I liked this book a lot until the middle third. She's the elder sister to a debutante in Regency London, he's a notorious rake who's trying to seduce the younger sister. He has weird issues where he thinks he has to marry a woman he'll never fall in love with -- makes no sense -- and she's afraid of thunderstorms due to highly nonsensical childhood trauma. Naturally they fall in love by accident. He's a little too mean to her for my taste, and she's supposed to be witty and mean but can't because she's so overwhelmed by his manliness, or something. Also, I know it's probably historically accurate, but a huge part of the book is about their wedding night and her virginity (she's not even sure what "sex" is) and his prowess. The power imbalance really icked me out.
I liked other things about it; I liked that the beautiful younger sister was really nice and smart, and that the step-mother was nice. In fact, everyone in the book is basically decent, except out hero, and a throw-away debutante who is only there to be wretched so our hero can save the day. But it fails as mindless fun and fluff, because I didn't like him enough and I secretly wanted her to run away to London and become a worldly actress or something so they could get together years later when they were both bitter and wise.
Grade: C
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