The magical writing that I’ve come to love is back 100% with this book!  With a hero who is an insensitive jerk at times, damaged from when he was a boy, with money but not much else.  So not what I was expecting for our sweet Poppy Hathaway, but oh so perfect!

After having two gipsy heroes, it was time to go back to London and what I thought would be a more traditional match.  And that’s how I thought this would go since Poppy was in love, and secretly seeing Michael Bayning.  He had everything a girl could’ve asked for, came from a good family, did all the right things for Poppy to fall in love with him, except being out in the open about their courtship.  Because of course his father wouldn’t approve.

But Harry Rutledge, owner of the famous London Rutledge Hotel, saw Poppy and was enthralled.  He had to have her, and if that required using some forced methods and a convenient and timely proposal, then so be it.  Harry was, as he best described himself, the villain.  It’s a true testament to the amazing quality of Lisa Kleypas writing when she can turn what should’ve been an arrogant, manipulative bastard into a man you want to cuddle and take care of and you are rooting for his happiness and that he gets the girl.  There’s just something about this type of hero in a Kleypas novel that makes him unforgettable.

While Poppy might not be my favorite Hathaway sister, she certainly was sweet and did what she thought was right for herself and her family, and in the process she fell out of what she thought was love and fell for a complicated man who needed a soft woman like her to treasure him and make him fell cherished.

A perfect couple and a perfect historical romance story!  Soft yet rough around the edges.