Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖 (even though this had a number of elements I’m not usually into, I was really fascinated and so curious what would happen)
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥
Humor: Yes, a bit. This isn’t a lighthearted book, there’s heavy themes. But the humor is woven throughout.
Perspective: This is third person from both the hero and heroine and a few minor chapters from the heroine’s brother, Joshua, who is 13
More character focused or plot focused? plot focused
How did the speed of the story feel? medium to me
When mains are first on page together: 12% in
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes, 6 months later
Format: voluntarily read an advanced reader copy through NetGalley

Should I read in order?
This is the first of Galen’s Misfortunes Favorites series.

Basic plot:
On his thirtieth birthday, King loses everything. When his creditors come calling, he finds one person there for money from him willing to hide him until he pays her back.

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency – 1814
- London setting – Seven Dials
- heroine is the proprietress of The Silver Unicorn (alehouse)
- riches to rags – hero loses his title
- children in the story – Vi has two younger brothers, 13 and 6 (?)
- curse to overcome
- dare I say ‘ugly duckling’ hero vibes? This hero is a bit self centered and spoiled...perhaps a bit of an idiot – and this book shows his turn around
- villain to overcome
- interesting author notes!
- medium steam – 3 scenes but one is at the very end

Ages:
- Hero is 30, heroine is 21

First line:
Witches scared him.

My thoughts:
The King and Vi starts with a troublemaker hero that desperately wanted attention and ended up being expelled from a number of prep schools. These leads to him eventually going too far in a dare and getting cursed, along with his 2 friends. King loses everything and finds himself facing Vi, whose tavern he assisted in wrecking the night before, demanding her share of his money to right his wrongs. They work out a bit of a bargain where she will house/hide him while he gets his affairs in order.

This leads to some delicious close proximity between King and Vi, and him bonding with her two younger brothers she also cares for. Now King definitely isn’t someone you are really loving in the beginning. He’s a bit lazy, self centered, and doesn’t really think of long term repercussions. And one of my small issues with the story was it was a good 40% before I felt like he started to turn around into someone I didn’t want to kick.

This story really has a lot that is not really my jam in romance. I don’t love children being main characters, and these two get lots of page time and even tend to invade the steamy scenes because they are worried about them having privacy from them (maybe a bit too close to home in my current phase of life haha). It’s also a plot that revolves around a villain character and just isn’t as focused strictly on the characters and their relationship development like I usually prefer.

But maybe it was the curse (I do love magic elements and curses!), but I ended up enjoying so much about this book. I think this is my first by Galen and I definitely want to try some more by her. I enjoyed her writing a lot – the action/suspenseful scenes I was on the edge of my seat to find out what would happen. I loved her humor. I loved the heart she put into her characters! I think she did such a good job turning around King and I thought it ended up being believable.

I’m left quite curious about King’s friends and fellow curse bearers. I will probably pick up the next in the series as well when it comes out this spring.

Endearments

The hero calls the heroine ‘sunshine.

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

At the age of thirty, repay them in kind.
Pilfer, purloin, and pinch what it is they love best.
And then and only then will I find my eternal rest.
----
“Is she your woman?” the man asked, his fingers loosening slightly.
“As much as she’s any man’s,” King said. It was a pretty play of words, and the patron took it the way King wanted. He loosened his grip, and King lifted Violet’s hand from the bar and kissed it.
---

I love this stuff…

He reached out and took a lock of her hair, running it through his hand then winding it about his fingers until she moved closer to avoid having her hair pulled.
“What are you doing?” she asked as she put his other hand on her waist and tugged her against him. Her voice and tugged her against him. Her voice was still hard, but he heard the way it hitched.
“I’m about to kiss you,” he said.
She shook her head. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.” He released her hair and slid his hand through it to cup the back of her neck. “Last chance to tell me to stop.” He lowered his lips, pausing just a fraction from her mouth.
---
“Right now, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.”
She cocked her head dubiously.
“Very well,” he acknowledged her. “I would rather you had a servant and a cook and a feather mattress, but otherwise, there’s nowhere else.”
“Uh huh.”
“Perhaps a valet. And more blunt so I might see a tailor.”
“Yes, you certainly seem content.”
 

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

- scenes of witchcraft, curses and minor peril when the hero takes on a dare to steal from the local witch
- hero has been estranged from his father for 10 years
- remembrances of a bar fight damaging the heroine’s ale house and knocking one of her workers unconscious
- danger/lifestyle of Seven Dials in St. Giles – child labor, starving, sex work, being cold – having to steal coal and not having enough to eat, abuse by gangs, and medical negligence due to location. Rape, child abuse, mention of sexual diseases given to children.
- a scene of harassment when Vi is managing the bar – grabbing of her body and demanding sexual favors
- childbirth parental death mentioned
- hero’s father is accused and charged with treason to the crown and it’s mentioned he will die by hanging
- mention of a friend’s wife and child dying in a carriage accident
- scenes of fire/arson, smoke inhalation, and danger 

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:
 

Safe sex: 

Hero pulls out 

Hows the consent? 

Maybe like a yellow light for one kiss? The hero is kind of a boundary pusher – like he says he’s going to kiss her and she says no and he says yes...but he does basically tell her he’ll stop if she really wants (I think he’ knows how skittish she is about relationships) – you can view the scene under my quotes section above. Though for sex he lets her come to him and she’s definitely consenting. (Just a note that I like dubcon/noncon books but wanted to note for those that prefer to avoid these interactions) 

42% - kiss
49% - kiss
58% - 🔥 kisses, it is interrupted for a minute, then picks back up with fingering/oral for her, missionary

“King,” she said as he moved to her throat and unfastened a button just below his lips.
“Hmm?” he asked, sounding as though he had all the time in the world when she was on fire to be touched.
“Don’t bother with that. Just toss my skirts up and -”
He pulled back. “Don’t rush me. I want to see you naked.”

73% - 🔥 kisses, oral for her, missionary

He turned her around and put both hands on her plump bottom. She had a narrow waist, and he loved the way it flared out at her hips and rounded into perfect spheres that gave him more than a handful to enjoy. He kissed her there, and she laughed. “What are you doing?”
“I’d have thought you would have enjoyed seeing me on my knees, kissing your arse.”

97% - 🔥 missionary

“Don’t stop.”
“Never.”