An Affair Most Wicked - Julianne MacLean

My Dear Miss Wilson,


I have no wish to spoil your chances of meeting the decent and respectable man you desire. Yet I find I cannot idly sit back and accept that I will never see you again, or - forgive me for my candor - kiss you again. If I were like other gentlemen, I would say good-bye to you now and wish you the best. But I have not behaved as a gentleman for many years....Do you understand my meaning?

So begins a very wicked correspondence between the scandal-ridden Marquess of Rawdon and Clara Wilson, an heiress with more than a few of her own secrets to hide. Clara has come all the way to London to find respectability, but she has always craved excitement, and adventure has always sought her out.

This time, excitement is a man unlike any she has ever met before, one who is stunning, brilliant, and definitely not what her mother had in mind. Clara's cautious younger sister Adele warns her to be wary and remember her past follies, but her spirited older sister Sophia urges her to risk it all for love. Clara knows the answer lies somewhere in between, but with her heart and her future on the line, the stakes will never be higher.…

I really enjoyed the first book in the American Heiresses series and although the others I've read weren't as good I decided that I would like to complete the series so to see all the characters have some closure. An Affair Most Wicked is about sister nº 2, Clara Wilson, and the Marquess of Rawdon.

I must say that at first I thought I was going to have another winner in my hands - curious but not TSTL heiress flaunts the rules a bit to meet an acknowledged rake, and acknowledged rake with a troubled past but a good heart is ready to be reformed by the love of a good woman.

This is actually what happened in the end, my problem is that the road to get there was mostly sex based instead of characters actually getting to know each other and liking each other. While Clara feels very attracted to Rawdon she doesn't want to force him to propose, however he feels obliged to do it since their relationship (already sexual but no one knows that) is already provoking some scandal. He bases his decision on the fact that he is too honourable not to face the consequences of his actions towards an innocent, but at the same time he distances himself from her by only admitting to physical desire between them.

Clara is one patient heroine. She marries hoping that one day he will fall in love with her but she has to put up with his cousin and aunt who are trying their best to ruin the wedding, she has to put up with Rawdon's distrust whenever he receives an anonymous letter trying to ruin her reputation and she has to put up with the memories of his lost first love. Also, most of their time together was spent in the bedroom and I really wished they had some quality time together outside so I could actually see them fall in love besides of falling in lust.

Eventually all the troubles of his past are solved and not all is what it seemed to be so he is freed of his memories and realises that he does love Clara. However, by the time he went looking for her I was wishing her brother in law would just punch his nose and tell him to grow up a bit.

I'm afraid that I'm making sound all bad which it wasn't, Clara was very likeable and it was a really fast read meaning that it kept me interested. But it definitely had the above mentioned flaws.

Grade: 3.5/5