Overall: 3.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑 (The scenes are pretty light, the first one is more developed but I settled at 3)
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥 - there’s one decently developed scene and then 1 shorter scene (a few paragraphs) and 1 very short and vague scene
Humor: A bit
Perspective: Third person from both hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? medium
When mains are first on page together: Immediately with the prologue, after that it’s chapter 2, or about 10% when they meet current day
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes
Format: voluntarily read an advanced reader copy from NetGalley but was a bit late after publishing

Should I read in order?
I don’t think it’s totally necessary? I picked this one up alone and it seemed fine. There was some brief mention of the other couples from prior books in the series. I’m not sure how much character depth is created for these mains in the first two books.

Basic plot:
Iain believes his wife is dead, but comes to find out 13 years after they were married shes alive and living on the Isle of Synne. He goes to request a divorce...

Give this a try if you want:
- Late Regency - 1821
- Isle of Synne setting
- road trip vibes
- class difference – hero is a stable hand and heroine is the daughter of an earl when they marry
- second chance – it’s been a 13 year separation
- found family
- rags to riches
- heroine owns a circulating library
- Duke hero
- secret author
- marriage in jeopardy
- pets – heroine has a pet parrot
- lower steam – 1 nicely developed scene and two shorter and more vague ones

Ages:
- Heroine is 32 and hero is ‘more than 30’

First line:
I cannae believe you’re my wife.

My thoughts:
I loved the set up of this one! Second chance doesn’t usually work the best for me – but the fact that we got a backstory in the prologue and then the hero thought she was dead for 13 years...I thought I was going to really love this one.

But I struggled with Seraphina being so closed off to Iain. The woman has trauma for sure, but when she didn’t seemed too concerned about getting the full story from Iain after she finds out she’s been lied to rubbed me the wrong way. And then how she didn’t open up until the very end of the book, it kind of left that to be one of the issues for the whole book. And because she wasn’t opening up to him, I think I didn’t quite get the angst I wanted from their reuniting.

Still I think this is a very intense and worthwhile read – maybe a bit too heavy for what I was in the mood for at that time, but I did like it more than a lot of second chance I read. I LOVED the parrot, he was hilarious, and genuinely enjoyed her found family on the island. Maybe I should have read in order to get a bit more background from all the women because I found myself wanting to spend a bit more time there.

Endearments

Hero calls the heroine ‘mo bhean’ (my wife) and ‘mo chridhe’ (my heart)

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

- toxic and abusive family members
- heroine is imprisoned in an asylum and was abused
- heroine must work as a prostitute to support her sisters (briefly mentioned)
Author mentions she has content warnings on her website.

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

Safe sex: 

Hero pulls out 

Hows the consent? 

It’s good 

59% - kiss
68% - 🔥 kisses, oral for her, her on top, missionary
”Seraphina,” he said, his voice gruff, almost a caress on her feverish skin, “I will have you any way I can, for as long as you will allow me, and be thankful for it.”

71% - 🔥a mention of sex, but it’s only a few paragraphs
76% - a paragraph of sex but it’s pretty vague