Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Humor: Yes
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and the heroine
Cliffhanger: No
Epilogue: Yes, 6 years later
Format: voluntarily chose to read an advanced reader copy in e-book form

Should I read in order?
This is book 2 of the Flower Sisters – you can grab the beginning prequel novella for free as a newsletter grab but I don’t think it’s super necessary to read in order if you don’t want to. Alex and Fern (book 1’s characters) make some brief appearances but the book’s focus is very much on the main couple. (And I don’t recall much character development in book 1 for Henry, though he does make an appearance.

Basic plot:
Henry wants to give his friend an adventure and Ellie is ready for some fun after finally exiting mourning from a bad marriage end – pretending to be a married couple gives them freedom to explore Italy.

Give this a try if you want:
- Victorian/Edwardian time period (1901 and some flashbacks to 1896)
- Italy setting!
- Epistolary
- Artist hero
- Widow heroine
- Tall hero/short heroine pairing (hero has to almost stoop to take her arm to walk)
- Friends to lovers
- A couple that laughs together and fun banter
- Bespectacled heroine (And the hero cleans them which is so sweet because my husband does that for me all the time!)
- Unrequited love (from both!)
- You are okay with quite a bit of time jumps
- Sex lessons
- curvy/plump heroine
- medium to high steam - 4-5 scenes depending how you count

Ages:
- Heroine is 24/25? Hero is 30

First line:
“I’m not letting you get off this boat until you agree to marry me.”

My thoughts:
This book! This book! As I started this book, honestly I wasn’t sure I would get into it. I noticed some time jumps in be beginning between the hero and heroine’s past and I got a bit of a stubborn look on my face that I wasn’t going to be into this.

As I got to know Henry, he was a bit, well, chaotic. A bit unpredictable. A touch unreliable and slightly down on himself. And I didn’t love him immediately.

And Moore took these things, these things I didn’t think I would like and she wrecked me with them.

She made me love them.

As the time jumps caught up with present day I had an ache in my heart, the best kind, and I was lost in this angsty ‘all is lost’ moment that I just eat up in romance.

There was so much I absolutely adored about this book. I loved that it took us to Italy (can we go there more often in historical romance???). I adored the fake relationship fun. I loved that we got to see Henry and Ellie’s relationship grow over time by snippets of the past, and came full circle to get a rounded relationship with great character depth. I LOVED that they spent the whole book together. I loved that it was character and relationship focused without a mystery or villain to take away from their focus. I adored their banter. I was touched by the representation of Henry’s mental state and the author’s notes on the topic. The ending was perfection.

I mean really, this book just took my heart and ran with it.

It far exceeded any expectations I had for it and I fell utterly in love. Definitely, definitely, eager for more from Moore.

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:

She opened her mouth to speak but Henry spoke first. “Greatest fear?” he asked, his voice low.
Being rejected by you.
Being forgotten by you.
 

Content warnings:

- Parent with dementia
- Some possible feelings of infidelity
- Infertility
- Abusive marriage (the heroine’s prior marriage)
- Scene of purposeful fatfobic comments from a dick side character (don’t worry the hero takes care of him!)

Author given content warnings: 

This book deals with issues of depression, anxiety, emotional abuse and related trauma, and infertility. While love will conquer all in the end, this book will not end with a miracle baby or love magically curing mental illness. While romance should be an escape I do not believe in ignoring the realities of the lives women lead in our world.

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
Safe sex: 

Hero mentions using protection in the past (he has slept around to avoid dealing with his emotions/mental state) and it’s discussed during sex but no available so he pulls out 

 
32%-ish - 🔥 there’s a scene where Ellie is having sexy dreams and she’s in bed with Henry after imbibing the night before that is a tension filled partial but nothing actually happens between them. Henry then masturbates (present day)
36% - mistletoe kiss (flash back)
52% - kisses
56% - 🔥kisses, fingering/oral for her
64% - 🔥kisses, oral for her, lavender oil used, missionary
71% - 🔥oral for her on a writing desk bench with mirror play, her on top (hero pulls out into his hand)
74% - her on top (it’s a bit short)