Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥
Humor: Yes, a bit

(These are all personal preference on a scale of 1-5 (yours ratings may vary depending what gives you feels and how you prefer you sex scenes written, etc) except the Steam Scale which follows our chart from The Ton and Tartans Book Club )

Should I read in order?
I think it’s worthwhile to read the prequel novella titled The Ice Duchess. There’s some character overlap in the books and it shows how the heroine started The Duchess Society.

Basic plot
Working within the organization The Duchess Society, Lady Hildegard helps women of marriageable age navigate into proper relationships while protecting what rights they can. While investigating Tobias Streeter for a client, she finds she’s miscalculated quite a bit regarding him...

Give this a try if you want:
- Late Regency time period - 1822
- Matchmaking trope – while Hildie isn’t really a matchmaker – she’s trying to get Tobias up to snuff for his fiance and society’s strict standards.
- Hero – tattooed, ex-soldier, architect
- Heroine – working woman, nurses hero back to health
- Forbidden love/class difference trope feel
- Medium steam – 2 scenes and steamy kisses

My thoughts:
There was so much I loved about this story, I’m unsure where to start.

Tobias Streeter is my catnip hero. I cannot get enough of these heroes that have struggled in life, and made something of themselves. He’s created a successful shipping company from nothing. Perhaps gets his hands a touch dirty (that smuggling always mentioned with a quirked eyebrow). The ton tries to turn their backs on him due to his Romani blood, but he’s determined to get what he wants out of life – to be a recognized architect. Labeled The Rogue King, I was already half in love with him by his initial introduction.

Then he meets Hildie, and I just continue to swoon. Known as The Mad Matchmaker, he’s in love with her dimples. Hes imagining kissing them. He’s sniffing her bonnet she left in his office, like the first real breath he’s taken. He’s playing my romance heart strings like a fiddle and I’m not even 20% in. He’s rescuing street urchins and pregnant cats named Nick and I am utterly lost to him. Completely. Irrevocably. Lost.

Both of our main characters have such wonderful depth. Tracy gives her characters passion for each other, but also passion for life. I can feel their drive for their work and how much they care about what they do.

Hildie was a wonderful heroine. Sweet and strong, she lives with her aging staff, including her deaf maid, she has a lot on her shoulders but doesn’t let it get her down. She’s a heroine I’m left thinking I would love to be friends with.

I’d also like to note a kudos to Sumner for normalizing LGBTIQA+ interactions. In the prequel novel I love that two lords busted in the room together for a quick tryst, and in this novel Tobias’ fiance isn’t interested in men. Thank you!

Some parts I loved:

Umm yes please!

Tobias Streeter, the Rogue King of Limehouse Basin, was patiently waiting for her to decide. Hildy felt aroused by the control, seduced by the options.
Something fiendish flickered in his eyes. A lock of hair fell forward, brushing his cheekbone. How had she thought him austere? He seemed vulnerable and heartbreakingly young beneath armor constructed to protect him.
“A dangerous game you’re playing, Hildy girl, when I rarely back down.”
A long moment passed. Words crowded her throat, melted on her tongue. Thought melted into sensation along with them. She was lightheaded, drunk on his nearness and the thrill of touching him.
Then he answered her plea, kicking the table aside. Pulling her to her feet, against his hard body. She caught her breath, but it only filled her with his scent. Her heart pounded, and the air lit with desire. His, hers. Eagerness and need.


Could I melt anymore? Oh, I can!

Tobias blinked, stunned by her honesty, her courage, her strength. Stunned by the way her words sliced his heart open and let feeling trickle out. “This is how a ruffian makes love to his woman,” he whispered savagely and seized her mouth beneath his. Turning them, he guided her three paces until he had her backed against the door. Then, drawing her arms up and around his neck, he slithered his hands down her sides to cup her hips and pull her into him. Stepping between her legs with bold ownership. Letting know what she’d done to him – hardened his body to the point of pleasure and pain.

Melts*

He was dressed as casually as she’d ever see him. Untucked shirt fluttering at his hip, unbuttoned halfway down his chest. No cravat. Sleeves rolled high on his forearm. Graphite pencil tucked appealingly behind his ear. Hair disheveled as if he’d run his fingers through it moments before.

Content Warnings:

Brief mentions of Tobias’ time in the war with India/PTSD
Mentions/remembrances of child labor/abuse/poverty
Brief scene of anxiety/PTSD for heroine

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

34% - kisses
55% 🔥 - kisses, oral for her
64% 🔥 - kisses, missionary scene (virginity loss for her), followed by mention of a second scene of her on top
72% - the beginnings of another scene that fades to black
80% - brief mention of an against the wall scene (I want it!)\
90% - kiss