When I bought the last book of the series „The Ladies’ book of Pleasure“ I knew that I didn’t want to read it because I knew it would be the last one of this series and I really enjoyed it. Well I read it.
The story is rather easy to be told. The female lead is Lady Grace Hollis, the Duchess of Jameswood. She’s widow and the last one of her small circle of friends who isn’t yet (re-)married. Her two friends got married because of the scandalous “Ladies’ book of pleasure”. Grace plays her part very well, nobody knows that she penned this book, not even her closest friends. She doesn’t share private things easily nor emotions, she is rather cold but a good listener and friend.
Secretly she wrote with the publisher of the book for years – Connor Sheridan – but never met him. Now he went into society and everybody wants to know about the anonymous lady who wrote the book but he doesn’t know it either.
They meet more often and she tries to be cold, tries not to feel anything when he is around but the problem is – she feels something. She feels like she knows him very well because of all the letters they wrote to each other.
It becomes harder and harder to hide her identity from him and her female friends.
Plus there are threads against the writer of the book but she cannot be informed because Connor, who is fascinated by her and feels the erotic connection between them too, doesn’t know who Grace really is.
Of course things get more complicated because of the threads but the reader has to deal with those in the last third of the book, in the beginning they are rather unimportant because Michaels centers around the connection between Grace and Connor and the fact that a widow has more possibilities than an unmarried woman – she can have a lover, discreet of course. So she invites him and I’d say Grace has to pay her butler and footmen a lot of money to not say a word.
I really hoped through a long part of the book that Grace would agree to write another book and to write more about her new found sexual fascinations. She likes to be dominated.
Yeah I like books dealing with domination and all those kinky things in the Regency era because they also existed but nobody talks about it. Maybe that’s why I like Jess Michaels’ books. It didn’t even take me 2 days to finish it –that’s what I like about her books. You cannot put them away.
What I didn’t really like respectively wasn’t fascinated by was the story about Connors past. Why bring his father on the tablet and do not deal with it for real. Why is it important? I don’t get it. Maybe Connor has some blue blood in him but he is illegitimate. I do not understand why it was written into the book.
Rating: 4 stars
Buck is reading .... 