Not our favorite Lorraine Heath. Love her and had a lot of expectations for this series but so far it hasn’t been as good as what we’ve seen from her in the past. Will obviously keep reading whatever she writes tho!

3.75 ⭐️/5
2.00 🌶️/5

One thing about a Lorraine Heath book is that there’s gonna be angst. The beginning started off light and seemingly low stakes but as the story progressed so did the angst. Rook’s father was awful and Leonora’s mom was the worst. I loved how out of everyone Rook was the one who wholly believed in Nora, and was just smitten by her. I absolutely loved the character of Rook’s mom and her story just broke my heart.

I grew a bit frustrated when it was obvious to everyone except Rook and Nora that Rook was in love with her. I loved the inclusion of Rook’s siblings out of wedlock in the storyline. Definitely felt the insecurity of Nora, the sweet summer child. There was a grand gesture but was it too little too late?

If you like historical romance, Lorraine Heath, dual POV, angst and interconnected standalones.

Thanks to @avonbooks for sending me an advance copy of In Want of a Viscount by Lorraine Heath, which is already out in the world! 😆

I’m getting to this one a tad late (it released in February), but it turned out to be my favorite of the series!

When I tell you this one had me giggling from chapter one? I was *in*. Rook has a hot (and hilarious) anonymous encounter with a woman at his brother’s club, only to discover that she helms a company the Chessmen are considering investing in.

The angst and the small moments where these characters feel so safe and seen were the absolute highlights for me.

While The Chessmen series can be read as a stand-alone, Lorraine Heath makes the most of the universe she has crafted: the characters and storylines of The Chessmen overlap and intersect with those in the Once Upon a Dukedom and Sins for All Seasons series in a way that feels like a love letter to longtime fans. Rook’s story, and in particular the epilogue, serves as a bookend those stories in the best way possible.

The romantic and fun next book in the Chessman series did not disappoint. Rook may be my favorite of the chessmen so far! Even though you dont have to read the rest of the series, I recommend doing so. Thank you to net galley and the publisher for letting me read and review this ARC.

Leonora is an American inventor. Rook is an English Lord looking to invest in her invention. The fireworks between the two is immediate and puts a monkey wrench in all their plans. This is the third installment of the Chessmen and also ties into the Truelove family as well so there are plenty of secondary characters you will recognize if you have read this author’s previous books. The story ended satisfactorily and I enjoyed reading about the characters from the previous book.

Thank you NetGalley for providing a eARC of this book!

Lorraine Heath never fails to create steamy scenes for her books. However, throughout the book, I felt like I wanted more scenes where they spent more time together rather than having those types of scenes. It felt as if they were starting on a basis of lust and felt difficult moving out if that.

I have not read any other books in The Chessmen series, but you don’t have to when reading this book. Although you can tell many characters from her other series show up. So I bet it’s fun to see them again. This one takes place between Viscount Wyeth, known as Rook to his friends, and an American Leonora Garrison. Her and her family have come to England looking for investors for the family business.

I loved that the story is quickly set and you dive right into their meeting. They are very sweet to each other and more tender than I was expecting. I also love that Nora is a smart character who knows what she wants and loves to invent and build things. It’s different from what you usually read in this genre and era. One thing that was infuriating was her mother and in some ways her brother. She might be one of the worst I ever read. I was embarrassed for Nora.

I thought the first half of this book was strong and sweet. The ending had some angst that changed the tone a bit. Don’t get me wrong, it is a happy ending but it didn’t feel as smooth as the start of the book. Despite the angst at the end it was still a sweet read and I hope we see them again in the background of other books.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for sharing this book with me in exchange for my honest review.

While this wasn't necessarily my favorite in the Chessmen series overall, bonus points for Heath making her two leads so irrepressibly into each other that they couldn't have a single basic interaction without thinking about how soon they could tear each other's clothes off. This also felt refreshingly softer in terms of its overall plot — while there IS a wrench thrown into the plot when Nora and Rook are caught in a compromising position and effectively forced to marry, the biggest question really becomes about when they'll realize they're not just doing it for duty's sake but because they truly love each other. Starchy <spoiler>secretly virgin</spoiler> hero who wants to do anything to put a smile on his love interest's face is just always going to be catnip to me, and Rook is down BAD for Nora along those lines. (Beyond the overall story, do we think the Inspector is going to kick off a new Heath series? I have my theories!)

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this edition from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Oh…yum…was this ever a good book!!! This is the third (and last) book in this series. I am always a fan of reading them in order, but this could be read as a stand alone. Leonora Garrison has traveled to England with her brother and mother to find investors for their company and an invention that Leonora is particularly fond of. In reality, her mother is more interested in finding her daughter a husband and her brother could not manage the business without her. Viscount Wyeth (our sexy book boyfriend in this book), or Rook, is always interested in a good investment and is willing to listen to the two Americans. Rook tries to walk the straight and narrow path because he is driven to be the opposite of this father. As the story moves forward, the author keeps giving us insight of what a horrible person the previous Viscount was. Rook still cleans up the mess his father left, especially with the many illegitimate children he has spread out throughout London.
However, Rook finds that the walls he has put up around his feelings and emotions are not there when he is around Leonora. They just “happen” to meet in a pleasure club for women. A super sexy, steamy kiss happens almost at the very beginning of the story – teasing the reader for more explicit scenes that will follow ;) They truly have the best kind of chemistry between them. Lorraine Heath is just really good at matching the perfect couple and writing swoony scenes. Leonora’s difficulties with a relationship is that she is an American and she is trying to run and rescue her father’s business. She is not given the credit she is due for being a successful business woman and Rook is the one who realizes just how astute she is, as both an inventor and a business woman. The banter between them is fun to read. There is just enough action and anticipation in this story to keep you reading until you are finished. This book came out Feb 20, 2024 - so it is still a month new and and worth putting in your TBR right now!

Wow, these chessmen! So gorgeous, so hot, so intriguing! This time we have a very proper hero who tries to rein in a very passionate nature. But when he meets our heroine he can’t resist her! And she is an inventor! A woman with a great mind who hasn’t been appreciated because women who have a mind and interests beyond the classic “feminine” pursuit are considered odd. I really, really loved this book and the chemistry between the characters and of course Heath is a GORGEOUS writer and I still haven’t found a book of hers that I didn’t love to distraction!

This is the third and final novel in the series, "The Chessmen." It can be read as a stand-alone.
American Leonora Garrison, comes to London to find investors for her company's invention, the writing machine. She is not looking for marriage or any relationship. She is fascinated with machinery, and how things work. Her greatest joy is to take apart something, find out how it works, and put it back together again. Her mother is hoping she will marry someone titled and very wealthy, and is not very nice about it. In fact, she is throwing her daughters to "eligible" bachelors, and alienating herself in the process. Nora's brother is also hoping she marries, if only to save their company their father left him, and have money. He is not very interested in the company, and doesn't really care about it.
Rook, the third member of the Chessmen, is the last single bachelor. Obviously. the HEA is already clear. He has some serious issues. His father is a horrible human being. There really is no other way to describe him. Over the course of at least 30-40 years, he has produced sons and daughters with other women. When the babies were born, he took them to a "baby farmer," who took his money, and either let the babies die, or gave them to other people to raise. He didn't care. He even tried to have his wife murdered, but that is only touched upon in the story. He has a very complicated relationship with his mother, but still loves her. He has spent his entire life under the horrible shadow of his father, and has made sure he does nothing to tarnish his reputation because he is afraid he'll end up just like his father. He has no interest in marriage, and is making sure he has no illegitimate children
Everything changes when Rook meets Nora through chance, or through the
"help" from his brother Aiden, the owner of a pleasure club for women, and one of the many illegitimate children his father sired Nora goes there to experience her first kiss, and Aiden convinces Rook he should kiss her. Later, they meet again, and are no longer anonymous. Rook happens to be part of the group of potential investors. He throws caution to the wind where she is concerned. She fascinates him, and despite Nora's mother's desperation in getting her married, he knows she is not trying to trap him into marriage.
They keep meeting, and he manages to get his name in the gossip section of the newspaper. This thrills her mother because she wants to shove any social success in London to the upper class in New York, who rejected her. It is quite obvious why they did. She is not a nice person at all.
Nora and Rook grow closer, but both are convinced it will be a temporary situation since she plans to return to America once she finds investors. Things don't always go the way they hope or think they will go.
While this is the third in the series, it can be read as a stand-alone. The other couples are involved, but it does not cause any confusion within the story. It gives you an insight as to how the couple are doing. If you haven't read the first two, it gives you enough information to make you want to read about them.
It is a wonderful closure for this series. Many things are resolved. The HEA includes both hopes and dreams, and it also gives someone what they deserve. I'm looking at you, Nora's mother. Not a spoiler. Her future path is pretty much obvious. it makes you happy that you know how things will eventually go for her.
As far as how wonderful of a closure this is for this series, it has an even better twist. (No spoilers) It comes full circle for the characters in a previous series, "A Sins for all Seasons." Several characters from the series are intertwined. You get an update on them as well. I didn't catch it in the beginning, but too many things sounded familiar, and I realized it was because of the first series. It's a very good series as well.
The ending is beautiful, and I never thought there would be an even better future of the previous characters from the first series. They don't confuse the story either. In fact, they provide more depth to the storyline.
There is a little heat in the story, but not much until the end. The kisses are described very well, and the passion is obvious. Most of the heat is towards the end, but there is not much of it.
I did not want to stop reading it. I lost sleep, and slacked off at work. For the two days I read it, I managed to be in different areas, to remain undetected.
I definitely recommend this novel, and hope you read the first two as well. The "Sins for all Seasons" series is quite wonderful too. It gives you Rook's backstory, by focusing on some of his father's illegitimate children, as well as showing you how horrible of a human being he really was. The stories are not about him, trust me.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Like the rest of the the Chessmen series, In Want of a Viscount is an engaging love story between a strong woman and a man who's irresistibly drawn to her. But maybe because it was so similar to its predecessors, this series finale ended up feeling a little bit rote.

Leonora Garrison has traveled to England with her mother and brother to find investors for their company, something that Leonora doesn't take lightly. Even if her mother seems more interested in finding Leonora a husband than anything else. Meanwhile, Viscount Wyeth, better known as Rook, is interested in the investment opportunity but even more so in Leonora, who becomes like an addiction to him, in spite of the fact that he's sworn never to become the same kind of libertine his father was. But they're drawn together over and over, despite both being very sure that they are not what the other really needs.

There's plenty of chemistry between Leonora and Rook, and even when all they're doing is kissing, those kisses are steamy af. I enjoyed that there was an emphasis put on what can often be an overlooked element of romance. That said, the push and pull over whether or not they could be together in any real sense grew a bit tiring and repetitive; Rook only needs to think about how he doesn't want to be like his father so many times before it gets annoying. And the excuses always seemed a bit flimsy to me, even when they were *spoilers* ultimately pushed into marriage.

Still, even though this book felt a bit too formulaic to really shine, it was another enjoyable Lorraine Heath read with appearances by plenty of members of the Lorraine Heath extended universe.

3.75/5

This book was kind of heavy on the insta-lust. The two main characters immediately kiss in their first meeting and keep kissing without getting to know each other much. I liked Leonora as a character and I liked her ambition and I also liked Rook and his backstory. However this series as a whole has just been missing that spark that Heath has always had. That said, I still enjoyed it better than the last one!

In Want of a Viscount features an awkward American heroine who prefers business to romance (but the latter more because she feels unattractive) and a lord whose terrible father who sowed bastards everywhere, resulting in a man who observes strict propriety. This story grew on me as I read further, though in many ways the characters felt somewhat cardboard-y to me. Once I read somewhere that novels are typically written at a grade five level, and this novel felt that way. The words were simply there to move the story along; they weren't transporting say the way an old Judith Ivory novel is or witty and bright in the manner of Julie Anne Long. Lorraine Heath's prose is work-woman like. That said, I did like that the heroine's focus was on a writing machine, and the hero's eventual support of her. If I recall correctly, there was a tedious storyline of how the hero didn't want to procreate because of how awful his father was, and I'm tired of that trope.

I'm getting pickier and pickier, so I rate this a 3.5. It was good, solid, but not great.

An ARC was provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Leonora travels to England along with her mother and brother to look for investors among the aristocracy. She has invented a writing machine but her father left his machinery business to her uninterested brother instead of her. They need funds to put it into production. She has always been considered odd for her interest in how things work, being made fun of by the men in her circle instead of courted. She goes to the Elysium Club owned by Aiden Trewlove, a place where women's fantasies are granted. Hers is for a kiss. Aiden is short on staff and sends up his brother, Rook. Things get a little murky for me here since I haven't read the all of the Trewlove series of books. They have the same parents but didn't grown up together. Aiden is illegitimate while Rook is the heir. Something about murder, their mother being their fathers mistress before he married her and had Rook. Lots and lots of illegitimate children on the father's part. So there is a feeling of having missed something. Rook has always worked to be honorable and scandal free to prove he is nothing like his. father. This gets more difficult as his attraction to Nora grows. It's nice that he appreciates Nora for her intelligence and interests and encourages her to follow her dream. Lots of steamy scenes and an epilogue that views their life a few years later.

First a very big thank you to NetGalley and Avon HarperCollins for this ARC in exchange for my fair and honest review.

I love Lorraine Heath’s books, while she generally delivers an HR that is pretty deep and filled with loads of tension, & chemistry “In Want of a Viscount” the 3rd book in the Chessman series was a little more subdued. But while it is a softer romance it’s still amazing and has a lot of really great and lovely moments that I really enjoyed and I absolutely loved seeing so many of my favorite places and characters from Heath’s other books, it made the story richer and much more exciting.

I love historical romance because I love it when olden-time virgins fall in love. How’s that for an elevator pitch? Virgins wearing a lot of clothes fall in love. And there’s no electricity. And women have no rights…Yes please, sign me up.

Nora is an American in England with her dense brother and arsehole mother trying to find investors for their company- and maybe a hubs for Nora since she can’t find a man due to being smart and inventing things like a typewriter. Ew gross, who wants to marry a woman like that? Nora goes to a ladies club and requests a kiss from a stranger bc #desperate. Rook, a viscount, kisses her as a favor to his brother who owns da club. Nora refuses to marry bc she wants to be a bizness lady and Rook refuses to marry bc his dad was the Earl of Manwhores with approx 33200 bastard kids and he doesn’t wanna be like his daddy. Despite wanting to remain single and friendzoning each other, Rook and Nora spend most of the book making out and even have quite the rendezvous in a greenhouse. Like the old saying goes “those who bone in glass houses shouldn’t throw bones in glass houses”…but these horny hooligans do it anyway.

This was a fun and sexy historical romp. There was a bit too much exposition about typewriters and machines and now I know why nobody wanted to bang Nora…bc typewriters aren’t very sexy or interesting. Thankfully, I’m not here to bang Nora, but Rook is and he found typewriters to be a super turn on- qwerty and flirty!!!

Smut- 3 stars
Romance- 4.6 stars
Story- 4.1 stars
Me inventing the saying “qwerty and flirty™️”- 8.3 stars

Leonora is an American woman with a dream. She is an inventor and is hoping to save her late father’s business. With the support of her brother and mother they go to England to find investors who will support her machine that will change the future of correspondence. But I think secretly Leonora is also seeking adventure and danger- which leads her to a private women’s club. For the evening, she becomes sleeping beauty when she meets her Prince Charming. Rook, brother to the owner of the women’s club, pulls a favor and kisses Leonora to fulfill her request of having a kiss. Rook finds more than he bargained for when he becomes more acquainted with this mysterious women.

I would rate this a three out of five; it was a slow burn romance. I would suggest this novel who like a more mature romance with a side of wine and dining. Rook was very thoughtful with Leonora and recalled things that held a lot of meaning for her. I felt like these characters knew what they wanted from one another but also respected their independence. This ARC was provided by NetGalley in exchange for a honest review.

I love all the connections to other books and series in her universe- Aiden was one of my favorite MMCs, and I was so happy when he popped up in this book, too!

I’m a big fan of Lorraine Heath and yet I somehow missed this fun series, The Chessmen. Leonora Garrison is an American woman who knows what she wants. She is also an amazing inventor with a mind for business. Rook is an all around good guy. He is trying to do everything that’s best for his family. Leonora’s brother won’t let her do what she wants in the business and her mother is determined to marry her off, and well.
After Rook is talked into helping out at his brother’s club he ends up in a kiss with Leonora after she has decided to take chances and take life in her own hands. Rook definitely falls for her and adores her for who she really is. Can they find their way to each other?
This adventure is exactly why I love Heath’s writing. She always has strong characters, and I love her strong female characters. She has detailed back stories and the absolute perfect amount of humor and spice to create the perfect adventure. A woman with brains and a gentleman who is a good guy, perfect combination. I have to go back and read the whole series. You are going to love it. I couldn’t put it down and I want more. I received this as an ARC but this will be going on my bookshelf with the Lorriane Heath collection.
Can't give it enough stars. Enjoy this adventure.