Overall: 3.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖 (The first half especially I struggled. It was just too much bickering and enemies vibe for me)
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥 (plus a partial and a short epilogue scene I didn’t count)
Humor: Yes – especially if you like sarcastic banter
Perspective: Third person from the hero and heroine
When mains are first on page together:
Cliffhanger: No, this ends on a happily ever after.
Epilogue: Yes, a few months later
Format: voluntarily read an advanced reader copy through NetGalley

Should I read in order?
It’s not necessary but there is some cross over of characters.

Basic plot:
Vesper hasn’t seen Greydon in years, but when they are locked inside an attic together, they kind of pick up right where they left off – trying to take each other down a notch.

Give this a try if you want:
- Victorian (I didn’t see a year, but it’s after Darwin was publishing work and I have book 1 in the series marked as 1865)
- London setting
- Clueless retelling
- childhood friends
- billiards lessons
- enemies to lovers
- neurodiverse heroine – Vesper has ADHD
- prodigal hero returns
- lots of social action – garden parties, balls, masquerades...
- bespectacled hero
- pets – the heroine gets a cat
- very light touch of hero nurses heroine back to health
- paleontologist hero
- low to mid steam – I have 2 full scenes, a very hot partial, and a short epilogue scene

Ages:
- Heroine is 23, hero is around 25

First line:
Lady Vesper Lyndhurst marched through the garden, wrenching the petals from a daisy though she had yet to end up with an answer other than he loves me not.

My thoughts:
I am really sad I struggled with this one! I think part of it may be I really love the movie Clueless and just rewatched it before starting this book. So I probably had some of my favorite scenes/ideas and when it didn’t go that way I was a bit disappointed.

I think another part of what I didn’t love is the non stop bickering and fighting Vesper and Aspen do in this story. Maybe if my children haven’t been fighting non stop it wouldn’t have been so noticeable. But this is why I struggle so hard with enemies to lovers. And I know our relationship dynamic with Cher in the movie was like this but I felt like theirs was a bit more playful and fun. They still did stuff together and seemed to enjoy each other's company - In the beginning this one really feels like hatred.

We’re told that Vesper behaves perfect socially – she controls herself and her emotions rigidly due to her ADHD and she’s worried she will make a misstep. I felt like I never really saw this side of Vesper though – and part of it is that Greyson throws her off but she seemed to always be acting a bit angry and filled with outbursts with him in social situations and it seems like that was the opposite of what I was told about her. Losing her temper with him, basically making scenes, I couldn’t reconcile what I was getting on page with what I was supposed to think of her character as and it did bother me a bit.

I LOVED the matchmaking aspect. I adore when we have a matchmaker in the story, so I really appreciated this aspect of Vesper’s personality. I also really, really loved the steam in this one. I think it really worked to connect the characters and propel their relationship forward. Most of the scenes were decently long and detailed too and I really loved that. I think the latter half of the book I connected with way more than the first half.

I was glad the villain activity didn’t take over the book like I was worried it would when I saw blackmail mentioned. I don’t like the ending result of the whole villain thing – I am pretty blood thirsty when it comes to punishment and was definitely disappointed in this. I feel like this is one of those things that is a problem waiting to come back and affect them in later years and it just niggles at me and I don’t feel as strong of a HEA for the couple…

I can't say I loved their names and while I smirked the first time I heard "Lord Ass" instead of Aspen, I didn't love him calling her "Lady Viper" - and it was a lot throughout the book even during sexy scenes and I was just like blehhhhhh.

But, overall this book had some things I really loved and I appreciated the Clueless nods throughout the story.

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:Any mistakes/typos are my own. There’s also additional quotes under the steam section for some steamy scenes

“I’m not a boy, Vesper.”
The soft snarl of her name on his tongue made her insides liquefy.
No, he wasn’t a boy. He was a man – a tall, strong, and riled man currently crowding her personal space and daring her to react. Vesper huffed a shallow breath and moved to step away from him, but he shifted to cage her against the windowsill with his arms.
---
“I think what scares you is that I might know you better than anyone here,” came his rumbling reply. “And you like it.
His lips grazed the shell of her ear in the measliest of caresses.
---
“Aspen,” she began, searching his eyes. “I want…”
He loomed over her, those stiated irises of his nearly swallowed up by his pupils as she trailed off and moistened her dry lips. His nostrils flared with something all too primal. “Is this the favor you’re claiming then?” he whispered huskily, that hooded stare dropping to her mouth. “Do you want me to kiss you, Viper?”

---
I love lines like this

He had to stop lying to himself.
She was under his skin...and he fucking cared more than he should.
---
“Out,” he snapped to the footmen.
Her eyes narrowed as the servants filed out after a firm look from him. As if she could sense what was to come, Cat scampered out of sight and made herself scarce beneath the table. Wariness flitted across Vesper’s face when he pushed back his chair and prowled toward her. He relished the flash of surprise in her deep blue eyes before she tried to hide it with disinterest.
He turned her chair to face him, propping his hands on either sides of her armrests, effectively trapping her in place.

 

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

- hero’s father is put into asylum and abused until death
- hero’s mother blackmails, lies, and abuses others
- no punishment of villain in the story

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

Safe sex: 

  French letters discussed but withdrawal used as a preventative measure 

45% - a partial scene on the billiards table – kisses, banter, fingering for her that’s interrupted by Cat jumping up
67% - 🔥 kisses, oral for her, missionary outside on a bench
Hell, he was going to fuck the sass from her lips.
87% - 🔥 outside against dinosaur statues at a public part he fucks her from behind against Hylaeosaurus

“Tell me what you need, Vesper,” he whispered, licking the lobe of her ear and making her whimper.
“You.”

97% - missionary – but it’s in the epilogue and only a paragraph (5 sentences) so I didn’t count it.