Bold of Lorraine to give the hero in Book 1 of a series a foot fetish…

Picked this one up because I heard Book 2 is 🔥 & still intend to read it but did not enjoy. I love the premise of a masked liaison leading to more, and I liked that Ashe is a Real Rake - problematic and fun. However, he’s more than that - he’s kind of a dick, lol. Like, I’m okay with a third act breakup, and I’m okay with a rakish hero threatening the heroine with blackmail, but not in said third act. I need character development and I don’t need it to happen in the last 10 pages only.

Also hated that the author assumes you’ve read her other bodies of work. I have read some but not all. This is Book 1 in a series, so why do I find out like, halfway through the book that the character has written a feminist treatise and everyone knows it and seemingly I should have as well?

Ashe’s obsession with photographing “perfect” legs and feet to deal with PTSD was so weird to me too. I mean, everyone deals with trauma and grief differently, but I felt like it made no sense given he wasn’t even at the scene of the accident that led to this trauma. I know therapy wasn’t around in the 1800s but damn, this is some real Mommy/Daddy Issues shit and I didn’t find it sexy or romantic at all!

This was written about a decade ago and the progressivism of the characters reads like that too. It was cringey.

A fun listen, I've enjoyed reading the series out of order (2, 1, 3) and feeling like I could understand some characters better for it. I liked Minerva, but her insecurity was a little grating by the end. Also not generally a fan of the "she doesn't know she's beautiful until a man can show her she actually is" plot, but it's to be expected from the genre I suppose. The writing style does get kind of redundant what with the "but he/she would never accept them because of their HORRIBLE SECRET" every other line and then the secret is like...my nose is too big behind this mask. 

I really liked this book. Minerva was a fantastic heroine. Ashe was interesting and compelling, too, though I felt like his past trauma, both his parents’ deaths and his unsupervised youth at Havisham, could have used more fleshing out. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen photography used in a historical novel the way it is here. The one thing that really bothered me, and that influenced the rest of the book, was how paternalistic Ashe became when he learned that Minerva, the woman he was about to have sex with at a club specifically set up for anonymous sex, was a virgin. Seeing as he was there for the exact same reason he really had no basis for his presumption that he knew better than her what sexual experiences would be best for her. Let the woman decide for herself already! Sheesh!