SERIES: House of Pleasure, #8
GENRE: Historical Erotic Romance
SETTING: England, 1826
MY GRADE: D
SYNOPSIS: Lucinda Haymore is still reeling from the cruel betrayal of a vile seducer. Softly, irresistibly, his profession of love disguised his truer, baser intentions. With the knowledge that her reputation is at stake, she is happy to accept a proposal of marriage in name only from her best friend since childhood... While Paul St. Clare has no interest in consummating his marriage with Lucinda, he has every intention of allowing her to enjoy true physical ecstasy in the hands of another. It's no surprise that he finds an agent more than willing to accommodate his needs in the House of Pleasure. What he doesn't expect is how perfectly the arrangement satisfies everyone's desires...
MY THOUGHTS: Another bad novel with little to no background information on lead characters. I don't know anything at all about Lucinda's (aka Lucky) background/childhood, or how long she's been good friends with Paul. I don't even know how old Paul is. I was assuming he was around her age but since he fought in a 'long, bloody war', I'm guessing he's a bit older than her twenty-one.
Something bad happened to Lucky so she was eager to marry Paul. She claimed she's always loved him but I never felt any love between those two or for the love she and Con claim to feel for each other. I did feel love between Paul and ex-lover Constantine (aka Con) Delinsky and was sad that they couldn't be together in the traditional sense. They say they're still in love with each other.
Con is from Russia, and is thirty-four, tall, and has white hair and silver eyes. I wanted to know how long Con and Paul have known each other but never got any information on it.
Paul, well, all I know about him is that he's blond and brown-eyed, has a slight frame, and was in the army. That's it.
Lucky puzzles me. She knows Paul loves Con so she wants them to continue to see each other. She thinks Paul 'gave up everything' to be with her but what, exactly, has he given up besides lovers? If anything he's gaining her fortune. She also wants to make Paul jealous so she flirts with Con. She thinks that Paul's jealousy will make him want to take Con back as a lover. What?! That makes no sense at all. I don't find her encouragement of Paul and Con's relationship to be the slightest bit believable. Not at the beginning of their marriage, anyway. I can see her, at a much later date, wanting them to resume their sexual relationship and include her in it, but not at the beginning. I don't even know if she knew Paul was bisexual and leaned more towards men.
Toward the end of the story there was a whole lot of uninteresting drama involving Con and whether or not his wife was still alive. I really didn't care a thing about it.
There are ten sex scenes in the book. Four are just between Con and Paul, five are between Lucky and Paul, and one is a threesome between Paul, Lucky, and Con. All are very graphic so two thumbs up to them. Two thumbs down to the storyline.
I received this from the publisher in 2015 in exchange for an honest review.
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