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Book Review of The Lady Is Tempted

The Lady Is Tempted
The Lady Is Tempted
Author: Cathy Maxwell
Genre: Romance
Book Type: Paperback
susyclemens avatar reviewed on + 158 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3


Plot: the widowed country mouse (and sexually supressed) Deborah Percival goes to visit her sister in London - on the way, thanks to a rainstorm, she meets Anthony, an Earl with long-standing emotional issues concerning his father's suicide and mother's abandonment of him. It's mad, passionate lust at first sight (and it really is from first sight, they're in bed together within three hours of meeting).

I thought this book was a piece of fluff. I guess you could call it a beach read. Whether it's a good beach read, I don't think so. The love story was, frankly, blah, and predictable. Mean characters become nice; selfish characters become giving & protective, and Anthony's mother tells him she never meant to hurt him. Very sappy-style plot and characterization and way too historically lightweight for my tastes, too -it's one of those books where characters act the way they want, and all is forgiven & forgotten by the end, without regard for the real social behavior of the era. I did like that Anthony was NOT presented as a rake or a bounder, and his relationship with his old nurse - but that's the only original thing about this Regency-era romance.