Overall: 4.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖(I struggled in the beginning but then was riveted)
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑 (varies, one is very long and one is on the shorter end but most are decent size!)
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Humor: A bit
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine
When mains are first on page together: Immediately
Cliffhanger: No, ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes, a few months later. Also a second, longer epilogue is available as a newsletter subscriber that takes place 6 years later.
Format: voluntarily read an advanced reader copy from the author

Should I read in order?
It’s not necessary. There’s a few mentions of characters from the prior book but nothing extensive.

Basic plot:
Phoebe decides to take another offer of marriage when she believes George will never see what is in front of him.

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (1819)
- mix of London and house party settings
- chess
- childhood friends to lovers
- Baron hero
- bald hero
- sex lessons
- loud in bed hero
- friend’s brother
- emotionally strong hero (hero cries)
- jealous and possessive hero
- bargain (bet?)

If the hero wins a chess match, he can have a copy of her first edition Table Alphabeticall by Cawdrey and if the heroine wins, she wants the hero to bed her 

- all the angst
- higher steam – 6 full scenes and some shorter ones I didn’t count

Ages:
- Heroine is 22, hero is 26ish

First line:
George found Phoebe in the blackness of the priest hole.

My thoughts:
This book. This book! This is definitely my favorite Niven I have read yet. It ripped my heart out. And then it went back in and took out what was left. Stomped on it. Kicked it around. I felt Phee and George’s pain so badly!

I did struggle in the first half a touch. I loved the beginning, seeing them together as friends and opening to that sex lesson bargain. But as we went on, I found George a bit, well, annoying. A bit of an idiot. And when my guard was down, this entire book wrapped itself around my heart and SQUEEZED. Before I knew it, I was gutted over these characters. I was so dang invested in what was going to happen. How George was going to pull this off, make up for the things he did. He was so raw, and real and flawed and I didn’t like him until I adored him and was rooting for him as my heart ached.

Phee is a bit lost in her own world sometimes, late to things, losing gloves...but so delightful. George calls her Bumblephee because she was a buzzing thing, flying and never still and maybe a bit clumsy and messy. Again, the uniqueness and flaws in these characters gave them such depth, made them so memorable and relatable.

This book took me emotionally all over. I was worried about the ending making me feel it was all okay – but it did. I’m very excited to read the 6 year after epilogue to really experience that happy ever after (grab it as a newsletter subscriber!)

Endearments:

The hero calls the heroine ‘phee’, ‘bumblephee’, ‘lovely girl’, ‘sweetheart’ 

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:Any mistakes/typos are my own

It’s so beautiful!

He stared at her mouth which suddenly looked like the most fragile of roses. Delicate and lush, at the same time. Full-blown. One touch and a petal would fall.
---
“Goodness.” Her tongue darted out and ran over her lips. “George, you’re beautiful.”
He grunted. Some very male noise of denial, he hoped. His face felt warm. “Men aren’t beautiful.”
“Oh, no, you’re wrong.” She hopped off the bed and took a few steps toward him. “You’re wrong, dear teacher,dear friend.” And then her fingers were running over his abdomen, his chest, his shoulders, his arms. “Look, you have hair here. And you’re so hard. All these muscles. Did you get all these just from riding? You’re like some delicious village blacksmith.”
---
Oh, the pleasure, the pleasure of being inside her.
Not, that was wrong.
Because pleasure was a totally inadequate word to describe being inside Lady Phoebe Finch.
The paradise of being inside her.
He supported himself with both hands and bent his head down to her. “Kiss me, Phee.”
---
He closed the door behind him. The very vile man in him closed the door. Yes, he wanted the door closed. Definitely.
“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” He crossed to her, forcing his voice to be gentle instead of predatory. He would take her in his arms, feel her soft body against his, let her cry. And after a bit, he would pull her face away from his chest and kiss her. Tenderly, at first. Sweetly. And then with a bit more force. Show her his desire for her. Like a lover. So she would know his intentions. No more brother George. No more teacher George. He was George, the ravisher.
---
“Oh. So you weren’t here to see me?”
I’m not here to see you, Phee. I’m here to kiss you, year your clothes from your body, and take you here on the sofa in the drawing room of your father’s town house.
---
“That’s right, lovely girl, just relax. I’ve got you. And don’t worry about the perspiration. You smell divine. Like Phoebe times ten.” He put his nose and mouth against the side of her neck and she could feel her nipples hardening and aching under her chemise as he held her breasts. “And I intend to make you perspire a bit more.” A long, soft lick of his tongue on the side of her neck and she shuddered as his fingers very lightly scraped over her erect peaks.
“You taste even better than you smell. And I’m going to taste you everywhere.”
---
I am laughing because of all the alien romance I read as well

“Oh, George, wouldn’t it be wonderful if men had a little tongue just above their cocks?”
---
Filled with fury, George stood.
He would not tell Alice off in his most imperious manner. Thunder at her that she was a meddling, conniving bitch of a sister who knew nothing about Phoebe. About him, About what was between the two of them.
He was shocked when his knees buckled and took him to the floor and his words came out in a pitiful bleat.
“Tell me what to do, Alice. Tell me what to do. I love her. I love her. I lover her.”
---
George went on. “He doesn’t care for you like - “
“Shut up. Put me down.”
“No, I won’t shut up. Ever. And I won’t put you down. And I won’t stop kissing you. Ever.”
---
“We will say exactly what I told you.” William grinned. “And certainly, if you prefer, we will not mention any kissing.”
“I prefer you do not.”
George must have come out of his swoon because he opened his eyes and raised his head at that point. “And I prefer you do. Lots of kissing. Tell that pusillanimous arsehole there was lots of kissing. Between me and Phee.” 

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

- possible feelings of infidelity – the heroine asks (and follows through on) the hero to bed her while engaged to another
- mention of death of parents
- 

death of a parent on page THAT WAS BELOVED AND I WILL NEVER GET OVER IT. NEVER. EVER. 

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
Safe sex: 

Hero pulls out in all the scenes except for the last few 

 
9% - 🔥kisses leading eventually to fingering for her, missionary
25% - heroine kisses her fiance (not the hero)
26% - heroine masturbation (short)
30% - hero masturbation (short)
33% - 🔥blow job (complete), oral for her twice
47% - 🔥doggy style
69% - kiss
75% - 🔥kisses, her on top
79% - kiss
86% - 🔥sex (missionary?) but it includes the orgasm where your emotions are so riled you just bawl after you have an orgasm
89% - 🔥missionary (a bit short)