Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: There’s no kisses or bedroom scenes
Sex Scene Length: There are no scenes
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): no scenes
Humor: I don’t recall much
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? slow to medium
When mains are first on page together: Not too far in, about 8%
Cliffhanger: Yes – the story continues in The Bittersweet Bride
Epilogue: No
Format: read owned e-book (it was free)

Should I read in order?
This is a prequel short story to The Bittersweet Bride (book 1 of Riley’s Advertisements for Love series)

Basic plot:
A wildflower saleswoman meets a playwright who wants more from his gilded cage.

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (1813)
- Epping, England (outside London) and London setting
- writer hero (and second son of an Earl)
- heroine sells flowers
- short story
- forbidden love
- no steam

Ages:
- hero is 20, heroine is 18

First line:
Something had to change for Ewan Fitzwilliam.

My thoughts:
This is a short story with background for the mains in The Bittersweet Bride.

I am a bit sad I didn’t love this story – I own the Bittersweet Bride and seeing it was second chance, I was hoping by reading this first I would like that trope a bit more than I usually do.

But I found this book pretty slow and uneventful. I...didn’t dislike the mains, but I didn’t love them either. I felt like I barely knew the mains still after this story and didn’t really see their relationship as something that was strong and cemented together before this break that they experience before the next story.

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.
[
- mention of physical abuse by father of hero
- racism (heroine deals with this from a side character)