Overall: 4.5 rounded ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑 (The first scene is a bit shorter)
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥
Humor: Yes!
Perspective: Third person from both hero and heroine
When mains are first on page together: Pretty soon in – about 8%
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: No
Format: voluntarily read an advanced reader copy through NetGalley

Should I read in order?
This is the first book of Lorret’s The Liar’s Club.

Basic plot:
When the needling of Verity’s nemesis, who she has named The Tick, becomes too much, she tells a whopper of a lie. That she’s engaged. To a Duke. That is her family’s enemy...

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (my assumption)
- country and London setting (about half and half)
- ‘plain’ heroine
- anxiety rep (heroine)
- fake engagement – heroine tells a wallop of a lie and announces her betrothal to the Duke of Longhurst to a nemesis
- rival families vibes – the hero’s family severed ties with the heroine’s after a swindle that ended with the loss of the hero’s father’s fortune
- I would say it’s enemies to lovers? But definitely has that vibe – frenemies?
- elements of close proximity – the hero’s grandmother asks him to spend a week paying court to the heroine to help drive the scandal down of a broken betrothal (make it more believable) and then in the latter half brings the heroine to London as her companion so they are in the house together again.
- other woman aspects – the hero is * almost * engaged to someone else – he is courting her and there is an implied understanding


Ages:
- Heroine is 25 – I’m not sure about the hero but would guess around 30?

First line:
At the time, climbing out of the window seemed like the only practical option.

My thoughts:
Oh Vivienne Lorret just checks sooo many of my romance boxes every time! I enjoyed so much about this novel, but it had a few minors things I would have maybe preferred went a bit different.

The humor in this one I thought was perfection. It was just fun. Verity’s family of actors was such a joy. The closeness of the family (though Verity feels on the outside, you can still see the bond between her and parents, and her siblings – it is a special family dynamic) was appreciated by me – and yes there are some issues and some past trauma – her family is very...chaotic but overall so lovable.

Magnus’ grandmother is another character that I have a soft spot for. The feisty matriarch that tries pulling some strings behind the scenes, I love it.

Verity herself is one of those heroine’s that I just fell in love with. So full of life – the hero calls her feral and I felt I could just related to her and wanted to be her friend so badly. So, so caring and vulnerable.

Magnus took me a bit longer to come around to. He’s more closed off and starchy and definitely an opposite feel from Verity. And she just breaks down all his walls until he’s doing things that surprise himself, thinking things he’s coached himself not to, and wanting a love that is not at all a part of his well planned out life.

There’s something so swoony to me about Lorret’s writing. So many parts I pause over and savor and want to highlight. Their relationship was so much fun for me to read.

I am not a big fan of when one character is kind of ‘promised’ to another, or there’s other woman drama, but in this book all of that worked in a way that didn’t bother me. There wasn’t a ton of drama from it and it provided a bit of angst and uncertainty to their relationship.

I did think there was a part in the middle that drug a bit for me (it felt a bit slow in some parts), I do wish the steam was just a touch higher (2 scenes just felt kind of low here?? Maybe because the tension was so good) and the end where Verity made her feelings known I was pretty frustrated along with her lack of action – BUT the actual ending I thought was adorable and it brought a smile to my face.

I cannot wait for more in this series. Lorret has become one of my favorite HR authors. I’m going to have to read all her books I’ve missed while waiting for the next release.

Endearments

Hero calls the heroine ‘darling’ and ‘wildling’. 

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

Then those gazes would drift to Verity and...discreetly fall away in obvious disappointment.
She referred to that as the last grape look. It was the look one gave to the squished violet globe at the bottom of the fruit bowl, after it had fallen from the stem and tumbled through the cracks between heaped oranges, pears and persimmons, left forgotten until an unsightly green fuzz formed on its skin.
Though, as far as Verity knew, she did not have an unsightly green fuzz on her skin. At least, not yet.
---
Then again, he was a veritable beast of a man, powerfully built in a way that wasn’t typical for a gentleman. At least, the ones she’d met. Though, strangely enough it wasn’t his size that made him intimidating, but the way he carried himself.

The tick. I am dying

The dinner was in six days. The Tick left for Londong in seven.
One week. That was all she needed. Just one week of letting this lie run wild. Then when the Tick was gone and too far away to snicker in her face, Verity would set everything rights.
---
There wasn’t any way she could hold on. Her arms were already slipping, legs whisking in the air.
“I’ve got you,” the duke said.
In that same instant she felt a strong hand curve around her calf to the back of her knee, past her garter ribbons and the ruffle trim of her drawers to her-

Oh, he is SEEING her and I love it

He continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “Your hair is a different color – nay, colors, for there are shades from barley wheat to chestnut with strands of burnished gold and cornsilk...”

I find these little things so utterly romantic. Yes. Linger over the letter. Stroke the letter. Keep the letter….

“You appeared to be reading something that pleased you. I thought it might have been a missive from your Miss Snow.”
“What, this?” he asked when she glanced to the card in his other hand. He quickly tucked it against his palm, disliking the unfounded rise of guilt he felt in the pit of his stomach. “This is nothing.”
And to prove it, he strode to the marble hearth, prepated to toss it into the fire. But as he held it over flames that licked hungrily over the three logs resting in the grate, the ink seemed to capture the light, inviting him to read the scrawl once more.

I adore tension building like this. The focus on each other

It wasn’t until that moment that he realized her shawl had slipped, giving way to the petal softness of her bare skin beneath his fingers and palms. And in the very same moment, he also realized that his thumb was stroking that very skin in gentle sweeps.
Dumbfounded by his own actions, he simply stared at the back-and-forth motion, his flesh swarthy and labor-roughened, hers pale and perfect. The barest shade of pink emerged beneath his touch.
Then his gaze drifted to her parted lips, to the flush blooming on her cheeks and to the question suspended in those unfathomable eyes.
----
Because of that-along with a rather traumatizing sock puppet show with the bumbling, droopy and lisping Lord Flaccid, and his alter ego the suave, athletic and much taller Lord Turgid – Verity had decided that it wouldn’t be altogether terrible to remain a spinster.

Give me all the jealousy

But he spoke first, goading her, looming beside her. “Surely, a woman of nearly six and twenty with her thoughts on the arts would summon someone she was attracted to. Now who could that be, I wonder.” Was it her imagination, or had his voice developed a rough edge? There was certainly a bite to his next words. “Another man in the village? A tenant, perhaps? A certain Mr. Law-”
“It was you. There! Are you satisfied? I pictured you naked,” she admitted just to shut him up.
And it worked, too.
---
Hell, you’re practically feral, climbing trees and whatnot, forever out of doors without proper attire, hair disheveled with strands in five hundred different hues, and don't even get me started on those changeable eyes of yours…”
---
He looked fierce, eyes blazing. And he didn’t wait for her to grasp his hand. Instead, he reached out, took her by the shoulders and lifted her.
“How dare y-”
He crushed his mouth to hers, silencing the last syllable on a deep growl.
---
“Regardless,” he said, “it is a man’s duty to prepare for the worst.”
“Which is precisely what you tell yourself before you look in the mirror each morning.”
“Peering through my keyhole, are you? I’m not surprised. Everywhere I turn, you are always there. Never giving me a moment’s peace.”
“Me? I have been avoiding you like the plague.”
“If these past days speak of your efforts, then the black death is surely upon me.”
---
Just a little longer, he told himself. And I won’t, absolutely will not, slide my hand along her ribcage to cup her full, lush breasts – damn he was already doing it. Well, I won’t caress – he cursed again as she thrust the perfect weight into his palm and made the most deliciously needy sounds.
He was helpless to resist.
Nevertheless, he told himself as his lips coasted down her throat, I will not unbutton her dressing gown. At least, not all the way. Very well, I’ll just try not the notice the inviting dusky peaks outlined through the thin cambric….

I LOVE when the heroes keep trinkets

She opened the book wider and saw a slender ribbon nestled against the margin. It took her a moment. Then she recalled throwing this very thing at him in this room. But no. It couldn’t be. “Is this...my hair ribbon?”
 

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

- some scenes of anxiety
- financially irresponsible father that put responsibility onto the hero
- bullying of the heroine including locking in a closet
- child abuse (heroine, by the governess)
- some scenes of danger, threatening with a gun including a gunshot wound
- death of family member

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

Safe sex: 

No 

39% - kiss
41% - kiss
67% - 🔥 kisses, fingering for her on the sofa

It let something loose inside of him. Something raw and feral.
A garbled, indecipherable sound rumbled in his throat as his hands delved into the untamed tresses that had escaped her plait.

83% - 🔥 kisses, oral on the desk, missionary

“And just what do you intend to do with that,” she asked – or croaked, rather – ash she inched backward on the bed.
His grin was positively feral as his hungry eyes raked down her body. Then he prowled after her, his muscular shoulders rolling sinuously. “Wicked things.”
Snatching her foot, he dragged her underneath him. She made a half-hearted attempt to escape, but ended up having her hands pinned to the mattress above her head.

87% - implied blow job