To save her sister, Lady Chastity Ware hold up a coach. Unfortunately, instead of containing an elderly lord or a wealthy merchant, it holds Captain Lord Cynric Malloren, bored after time at home recovering from sickness. To her exasperation, he insists in helping her, regarding the whole thing as an adventure.

While evading the villain who seeks to snatch her sister's child, and the military raised to search for all of them, Chastity and Cyn fall deep in love. But Chastity is a ruined woman whose father will never let her marry a Malloren, and Cyn's brother, the formidable Marquess of Rothgar, will surely not permit such a disastrous alliance.

RELEASE NOTES:

Sent this book to Sonia in Switzerland as part of a trade. Thanks Sonia and enjoy the book.
P.S. Look out for Rothgar, a wonderful character :)

Looking forward to reading more of Jo Beverly... so far I've only read a short story of hers... Thanks so much for trading, Ioana!

Very fun story. I started reading this out loud to my husband in the car while on a road trip... after about five chapters I had to quickly finish reading it to myself, and today he finished reading it too!
Now I have to find the next in the series. This is available for trade, preferably in the States while I'm still here.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

This is now on its way to Virginia from the Swiss alps, courtesy of the VBB. The cover of this book is a bit travel-weary. I tried to tape it a little (although I had some misgivings after the whole discussion on the forum about plastic covers on books)... hope you won't mind, and that the somewhat battered exterior will not detract from this intriguing story. All the best!

Picked up from the post office. Thanks!

This book didn't really work for me. It's different enough that it should have kept my attention, but I just didn't find most of what happened in this book romantic. Maybe it's just because the book took place in a more primitive time than the Regency England that I'm used to. But hero dressed in drag? Herone going around with cropped hair and dressed as a groom? And then there's the well developed sense of time. At first I thought that the author did such a good job that even though the time period was never specified, we're never in doubt that this happened in Georgian England. But then I started to think that the realism has been carried to far. I kept on imagine in my mind Chastity and Cyn running around England in dirty clothes and smelling like sewage, which is decided not romantic. And did we really to read about diaper changing and the heroine wondering if the sound of a woman urinating is different than when a man does it?

I also wasn't convinced by how quickly Cyn and Chastity fell in love, especially when I couldn't really see what they saw in each other. I can understand how Chastity can easily fall in love with Cyn since he's her knight in shining armor, her dragon slayer, but beyond that he didn't really have that much of a personality. As for Chastity, she spends the whole book alternating between being really prickly and annoying, not following orders and getting herself in trouble, or obsessing over her ruined reputation. I find myself cringing whenever she decides to take matters into her own hand and does something stupid.

Having said all that, the book does offer an intriguing glimpse of several member of the Malloren family. And I'd probably check out another book in the series before giving up on the series altogether.

3/19/09 Putting back into the romance vbb.