To be honest, historical romance spy novels are not my favorite. Regency 007s can be quite taxing, all that panther like grace competing with the romance. But I liked this one. The hero isn’t devastatingly handsome but he possessed natural intelligence and a V shaped torso – swoon. The banishment to the countryside by his papa to study nature plotline was weak but how else was he going to meet the heroine? Susannah grew on me – at the onset, she seemed to be a shallow chit tossed out of her plush life after the death of her father but she was refreshingly observant.
There is plenty of intrigue: her dad wasn’t really her dad, her mom supposed killed her real dad but evaded capture, scattering her sisters to the wind. There is a scheming, ambitious villain with a predictable physical impairment (a limp). But the machinations are secondary to Long’s ability to write characters who convincingly fall in love in the lulls between the “action.” There is a freshness to her style – the dialogue is snappy and the characters have interesting inner worlds. This is truly where Long shines especially in building tension between the leads. All in all, the book is a satisfying first entry of a trilogy
Overall grade: B