This is the last of the holiday reads for this year, friends. I’m excited that next week I get to resume my regular reading. Not that I don’t enjoy the holiday stories, I really do, but it’s time to take a break from them.
What I am reading this week
This week I’m reading Lady Windermere’s Lover by Miranda Neville. Book three in the Wild Quartet, it features Damian, Earl of Windermere and his wife Cynthia.
Rating
Heat Level: 🔥🔥🔥
Loveability: 💗💗💗
Heartbreakability: 💔💔💔
Why I chose this book
I chose this book for my last holiday read of 2016. It had all my favorite tropes in it; marriage of convenience, second chance romance, lovers stranded due to weather. I’m a sucker for these stories… :)
About the book
In order to regain possession of his childhood home, Damian, Lord Windermere, has no choice but to marry the niece of a merchant, as the property is part of her dowry. Now that the property is his, he leaves his wife, accepting a diplomatic position in the Middle East. Now, a year later, he returns home to find his formerly unpolished wife has been replaced with a sophisticated Lady.
With her husband’s parting words ringing in her ears, Cynthia, the titular Lady Windermere, has spent the last year turning herself into the perfect diplomat’s wife. When Damian’s estranged friends reach out to her, Cynthia gladly accepts their friendship. Including that of Julian, the Duke of Denford. When Damian sees his wife on the arm of his former best friend, he assumes that she has taken Julian Fortescue as her lover in his absence.
Having spent the past year apart, and the two weeks of their marriage prior to that in near silence, both find it difficult to discuss what really matters–her perceived infidelity and his lack of concern for her wellbeing. When both men come to blows over her, Cynthia realizes she is merely a commodity to her husband and flees.
Realising his mistake, Damian goes after his wife, only to find them both stuck at an inn waiting for the storm to pass. With a shared love of art and the help of some erotic drawings, they find the means to communicate and reconnect with each other.
What I enjoyed about it
I really did love this story. I love watching characters grow throughout a book and this one had them doing so from page one. Damian despises being forced to marry beneath his station in order to gain back the home he gambled away in a youthful indiscretion. As such he is a bit reserved and his treatment of Cynthia is cold and his expectations of her are demanding.
Cynthia, on the other hand, is determined to be the kind of wife Damian needs. She does not kid herself as to why he married her, she knows it was only to get the propert, and if he had it his way, he would never have chosen her. And while she would never commit adultery, she does get her revenge for Damian’s shabby treatment of her in a rather clever way.
I don’t know why, but I’m a sucker for a hero who is a jerk to the heroine at first. I think it’s because they change the most. They are able to look inside themselves and see how they are, and with the love they have for their heroine, they make the decision to become a better person. It’s not magic, and it’s not instantaneous, but it feels real.
Is this an author I’ve read before?
Oh yes. I began with the Burgundy Club books, and I do love those stories as well.
What keeps me coming back for more?
I like the complexity of the stories. There is always something hidden in them that you know is just below the surface. It never fails to surprise when it’s finally made clear.
I definitely recommend Miranda Neville for fun, complex stories that never fail to connect with the reader, and Lady Windermere’s Lover if you’re a fan of second chance romance, a hero who finally comes to his senses and an erotic twist ;)
