was very favourably reviewed by Pooja, Narfna and Chairbrarian)

Five years ago, Lucy's best friend Savvy was murdered and Lucy was found wandering along the road, absolutely covered in Savvy's blood. Unfortunately, Lucy also had a pretty severe head wound, which resulted in amnesia, and can't remember anything about the night in question, before or after the murder took place. There wasn't enough evidence to convict her, but most people in her home town of Plumpton, Texas made up their own minds.

Since absolutely everyone back home is convinced Lucy is a murderer, she's been living and working in LA, writing romance novels under an assumed name and doing her very best to try to stay as anonymous as possible. Unfortunately, podcaster Ben Owens has decided to dedicate the second season of his very popular podcast 'Listen for the Lie' to investigating Savvy's murder, and all the sordid details are being dragged back into the light. In short order, Lucy gets fired from her job, and it becomes clear that her throroughly average boyfriend is too scared of her to actually break up with her, but very much would like her to be gone, from his life and apartment. So when Lucy's grandmother calls and emotionally blackmails her into coming back to Texas for her 80th birthday, Lucy doesn't really have a lot of options.

Of course, back in Plumpton, Ben Owens is going around interviewing people and asking intrusive questions, making Lucy's life oh so much more awkward. That he turns out to be handsome and very charming, and that Lucy's grandma is a big fan of his, makes the situation even more annoying. Did Lucy actually kill Savvy? If she didn't, who was the actual murderer and why have they managed to stay hidden for the past five years? Lucy wants Ben to find out the truth, but also fears that it may turn out she was guilty all along.

As I mentioned above, several Cannonballers whose opinions I trust recommended this book, and I had Audible credits to spare, so I figured it might be an entertaining Spring read. There is a tradition in Norway, that during the Easter holidays, you do very little (if you're outdoorsy, you go to a cabin in the mountains somewhere and ski, either cross-country or downhill) and you read crime novels. The various television networks all show mystery mini-series and the book stores put all their crime novels front and centre on their displays. We even have a specific term for it 'påskekrim', roughly translated as Easter Crime/Mystery. It's a whole thing. So listening to a novel about murder and true crime around Easter seemed very fitting.

The audio book is very well done. It alternates between chapters narrated by Lucy, who is a very sarcastic and cynical individual. January LaVoy does an excellent job conveying her snarky tone. Then in between, there are the 'podcast' sections, narrated by Will Damron as Ben Owens. I don't listen to podcasts, really (they take time away when I could be reading, or watching something with my husband, who is already a bit cranky about how much time I would rather be reading than watching stuff with him). So I'll take other people's word for it that these podcast sections are well-done and feel realistic. Based on what I heard, if I had ANY interest at all in true crime (I do NOT - the world is an awful place and I do not need to find out about all the horrible things people to do one another this way), 'Listen for the Lie' sounds like it would be a good podcast to follow.

I really liked that Tintera let Lucy be a quite spiky and hostile character. Convenient though it may seem, the amnesia makes her life more difficult, because there is always that nagging doubt that something horrible happened, and she actually murdered her best friend. Her complete lack of memory of the whole evening (including the events leading up to the murder) also makes it impossible for her to help the police investigate and find the real killer, when she desperately wants justice for Savvy. So a little part of her is relieved that Ben Owens is investigating the case again. It's obvious that a lot of people have been lying about and keeping secrets about the night of the murder, but he manages to ferret out the truth and uncover a lot of information the police never discovered.

This was very entertaining, and I'm impressed that this was Tintera's debut into crime fiction She seems to have only written YA fantasy before this. Nevertheless, I didn't love it as much as Narfna and Chairbrarian. There were some story developments that I found a bit unneccesary. I would absolutely read more of Tintera's books in the future, though. 

Judging a book by its cover: Not the most exciting cover, really (and it also seems like it directly ripped off the cover design of Good Girl, Bad Blood, which came out four years before this book. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR9 Book 66: "Someone to Watch Over Me" by Lisa Kleypas

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Spoiler warning! This review will contain minor spoilers for the plot of the book. They will be clearly marked, though, so the rest of the review should be ok.

Grant Morgan is one of the most famous and sought after of London's Bow Street Runners. He's made a substantial fortune solving crimes for the wealthy, but is starting to find his life a bit boring. When he's called to the banks of the Thames to identify what appears to be a strangled woman, he is first of all surprised to discover that she is still breathing, and secondly, by her identity. The half-dead woman is Vivien Duvall, London's most desirable courtesan.

Once she wakes up and is examined by a doctor, it becomes clear that she has entirely lost her memory. She doesn't know how notorious she is or who may have tried to kill her. Grant decides to keep her at his house, both to make sure she is adequately protected, but also because he is plotting revenge against Vivien. A few months back, he rejected her sexual advances in public and she proceeded to spread a number of rumours about Grant. Now that she is entirely dependent on him for protection, he sees an opportunity to possibly seduce her and get back at her.

As they investigate which of Vivian's many lovers might have had cause to murder her, he pretends that he was her most recent patron. However, Vivian seems to be absolutely appalled by all the things she discovers about her life and claims to have no wish to return to a life as a courtesan. For all that Grant was angry and resentful towards Vivian in the beginning, the more time he spends with the timid, soft-spoken woman in his care, the more he grows properly attached to her. He doesn't really want revenge anymore, he just wants to protect her.

This is one of Lisa Kleypas' relatively early works, and it does not compare that well to some of her real classics, written later. My main problem with the book is that Grant really isn't that great a guy. Initially, he has absolutely no problem with taking advantage of a woman left in his care, just because he feels slighted by some malicious gossip she spread about him. Vivian has no memory of her former life or her actions, yet he seems to think that because she made her living as a courtesan, one he very pointedly rejected not that long ago, it's now totally fine for him to seduce her, by making her think he's one of her clients and making her feel obligated to him.

From the very beginning of his investigation, it's quite clear to Grant that Vivian appears to more or less have had a personality transplant along with the amnesia following her near-strangulation, drowning and head injury. The Vivian Duvall known in Regency society is self-confident to a fault, effortlessly sexy, quite the exhibitionist and arrogant in the extreme. Her former lovers claim she hated quiet pursuits and reading and was willing to do absolutely anything in bed. The woman in his care is timid, shy, seemingly very innocent and absolutely adores reading. While she doesn't remember anything about her past, she has intimate knowledge about a number of Grant's favourite literary works. She's unfailingly polite to everyone and seems uncomfortable being waited on by servants.

SPOILERS AHEAD! It's almost as if she's a completely different person - and in case you hadn't seen the surprise twist coming - she is! It turns out Vivian has a twin sister from the countryside, who came to London to look for her, and was mistaken for her by the man sent to kill her. When is this mistaken identity discovered? When Grant is in the process of deflowering the inexperienced and sheltered virgin, taking absolutely no care because he believes the woman he's sharing a bed with to be a courtesan with many years of experience behind her. He does not, to my mind, apologise or grovel enough in the aftermath.

There's a fairly heavy undertone of slut shaming throughout this novel. Grant basically hates himself for feeling drawn to the woman he believes to be Vivian, because she's slept with so many men. As soon as he discovers the woman he's attracted to is in fact her virginal sister, who has lived a quiet life in the country, teaching children and taking care of her elderly father, it's perfectly ok, because she's pure and all that is good and she is clearly seen as much more worthy of love and a long-term relationship than a possibly repentant Vivian would be.

END SPOILERS. This is definitely one of the weaker Kleypas historicals I've read. Grant being fairly dislikable all the way through is one factor. I really didn't think he deserved any sort of happy ending, and any changes he went through seemed superficial at best. The heroine is also very passive and mainly defers entirely to the will of the men around her, she seems to have little to no agency of her own. That got boring pretty fast. It was also very obvious to me from about the second scene he appeared in who the attempted murderer was, and surprising to me that super-detective Grant didn't clue in on the fact earlier in the story. To be fair, he was too busy hate-lusting over the woman in his care. Unless you're a Kleypas completist, this one is skippable.

Judging a book by its cover: I am very fond of the colour teal, but there may be an overabundance of it on this cover. This book is set in Regency era England, and I'm pretty sure that whatever the cover model is wearing doesn't count as period appropriate night wear, especially considering what is described as part of the story. I also pity whatever servant is left to iron out the creases in the silk after the skirts have been crumpled so carelessly as we see here.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 61: "The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband" by Julia Quinn

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Shortly after the death of her father, Miss Cecilia Harcourt gets a letter informing her that her brother, Thomas Harcourt has been injured during battle i the American colonies. Her odious cousin keeps coming around hinting strongly at how beneficial it would be for Cecilia to marry him, so instead she buries the family silver in the garden and sets off over the Atlantic to find her brother and nurse him back to health. Unfortunately, no one seems to be willing to speak to her and her brother appears to be missing. Instead she finds his best friend, Captain Edward Rokesby, who's unconscious in the hospital and clearly also needs her aid. In order to be allowed to tend to him, Cecilia lies and claims to be his wife. She knows the charade will be up as soon as Rokesby wakes up, but at least she can give him the tenderest of care until then.

When Edward wakes up, he's surprised to find the woman he identifies as his best friend Thomas' sister Cecilia by his bedside. He's even more confused when she appears to be his wife, but the doctors confirm that the blow he took to the head when out on some very secretive mission appears to have caused him to forget the last six months of his memory. As Edward had frequently sent messages to Cecilia in Thomas' letters to her, and she had started sending little greetings for him, he's not entirely surprised that he's married to her, having already half fallen in love with her through he correspondence, he just can't remember when or how the marriage took place.

Cecilia feels dreadful about her lies, but discovers that the army officials are much more likely to assist her in her search for her brother if she is Captain Rokesby's wife, not just Miss Harcourt, sister of a missing officer. So even though it pains her to deceive a clearly very honest and upstanding gentleman, she keeps up the lie that she married Edward and promises herself that as soon as they locate Thomas, she will tell him the truth and set him free, even if he's unlikely to ever want to see her again afterwards.

This is the second "hero with amnesia" romance I've read in the last few months. I thought Meredith Duran's A Lady's Code of Misconduct worked a lot better, and both the protagonists of that book were more morally complex and interesting. Julia Quinn doesn't really write about bad people. All of her characters tend to be upstanding and thoroughly decent, and apart from the lie at the centre of their relationship, there really is NO conflict between Cecilia and Edward. They're pretty much already madly in love with each other from the letters they've been exchanging and while Cecilia keeps being terribly upset about her lies, and her belief that Edward is really in love with Billie Bridgerton, his neighbour back home (who married his brother in the previous book in the series), so she's stolen him from some other woman, it's quite clear from all of Edward's thoughts that whether he remembers marrying her or not, he's absolutely crazy about Cecilia.

As well as the relationship built on a lie plot, there is Cecilia's missing brother to locate, and Edward trying to remember exactly what happened in the six months he's now forgotten. None of this was terribly interesting to me. While the setting, of Revolutionary War America is more unusual in a historical romance, I didn't really feel as if Quinn really utilised it as much as she could have. It was nevertheless a nice change from the English countryside or London drawing rooms that most of these books are set in.

It's been a long time since Quinn really knocked my socks off with one of her romances. This is perfectly pleasant, but all in all, rather forgettable. I'll still keep getting her books on sale, but she's completely off my auto-buy list for the time being.

Judging a book by its cover: I'm really not an expert on late 18th Century women's fashion, but I'm pretty sure that this is not a period appropriate dress for the American War of Independence/Revolutionary War period. It looks more like a generic "historical" dress, with no clear time period in mind. Why there's an ocean and rolling cliffs in the background is also puzzling to me, as the whole book takes place in a British-occupied New York, there's no picturesque countryside in the book at all. They have at least found a cover model who's blond, like the heroine, and her putting her finger to her lips, indicating a secret is really rather cute.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR5 Book 98. "Lick" by Kylie Scott

Page count: 286 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Evelyn "Ev" Thomas went to Vegas with her best friend to celebrate her 21st birthday spectacularly, and maybe get laid. She wakes up on a bathroom floor, monstrously hung over, in the presence of a very attractive, half-naked man with tattoos, and a diamond the size of a small ice berg on her finger. The courteous half-naked stranger is less than happy when Ev admits to having blocked out the previous night completely. She doesn't remember who he is, and she certainly doesn't remember getting married. Her new husband storms out in anger, claiming his lawyers will contact her.

Ev discovers that her new husband's name is David, because on her drunken night out, she apparently had it tattooed on her butt. She wants to just quietly forget that anything every happened, hopefully keeping her drunken mistake from her parents. When a horde of paparazzi meet her as she arrives back home in Portland, asking her all sorts of intrusive questions about what her new marriage will mean for the future of Stage Dive, Ev realises that anonymity is no longer an option. Her friend Lauren is both shocked and delighted that Ev's new husband is David Ferris, guitarist and song writer for the biggest rock band out there at the moment (and Lauren's favourite band). Ev is determined to just get the marriage annulled, and agrees to be flown to LA to get the papers signed when David sends a bunch of body guards to pick her up at her parents' house.

When she arrives in LA, there's a huge celebrity party at the mansion where the band are staying. David pretty much completely ignores her, dumps her in a huge bedroom, all alone. He then gets furious when he finds her later in the evening, talking to his brother (who Ev doesn't recognise), who is skeevily trying to make a pass at his new sister-in-law. The day after, a team of lawyers try to bully Ev into signing annulment papers, but she's so appalled when it's clear that she's seen as some opportunistic gold digger that she storms off, being rescued by the drummer of the band, who seems to be the only nice guy there. Her cranky husband eventually shows up and apologises for being a complete tool, and after Ev actually spends some more time with her new husband, she discovers why she may have agreed to marry him on a spur of the moment.

I noticed my friend Erica reading this, and as she rated it very highly, I decided to give it a try. It's a lot more fun than the rather contrived set up suggests. Slowly but surely, Ev remembers more about her drunken night in Vegas. When spending more time with rock god David Ferris, she discovers that he doesn't just make her weak at the knees, but is actually a very nice, if quite emotionally damaged guy. Ev has just turned 21, has only had (bad) sex with one other person, and has never really had a significant relationship before. David is five years older, but is also a rock star with a fairly messed up family and relationship history. He clearly has a lot of trust and abandonment issues, which isn't going to make him the easiest of partners.

For a while I was worried that the book was going to be some sort of annoying insta-love thing, but all the characters in the book feel very real, with a number of convincing flaws. Marrying a complete stranger, no matter how hot, in Vegas, isn't going to be super easy. David has a number of issues that complicate things, and after about a week of married mostly bliss, said complications are big enough that Ev is unable to cope. The way the story is resolved is nicely done, and I enjoyed the heck out of the book.

It helps that Ev, who narrates the book, is a fairly snarky and engaging heroine. She feels awful that she can't remember what David clearly does about their first night together, and once he stops being a jealous, insecure douche who taunts her with groupies, they are able to really talk and start getting to actually know each other. She's willing to cut him a lot of slack, but also has enough backbone to not let herself be taken advantage of, which is nice to see in a young female character. David is rather melodramatic, and I personally would have trouble being with a guy who was quite as possessive and quick to jealousy. The supporting cast are mostly good, and it's obvious that each of the three other members in the band are going to get their own romances in due course. Based on this book, I'll probably check out the next ones in the series too.

CBR4 Book 89: "Tempting the Bride" by Sherry Thomas

Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: October 3rd, 2012
Date finished: October 3rd, 2012

This is technically the third book in the Fitzhugh-trilogy, where each Fitzhugh sibling gets their own book. This book stands fine on its own (and frankly, I wasn't overly fond of the other two books - hence no reviews), though there may be spoilers for the two other books in the series.

What if you could have a second chance to make a first impression? David Hillsborough, Viscount Hastings, has loved Helena Fitzhugh since they were both fourteen years old. Her older sister Venetia is the legendary beauty of her generation, yet Hastings only ever had eyes for Helena, since he first laid eyes on her. Afraid of rejection, he wasn't about to admit his infatuation, and instead, as is the wont of teenage boys, acted like an idiot and insulted her instead. She insulted him right back, and from her side, instant loathing was born. As David is Helena's brother's best friend, their paths crossed frequently up through the years, and at every encounter, barbs flew from either side.

Now Helena is a businesswoman who runs her own publishing company. Her sister is a Duchess and her brother is an Earl. So she really should know better than to court scandal by meeting a married man in secret. Hastings discovers that she's been spending time in the bedroom of her childhood sweetheart, Mr. Andrew Martin, and promptly reveals her foolish actions to her family. Despite them keeping her under near constant supervision, Helena is determined not to be thwarted, and she's certainly not inclined to listen to the dire warnings of Hastings, even though the result of her affair becoming public would utterly ruin her reputation, and possibly that of her siblings.

When Helena receives a telegram that she believes is from Mr. Martin, she sneaks away from the servants her sister and brother have escorting her, to meet him at a hotel. She has no idea that the telegram is, in fact, sent by Mr. Martin's interfering sister-in-law, determined to catch him in the act. Hastings discovers the plot and rushes to the hotel in the nick of time, so that when Mr. Martin's mother and sister-in-law burst into the hotel room, they find Helena and Hastings in a heated embrace, with the explanation that the couple just eloped.

Naturally, the news spreads like wildfire, and Helena has no choice but to accept Hastings' hand in marriage. Before they can actually be wed, however, Helena is nearly run over by a carriage, and lies comatose for three days. When she wakes up, she has no recollection of anything that happened after her fourteenth birthday, and is shocked to see her siblings not only grown, but married, and herself apparently married to a man she's never met. Hastings is now given the wonderful opportunity of letting Helena see the real man behind all the insults, scorn and reprehensible behaviour he's shown her for their entire acquaintance. Is it possible that he can make her love him as much as he loves her? But what will happen when her memory eventually returns?

Before the Fitzhugh trilogy, I had generally been very taken with Sherry Thomas' earlier romances. She  writes estranged couples and the less idyllic sides of romantic love very well. Yet I didn't really like Beguiling the Beauty (Helena's sister Venetia's book) or Ravishing the Heiress (about Helena's brother and sister-in-law) all that much. They were well written, because Thomas is truly a master of description and writing, but I just didn't warm that much to the characters. Helena and Hastings obviously appear in those books, and their antagonistic relationship is very obvious.

However, upon discovering that an amnesia story line was central to the plot of Tempting the Bride, my curiosity won me over, and I'm very glad that I gave her another chance, because this was a very enjoyable read.

Hastings is a talented painter and illustrator, a capable landowner, and a deeply affectionate father to his illegitimate daughter (who's not like normal kids, and quite possibly borderline Aspergic, from the descriptions of her in this book). He is, however, a complete and utter fool where Helena is concerned.  Her entire family have known about his feelings for years, yet he's stuck in a destructive pattern every time he sees her. Hoping to provoke lustful feelings in her, he writes an erotic manuscripts and asks her to publish it. Unbeknownst to Helena, he also writes and illustrates children's stories, that he's also sent her publishing company under an assumed name. He sees that her affair with Martin is going to end badly, and while it would mean that he could finally marry her, he tries to offer her advice and warns her to stop courting scandal.

I liked Helena a lot better after she lost her memory, when she was no longer so sharp and disregarding of those around her. It's understandable that she would be unpleasant to Hastings, of course, and even when he's at his most lecherous and douchy towards her, she gives as good as she gets. I can also understand that it would be hurtful to her that her childhood sweetheart married another for convenience rather than love, but that she persists in foolish and headstrong behaviour for years when it's quite clear both that she's risking not only her own reputation, but that of her family, annoyed me. Especially because it's so obvious that Mr. Martin's a weak-willed, spineless man, wholly undeserving of her.

The description of the days when Helena is comatose, and generally the insight into Hastings' emotions, is rather heartbreaking. His unrequited love is so strong and passionate, and he knows that he's being a jerk, but just can't help himself. When he's given a new chance to woo the woman he loves, you can't help but cheer him on, and I was impressed at how well Thomas managed the whole amnesia subplot, that could have turned so hokey and cliched, but instead played out very enjoyably indeed. Both strong and passionate people, Helena and Hastings are clearly made for each other, and I enjoyed seeing them find their happy ending.

Sherry Thomas has also published the manuscript that Hastings wrote to Helena as an erotic novella, which is available as its own story, both in paper and e-book form. It's a very steamy, but also extremely well-written little story, which naturally compliments Tempting the Bride excellently.