Overall: 3.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋 (Her scenes are quite light on language – more poetic and vague than explicit)
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥
Humor: A touch
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? fast
When mains are first on page together: It takes a bit, 23% (chapter 3)
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: No
Format: voluntarily read an advanced reader copy

Should I read in order?
This is fine to pick up alone. I believe it was published prior in the Love for Maui anthology.

Basic plot:
Juliet and Ryker haven’t seen each other in 6 years. Now a widower, Ryker finds out he is Juliet’s guardian for the last year before she claims her inheritance.

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (1816)
- book loving heroine
- hero needs an heir
- childhood friends to lovers – there’s been a 6 year separation and the hero doesn’t recognize the heroine immediately
- guardian/ward
- widower
- unrequited longing (from the heroine)
- heroine pursues
- average novella steam – 1 full scene

Ages:
- heroine is 24, hero is 27

First line:
It was easy to hide beside the ficus.

My thoughts:
I was excited with this book because at first I thought the mains didn’t know each other. Piers loves to write childhood friends to lovers. But as we get a few chapters in, I realized they were childhood friends to lovers 😂

It’s okay, because I do love that trope, especially when combined with unrequited longing which we have here. This one felt like we had some more character depth, even though it was such a short story because there was a lot of reflecting of the main characters and remembering past events. But this also left me wanting them together on page more in the present.

Overall this a sweet and quick read. I enjoyed the writing and liked both characters. I think Ryker’s turn around from not wanting to marry to being okay with marrying was too fast, but all in all I like these reads to break up longer books.

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

  - hero loses his wife, father, and another close family figure within the same month

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes: Note that there is a sneak peak of another story at the end so the story ends at 81%

 
Safe sex: 

  No 

 
Hows the consent? 

  It’s good 

 
54% - some light touches/her on top on a chaise lounge but ultimately nothing happens
77% - 🔥 kisses that lead to missionary (it’s a bit light on details)