Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥
Humor: Yes, a bit
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine and minor page time for the ‘villain’ Mason Hale
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? medium
When mains are first on page together: Almost immediately, chapter 1
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes, maybe a few months later?
Format: read an e-book version through my library (Hoopla)
Why I chose this book: Holly and I decided to buddy read together
Mains: This is a M/F relationship between a cishet hero and heroine

Should I read in order?
This is the first in Sandas’ Fallen Ladies series. (I feel like parts of them, at least the first two books, happen a bit concurrently so that’s interesting – I read book 2 first)

Basic plot:
Emma must take on work to support her family, but being the bookkeeper for Roderick’s gambling hell might be more than she bargained for.

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (1817)
- London setting
- hero is a bastard (though his father was an earl and his mother the daughter of a marquess
- working women – heroine applies for a bookkeeping position
- heroine loves mathematics
- celibate hero (7 months)
- (very) light heroine nurses hero back to health
- bit of a workplace romance vibe (employer/employee)
- wager
- gaming hell owner hero
- low to mid steam – 2ish full scenes but the page count felt a bit shorter?

Ages:
- Heroine is 25, hero is 28

First line:
Emma resisted the urge to press her fingertips to her temples.

My thoughts:
This is my second by Sandas and I think I’m going to have to read them allllll!

She has a writing style I really enjoy – she spends time on emotions and tension building and kisses and little touches and all the things that make me really adore romance. I found myself swooning over so many lines and quotes – it was really delightful.

I read book 2 of this series first – I think it’s fine to kind of read either first because the events happen rather concurrently and you don’t get a ton of info dropped about either couple in the other book. I think I liked this one a bit more but both were really great.

I loved how hard Roderick was falling for Emma in this novel. So sweet.

Endearments

The hero calls the heroine ‘sweetheart’ 

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:

As she pressed father into the darkness, the unexpected scents of leather and cognac mingled in the air around her.
A floorboard creaked as Lord Marwood came father into the room.
Emma took another step back, and the heel of her slipper came down unevenly on something behind her. She faltered in a sudden loss of balance. Alarm flashed at the thought of tumbling from her hiding place right at Lord Marwood’s feet.
Just as she reached to grasp the curtain to stop her fall, a strong arm slipped around her waist and she was pulled back against a solid body. Her stomach flipped, and a harsh breath of shocked flew through her teeth at the realization she was not alone behind the curtain.
A large, warm hand fell upon her shoulder with gentle but insistent pressure, and she barely heard the low “Hush” murmered in a masculine voice.
---
“All right, Roderick,” she began with a slow smile, “for each round I win, you will kiss me. On the mouth.”
She waited for his grin to turn to an expression of shock and disbelief at her brazen response. But it didn’t. The only change was a slight lowering of his eyelids and what she thought was a flare of heat in the depths of his gaze.
---
Before she could think to pull away, he had placed her index fingering directly into his mouth, closing his lips around the first knuckle.
A firestorm erupted in her center as the velvety surface of his tongue swirled around her fingertip. She did not close her eyes this time, and his gaze held hers captive. He removed her index finger from his mouth in a slow glide. Then he replaced it with the next finger, drawing it a little farther into the heat of his mouth.
---
“What are you doing? You must return me to the ballroom,” she whispered.
He stopped at the edge of the terrace where stone steps led down to the garden. Then he pressed into an alcove created by angles of the house, drawing her with him. His arm remained around her waist, his hand warm over her hip. “I will. Just not yet,” he whispered.
---
She tried to withdraw from his embrace.
He responded by locking his arms more securely around her waist and leaning his shoulders back to look down into her face. He was in shadow, so she could not see his eyes, but she could feel the depth of this focus down to her toes.
“Are you going to let me go?”
“Not yet.”
---
“What about our personal relationship?” he asked in a raw murmur.
She licked her lips before she replied. “We have no personal relationship.”
“Maybe we should.”
---
“Kiss me again.”
He did not comply right away, and a delicious tension swirled in the spaces between them.
“You make a dangerous request,” he replied darkly.
---
Lifting her chin, she peered at him through the shadows.
“Are you all right?” she asked gently.
He would never be all right again.
---
“I have never thrown myself at a man before, but if you do not yet see how desperate I am for you to do something, then clearly, I am not doing it right.”
He closed his eyes and a sound similar to a growl and a groan combined rumbled from his throat. Then he opened his eyes again, and she noted the stark gleam of desire that had taken over his gaze. The sight of it twisted her insides.
“You do everything right, Emma,” he answered in a tortured whisper.
---
Reaching beneath the hem, she slid her hands up along his sides, feeling the wonderful tension of lean muslce over his rippled abdomen and rib cage. He obediently lifted his arms so she could shove the shirt up over his head. She was forced to step toward him and rise up on her toes to free him completely from the garment.
As his upper torso was fully bared to her view, a tingling rush of delight ran through her blood at the sight. The shirt fell forgotten from her hands as she reached to press her palms to his skin again. Her hands skated over the contours of his chest, shoulders, and arms. She took a tender moment to explore the healing scar on his upper arm before her fingers drifted gently across his low belly. She watched in delight as his muscles clenched beneath her touch.
He was all heat and hardness.
And control.
She didn’t realize just how much he held himself in check while she delighted in her sensual exploration of his body until she glanced back up into his face and saw the tight clench of his teeth and caught his heavy-lidded gaze.
“You have no idea what that does to me,” he muttered gruffly.

---
Ugh I love when the hero is barely holding onto control like this – it’s wrecking him
He slid in easily at first, her inner flesh softened by her pleasure. When he encountered the resistance of her innocence, he lowered his head to the pillow beside hers. His breath came in ragged puffs against her throat. Emma wrapped her arms around him and bent her knees alongside his hips.
---
He gripped her upper arms in a secure hold as he lowered his head until his lips hovered breathlessly above hers.
Emma’s eyes drifted closed and she titled her chin, trying to bring their mouths closer. Her earlier elation settled into a fierce hum vibrating intensely through her bones.
“For weeks, I have been dying to feel your body against mine,” he whispered harsley. “I have been desperate to taste the sweetness of your lips.”
 

Content warnings:

- First kiss is a bit dubcon-ish – she is hiding from a man in a room and he ends up kissing her without really asking, it’s kind of out of the blue
- mention of parental death
- guns/gunshot wound
- there’s a scene where the heroine is hiding from a man that would probably assault/harass her
- minor alcohol use on page
- opium mentioned (side character uses)

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes: My percentages are going to be off because the book I was reading had 13 chapters preview of the following book in the series (so action is sooner than posted….)

Safe sex: 

  Nope 

Consent: 

  it’s not really explicit for one of the kisses...but I wouldn’t say it crosses a line either, the rest is consensual 

Babies/pregnancy? 

No children (only a minor side character’s child mentioned) or pregnancy on page for the mains – there’s the possibility of future children? 

5% - kiss
34% - kiss while playing cards
39% - 🔥 kiss in the garden leading to fingering for her under the arbor
Lifting his head to watch her, he was stunned by the magic he held in his arms. Her eyes were closed as she tipped her face up to the night sky. The beauty in her surrender was astounding, and he felt a wave of possession so overwhelming his legs nearly buckled beneath him.
53% - 🔥 breast play, fingering for her, missionary (v loss for heroine)
(view spoiler)
59% - kiss
(Story ended for me at about 69%)