Pippa is engaged to be married to a decent, but boring and fairly unintelligent, uninspired fellow. Pippa, on the other hand, is scientifically minded and well-read. She is also not very socially adept and worries about the marriage and especially about the wedding night. Which is why she tries to get Cross, a notorious rake, to educate her about sex–although only through lecture and not the dirty deed itself. But Cross refuses because Pippa is an innocent. Plus, she’s his friend’s/business partner’s sister-in-law so it would be bad for him if he were caught alone with Pippa. But he is attracted to her–and her wit. And then there’s further complications when Cross is threatened and the only way out is for him to marry someone he has no interest in. There’s also his past and his secret shame.
I enjoyed the hell out of this one. It was a VERY fast read for me. Nice and steamy, and it didn’t make me cringe nearly so much with the male chauvinism. Philippa, or Pippa, was pretty delightful. She was nerdy, but I didn’t find her annoying. She was pretty endearing. I would give it at least a solid 3.75-4.0, so I’m going to go with a 4.0 because it was a lot of fun. I have heard that book 3 in the series isn’t any good, so I am debating book 4. It features Chase, which is tempting…. I had to go to the author’s website to find out if Chase even had a book because Amazon was not very helpful with my research. Sarah MacLean’s website made me chuckle – in large type across her screen it says, “I write books. There’s smooching in them.”
I totally don’t get the covers to this series of books though. The author describes the women as not typical beauties–and this woman isn’t even wearing glasses! Imposter! Also, my google search for the book covers had me stumble across the following pic:
Nice, but not sure what he has to do with the book. It looks like it’s attached to a review on someone’s Goodreads account. Sweet! So does that mean I can just post pics of hot men in my reviews? Excellent!