When a Duke Loves a Woman

June 4, 2018
In the enjoyable second Sin for All Seasons novel (after Beyond Scandal and Desire), Heath explores Victorian class and wealth disparities. Fiercely independent tavern owner Gillie Trewlove doesn’t hesitate to save a man who’s mugged by a young gang. She doesn’t recognize the handsome stranger as Antony Coventry, Duke of Thornley, who was searching the poverty-stricken and dangerous Whitechapel area of London for his no-show bride. Having been raised in Whitechapel alongside her four adoptive brothers, Gillie agrees to help Thorne find his fiancée and ensure her safety. Unfeminine Gillie is surprised and pleased that Thorne finds her attractive, but they both know their different social stations will prevent them from having more than a heated affair. Gillie’s sweet and successful brothers try to protect her from scandal, and deserve their matches in future books. This is a believable and winning romance between two people who don’t know how much they need love. Agent: Robin Rue, Writers House.

June 15, 2018
In the second novel in the Sins for All Seasons series, a duke looking for his runaway bride stumbles into the path of a Whitechapel businesswoman and finds himself rethinking his arranged marriage.In a scene reminiscent of Lisa Kleypas' beloved Dreaming of You, this Victorian romance by Heath (Beyond Scandal and Desire, 2018, etc.) begins with Antony "Thorne" Coventry being rescued from a mugging in the London slums by Gillie Trewlove. A tavern owner with a heart of gold and illegitimate parentage, she nurses the stranger back to health in her apartment. The reader is told that her solicitousness is partly due to her attraction to his naked (mostly unconscious) self, and he returns her feelings in between bouts of passing out. After a few discomfiting passages about this insta-lust and at least two in which the sole action consists of Gillie being startled by any move Thorne makes, it's a relief when he recovers and leaves. The plot is then padded by his decision to return to Whitechapel, which Gillie knows better than he does, and hire his new object of desire to locate his absconding fiancée--as one does. The nunlike, independent, workaholic Gillie, who has every reason to be wary of upper-class men, agrees to this scheme because she finds him inexplicably fascinating. Yet it's hard to like Thorne, who is not a rake but somehow shoddier--a good guy who is nevertheless more interested in sex than in thinking about its consequences for a single, working woman. Gillie, written as a gruff do-gooder, is more interesting at the beginning than after she gets involved with this bland romance-novel aristocrat. Nonetheless, the story might please fans of the "London slum" subset of historical romance, of which Elizabeth Hoyt's Wicked Intentions is a notable example.A tale that initially seems poised to challenge Cinderella conventions but fails to fulfill that promise, as if it wanted a claim to progressive politics but could not imagine a real alternative to gilded-cage tradition.

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