Ratings27
Average rating4.1
I was all in on this one until the last 50 or so pages, when Harry gets knocked out and kidnapped by a character who never appears on the page at all and is just mentioned in passing because reasons? I also thought Catherine's big reveal should've happened a lot earlier, and also seriously, everyone in these books is related to each other, even the non-Hathaways. I still love this family dynamic that Kleypas is so good at writing, and I also love a good marriage of convenience/enemies-to-lovers, so I ended up about 75% in on this, which is about good for three stars.
Poppy Hathaway is the smartest Kleypas heroine yet, even more so than Daisy Bowman, so she's my new fave. She might also be the funniest, although I can see her younger sister Beatrix swooping in for a win in The Hathaways, #5. So I loved this one, with a hero is sort of “reformed rake” but not as stereotypically so as St. Vincent (not that I don't also love St. Vincent), and some of Kleypas' best embedded commentary on patriarchy and what it really means to respect someone's autonomy.