Lady Eve's Indiscretion - Grace Burrowes

Pretty, petite Evie Windham has been more indiscreet than her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Moreland, suspect. Fearing that a wedding night would reveal her past, she's running out of excuses to dodge adoring swains. Lucas Denning, the newly titled Marquis of Deene, has reason of his own for avoiding marriage. So Evie and Deene strike a deal, each agreeing to be the other's decoy. At this rate, matrimony could be avoided indefinitely...until the two are caught in a steamy kiss that no one was supposed to see.

This must be book 3 or 4 that I read by this author. None of the other was a complete winner (although they did tempt me to continue reading her  but this one was the one I had higher expectations and that ended disappointing me the most. Evie and Lucas seemed like the perfect fit in the previous books I read. They also seemed like usual type of couple we find in these books that end with the rake saved by the love of a good woman. I do like that type of plot when it is well done so I was looking forward to it.

The thing is that the story I got was a bit different. First there is more to Evie than what I had known (I haven't read all the books in this series so people who have may have known more about her) and Lucas, despite still being a like able character is involved in something that I didn't like. I did like that they joined forces and decide to strike their deal to avoid marriage, it was obvious things would turn out the way they did but I still liked it.My problem was that what kept Evie from marriage was something that Deene would never blame her for. I kept thinking that if she would just confide in him everything would be better. She ended up being a very tortured character when, in my opinion, there was no need for that. I also wasn't very enthusiastic with all that talk about horses...

Regarding Deene he was a regular nice guy and I had a hard time understanding him wanting to have guardianship of his niece. It is never really explained what happened in the past to make him feel so and just a paragraph about his sisters marriage to that man. I could see a mile away who the bad guy was and even wondered if he didn't have some bad deeds in his past regarding Deene's sister but that is never really explored. 

I suppose that in the end I felt that they were two nice characters but there wasn't a reasonable plot to show them in the best light. The angles that were developed didn't appeal to me and those that I thought could be developed weren't. Oh and I find book covers with half naked man completely boring and unattractive, I wish publishers would stop this trend!

Grade: 2/5