A librarian, a duke, an Egyptian tome and a curse…what? Yes. I love that these are more mature characters who know what they want and are not afraid to act on it. Their love story is so sweet and slow (yes, I said slow even though they do have fun times during the course of their story). The two main characters are simpatico. A lovely couple in a lovely story.

Miss Catherine ‘Cate’ Pickwick is a spinster who works in a lending library and lives at home with her father. She had several failed attempts at being a governess but was dismissed because she had affairs with her employers.

Barrington ‘Barr’ Combes-Mead, Duke of Scarborough is a widower who is keeping himself busy by doing some renovations on his townhouse. He is hiding from society since his wife passed away and doesn’t know how to move forward with his life.

Barr finds an erotic book with Egyptian prose but needs someone to translate the book for him. He meets Cate at the lending library when she offers to translate the book. They both are instantly drawn to each other as they work on translating the book and soon begin an affair. When Christmastide is over and the translation of the book is done will Cate and Barr go their separate ways?

The description of this book was both interesting and intriguing so I decided I needed to check it out. I am glad I did because I absolutely loved it and thought it was fabulous!! The book was entertaining, a lot of fun and the steam level was out of this world!! I instantly liked both Cate and Barr’s characters and the chemistry between them was awesome. While there was a lot of steamy scenes in the book there was also the connection between Cate and Barr as they got to know each other for who they were. I liked that they were older adults who were not worry about society exceptions and followed their hearts instead of what was expected of them. The secondary characters were delightful and added to the story without being a distraction to it. This is the first book in the series and I look forward to reading the next book. I highly recommend this book!!

Sandra writes spicy, complex romances featuring strong women with men strong enough to appreciate them. This book, which brings a volunteer librarian together with a peer is no exception. As they work together to translate a previously hidden erotica book, will they find the HEA they both crave? Read it to find out!