A Week to be Wicked had top-notch humor and steam, both plentiful even early on, so it definitely earned my approval and recommendation.
Summary from Goodreads: “Minerva Highwood, one of Spindle Cove’s confirmed spinsters, needs to be in Scotland.
Colin Sandhurst, Lord Payne, a rake of the first order, needs to be…anywhere but Spindle Cove.
These unlikely partners have one week to
• fake an elopement
• convince family and friends they’re in “love”
• outrun armed robbers
• survive their worst nightmares
• travel four hundred miles without killing each other
All while sharing a very small carriage by day and an even smaller bed by night.
What they don’t have time for is their growing attraction. Much less wild passion. And heaven forbid they spend precious hours baring their hearts and souls.
Suddenly one week seems like exactly enough time to find a world of trouble. And maybe…just maybe…love.”
I’m reading about so many Minervas lately! M. Highwood, this particular Minerva, captured my heart — another Regency-era lady scientist with no patience for hiding her considerable intelligence in order to seem more marriage-able, she’s the type of forward-thinking of heroine that I love to read about. Colin, the hero of this piece, is a fairly standard rake. He’s charming and funny and of course, very attractive, and while for one reason or another he doesn’t stick in my particular pantheon of favorite romantic heroes, he’s sincere in his love and admiration of Minerva. The only thing I didn’t really love, which knocked this book down to four stars, was the addition of Colin’s phobia of closed carriages. Not to be dismissive of such a thing or phobias in general, but in a book with an already astonishing number of Things Going Wrong on their time sensitive journey, this was an element that warred with the humor of the rest of the book. No doubt it was intended to give Colin emotional depth, but when the romance is written well enough — which it was — the obligatory past hardship angle might not be necessary.
Did I mention the steam? It was so good! As a self-described spinster, Minerva isn’t forbiddingly concerned with maintaining her “purity,” so the two begin willingly exploring fairly quickly. Thankfully, Tessa Dare is a skilled enough writer that their affair doesn’t ever become boring, so the reader is treated to several great love scenes and lots of romantic tension in between them. Part of the appeal of the scenes, for me, was the humor: as a scientist, Minerva approaches these new situations with a researcher’s curiosity and a pretense of clinical study, which sounds rather odd and detached but actually reads as a witty and endearing faux-insouciance.
This particular novel came recommended by the ineffable Shameful Tally; may it ever reign!
