Enjoy a fun, flirty guardian-and-ward forced proximity romp from a New York Times bestselling author!
Miss Matilda Dodd refuses to be any man’s property. She’s a month shy of her majority, and cannot wait to live life on her own terms. Rather than meet her unwanted new guardian as instructed, she attends a ball and comes kiss-to-kiss with an adorably befuddled handsome lord instead. But the grumpy, sexy stranger turns out to be the new guardian, hell-bent on marrying her to someone else!
Titus Noble, the Earl of Gilbourne, is an emotionless, rigid automaton who lives for predictability and order. There is no room in his exacting schedule for a ridiculous matchmaking festival, and there is no room in his peaceful life for an unexpected ward. The only solution is to marry the chit to the first fool willing take the hoyden off the earl’s hands. That is, if Titus can keep his hands off his maddening, kissable ward…
Review:
Ohmygosh, this book was so cute and sweet with just the right amount of sexy hotness in it–I literally felt my heart smiling like a lunatic when I got to the declaration and epilogue. I mean, seriously. I read the blurb and thought, “Oh, that sounds cute!” but then I started reading and it just. Blew. Me. Away. There is so much more to this book and its characters than the blurb even hints at!
Like Titus. Titus just might be the book boyfriend who ruins me for all other book boyfriends. He’s so grumpy and so stern, but everyone who actually knows him (and he makes sure that number of people is very, very small) knows that’s all a front. He’s hiding an unbelievable amount of pain and guilt, but even with all of that he’s indescribably loyal and thoughtful towards the people he cares about. And after about 3.5 seconds in her presence, Mildred is one of those people.
And Mildred! She is absolutely sunshine in a adorable, (rightly) spider-fearing package. I loved that she didn’t take what Titus said or how he appeared at face value but looked deeper, figuring out what was really going on inside. Other than misjudging how he really thought about her, she never accepted what other people thought about him–what he wanted them to believe–as truth. At the same time, though, she 100% understood his real limits and never tried to push him beyond them if it wasn’t going to turn out to be good for him in the end.
Even though we were only at the matchmaking festival for about a hot minute this time, I’m not at all sorry for the change of location. I mean, Titus has his own library… 😉
Rating: 4 1/2 stars / A
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.