Pink Heart Reviews
To Bed A Beauty
Nicole Jordan
Ballantine Books, March 2008, 427 pp
ISBN-10: 0345494601
ISBN-13: 978-0345494603
Series: Book #2, The Courtship Wars
Regency
$6.99 (US) $9.99 (CDN)
Reviewed by Mary
May 2008
The second book in this series about the Loring sisters is not quite as fetching as was book one, a good read but it does leave you wanting the next book in your hand to feel the magic of the trilogy. In part this book lacks the character development of the first and while you do find the middle sister Rosalyn lovely and charming she is also a bit demanding and needy while always claiming that she is not. Rosalyn Loring may have gained her independence when her guardian Marcus married her sister Arabella and she says that she wants to be free of any man while in pursuit of one to marry and in fact will only marry in a love match something very difficult due to social status.
While in search of this love match Rosalyn sets her cap for the Earl of Haviland as he seems to fulfill the qualities that she seeks in a husband. The one man she does not want to consider for marriage is the one she winds up involved with the Duke or Arden “Drew”, a rake she can ill afford to slow herself down with for too many reasons to count. Drew is a lifelong friend of Marcus and a man who wanted nothing to do with any marriageable females as he enjoys his life of freedom and his role as patron to a mistress he can easily part with and have no emotional ties to.
But as fate and romance would have it these two are drawn together by mistaken identity created when Fanny helps Rosalyn learn all the traits required to convince a man that he wants to become your husband. While an innocent in all ways of the world she is an apt pupil and Drew decides to educate and mistakenly falls in love with while trying so hard not to.
There is also the side story of Winifred and a mystery thief who refuses
to accept that he cannot take Winifred's broach! This turns out to be the
most heart-warming part of the book and one that will always endear you
to Winifred.
