Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥
Humor: Yes! Some truly delightful humor in this one.
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Format: checked out the audio version from Hoopla
(Descriptions found at end of my review)

Should I read in order?
You could but I don’t think it’s entirely necessary between books 1 and 2.

Basic plot:
Cynthia is attempting to recover from a scandal that has decimated her marriage prospects and attending a house party is the perfect husband hunting opportunity. Miles agrees to help her find a husband – at the price of a single kiss.

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency
- house party setting
- beautiful heroine
- class difference
- entomologist hero (interested in bugs)
- gifts given to the heroine by hero
- big family feel
- relationship focused romance (not a big mystery to solve or villains)
- lower to mid steam – 2 full scenes and a hot partial

Ages:
- hero is nearly 30, heroine is 22

My thoughts:
I had such wide ranging thoughts about this one! Overall I enjoyed it, especially the humor and emotional and angsty aspect to the ending.

I wasn’t a big fan of book 1, so going into this the bar was a bit lower. And I found myself really loved the house party setting and focus on the characters interacting. There were some extremely humorous scenes that had me laughing in pure delight (the drinking game in this one had me rolling!). But I think what I struggled with most was the hero.

I didn’t grow to love Miles. I loved Cynthia, even though there’s some aspects of her not being entirely truthful. (That stuff usually really bothers me, but I am doing better about understanding reasoning and driving factors behind that…) I just felt like I couldn’t help but like her. She was fun to be with as a character. I liked her humor and bit of fun she likes to have. But Miles...their relationship kind of drove me bonkers. I wanted Miles to want Cynthia more than he did – or at least to the point where he wouldn’t schedule an assignation with someone else as late in the book as he did (nothing comes of it, but it was disappointing to me).

There were a few parts that drug a bit for me. There are some scenes of building other characters, which I know is expected in a big family series and a lot of people love that (I don’t, but that’s just me).

I did find some things super romantic. I loved the angst at the end. I love Long’s ability to write emotional scenes throughout the book. The characters really come to life and don’t feel two dimensional. The emotions and steamy pull of the first partial scene between Cynthia and Miles was amazing. So, overall I liked this one, but was frustrated a bit with Miles and probably wouldn’t reread this one. Still, it was fun and I enjoyed it quite a bit more than book 1.

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

- mention of death of parents, parental abandonment
- some aspects of antiziganism (anti-Romani judgements and assumptions), ‘gypsy’ used
- hunting
- smoking

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
Safe sex: 

I don’t believe so but can’t recall 

 
16% - kiss
49% - kisses, breast play, cock touches
69% - 🔥 kisses, fingering for her, hand job
91% - 🔥 kisses, missionary, her on top and mirror play