The blurb is what grabbed me for this book, marriage of convenience is one of my favorite Historical Romance Tropes.

At the beginning of this book it quickly changes from an enemies to lovers trope to one of lust at first sight and reluctant lovers (due to certain circumstances - not because of want).

There are a lot of mysteries to be solved in this book, though the story tended to jump around to connect certain aspects. It seemed almost disjointed at times, and there are some loose ends that either we will never know, or will possibly be tied up in the next book in the series.

The author has some wonderful dialog, especially for Jonathan.

"I will always remember you. You are my first -"
"I am your last." He pulled her forward, his words vehement as his mouth claimed hers. "I am you only."

This was a typical 'party girl' meets rake love story. The things that set it off were an older debutante at age 22 and her family moved to Italy for about 10 years. The heroine is also a titled lady. The hero, is a rake. His fathers dies and he has set herculean tasks for him to overcome in order to get his full inheritance. One of the tasks is to look for missing famous paintings that his father lost or were stolen from him. So part of this story deal with the underworld of black market art dealings. It was.a very interesting turn that I quite enjoyed. There was a little danger and the hero definitely had to become a hero. Even though I will give this story 5 stars, I really wonder how the characters were able to fall in love. They had very little in common. The only thing really was that the heroine was rebellious under her society face. But that would not make a beneficial, enduring and sincere loving relationship. I wish the author would have developed the relationship between them more because it makes the story more of a fairy tale then a believable story. The spelling and grammar were acceptable and there were no dangling plot lines. 5 stars and I recommend reading this book.

I had high hopes for this one based on the blurb. Marriage of convenience and enemies to lovers is right up my alley. Sadly, I couldn't even finish this book due to the writing style. It felt very belabored, and I had to spend too much brain effort to untangle what the author was trying to say with each sentence that I lost the story line and had to go re-read. After several chapters, I still couldn't get into the flow of the book and gave up. I'm all for a well-written, or clever turn of phrase, but this was not engaging. There was a lot of telling rather than showing and it read closer to my work-related academic journal articles, which is not what I want in my reading entertainment.