The Wicked Lover - Julia Ross

It was the last thing he expected...to catch a beautiful intruder disguised as a man, rummaging through his bedroom. The fair lady claimed she was stealing one of his cravats for a wager, but Robert Sinclair Dovenby- known throughout fashionable London as Dove-suspects there is far more to "George" than meets the eye.


Little does Dove imagine, however, that Sylvie Georgiana, Countess of Montevrain, is an agent hired to determine whether he's guilty of treason. To uncover his well-guarded secrets, Sylvie finds herself having to stay dangerously close to her mischievous adversary. But when the masquerade comes undone, will she be able to betray the one man she thinks she could love?

This is one of those books that sat in my TBR pile for so long that I totally forgot why I put it there. Continuing my attempt to reduce the mentioned pile last week decided to pick it up. It is a spy story with a twist.

The story opens with the hero's mistress, Lady Grenham, setting his clothes on fire and so kicking him out of her life. Dove, the hero, is a bit surprised but takes it in stride after he finds out that she had found another woman in his bedchamber. The woman in the bedchamber, supposedly his other lover is accompanied by a manservant that Dove soon realises is a woman. The woman is Sylvie, the widow countess of Montevrain who has been helping the Duke of Yveshire by finding information that more orthodox spies cannot. The fact is that the Duke blames Dove for the death of his brother and wants Sylvie to uncover information that can ruin him.

The plot sounded interesting although one could predictably guess that Dove wouldn't be the villain that Sylvie believed him to be. Unfortunately, in the end, the story did not work for me... The thing is that Sylvie and Dove were not that interesting to me and I found myself thinking of giving up their story several times. There wasn't enough tension between them and Sylvie wasn't anguished enough by her decision of spying on the man she was falling for. There's a mystery for most of the book about what really happened between Dove and Yveshire's brother and when all is revealed I was sorry that that was not a part of the story also. It would have provided the angst that I felt the story needed. And I must say I would have loved to know more about Iveshire and Lady Grenham's relationship.

Grade:  3.5/5