Miss Cavendish is in a pickle. Guardian to her younger brother Edward, the passing of her aunt has left her without respectable companionship, or the means to acquire more. She has no choice but to accept whatever charity Viscount Enstone, whose father had been providing assistance to them, chooses to deal out. The only problem is that Luke had no idea she even existed, and can’t comprehend why his father would have been helping them out in the first place.
There’s enough plot here to make this interesting - a lecherous neighbour, a secret inheritance, an accidental compromise that forces Luke’s hand - but the execution felt a little lacking to me. There’s definitely too much telling rather than showing and I actually found the writing a little hard to follow as well - the author has a tendency to change points of view without a scene break, and to write long sentences without commas to break up clauses which can lead to confusion.
Honestly, I think the only thing this needed to be excellent was a strong line edit, but I would strongly encourage the author to get that done. As it stands, while I enjoyed the characters and felt the story was strong, my discomfort with the writing would keep me from committing to reading another full book by this author without having first read a sample to check it had been more thoroughly edited than this. I cannot give it more than three stars.
Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this title via Rachel’s Random Resources.