Part of the fun of the book is this “what is the deal with Keir” mystery, so I’ll leave it there. Because, as with Kleypas books, there’s a little something going on in the first half(ish) that gets figured out and maybe also resolved, and then the second half(ish) is more focused on a spin-off problem. Merritt’s love interest is Keir MacRae, a Scottish whiskey distiller who comes out of nowhere, but there’s a mystery attached to him that made me decide to go all in with this one and not stop reading until I’d solved the mystery. I feel like this world is getting complicated. The third book is the famed and beloved (I might be biased – deal with it) Devil in Winter, and those protagonists had five children, two of whom are (now) married to Ravenels. Now, if you know Kleypas, you know Merritt is the oldest daughter of the protagonists of It Happened One Autumn, which is the second book in the Wallflowers series. Just when we thought that the Ravenels series was finished – on account of, you know, the last known Ravenel finding her true love – Kleypas sends us a curveball by adding the story of Merritt Sterling nee Marsden. Overall: I re-upped my membership in the Bad Decisions Book Club for this one and read it in one sitting. Plot: “We’ll never work because of an unequal match” + “Why is someone trying to murder me?”

Heat Factor: These are some horny VictoriansĬharacter Chemistry: It’s totally insta-love, and it was written lucidly enough that it worked for me

The devil in disguise lisa kleypas