Anita Mills: Miss Gordon’s Mistake and Scandal Bound

After Lord Haverville forced Miss Kitty Gordon’s dearest friend into a loveless marriage, she set her sights on the beastly Baron for revenge. Isolating his wife in rural solitude, Haverville continues to savor all the delights the city has to offer.Determined to force Haverville to give her friend back her freedom, Kitty hatches a plot to kidnap the Baron at gunpoint. But to her surprise, getting her hands on the handsome brute was actually the easy part—it’s the temptation held in his arms that she never planned for.

This is an interesting twist on a comedy of errors, and only believable because the heroine is a brash American. Yep, sent back from the colonies upon the death of her father, Kitty Gordon is an ape-leading cousin in search of an annulment. The teaser above is not exactly accurate…she isn’t set on revenge so much as trying to get Lord Haverville to annul his marriage so her cousin can marry another. And that is where everything goes a little more sideways than pear shaped.

The H/h are likeable in sense that they obey conventions of the genre. However, I felt for most of the book like I was missing something–some chunk of backstory soon to unfold that would clue me in to the characters, their motivations and arcs. Unfortunately, I reached the end of the story without delivery on that promise.

The supporting characters are equally as watery and if not unlikeable and annoying, then at least boring.

The middle was at least a little exciting and had some action to keep the pages turning. By the end, I was ready to speed read my way to the finish line.

Overall, the book is I think trying to manage a romp replete with scrapes and foibles. What she lacks in laughter, Anita Mills does offer opportunities for mistaken identity driven conflict. There is definitely something original in the bones of the story, and if the meat is sometimes less than gourmet, at least it was edible and didn’t leave any lingering ill effects.

5 Stars 3 out of 6 Clean and creative, lacked strong characters and didn’t deliver the promised payoffs

Content Rating/Heat Index
Mature Content
Not much mature content

Intimacy
Little.

Violence
Not really

Overall
Clean with some mature suggestive content.

I read another of Mills’ books prior, Scandal Bound, and liked that one a lot better.

Ellen Marling lives in terror of her wedding night to the beastly Baron Basil Brockhaven. Forced into the marriage by her father, a leap in the dark from the bedroom window seems more appealing than spending even one night with the loathsome lord. Until she discovers that her leap delivered her straight into the hands of the notorious Marquess of Trent, as handsome as he is hedonistic. Ellen has traded a monstrous husband for a masterly rake, and now faces the prospect of the greatest danger of all: falling in love.

The heroine heads jumps out of a marriage of convenience into a romp on the road, with a rake of the first order unwittingly coming to her rescue. And this hero is deliciously confident, good with a pistol, rich as Croesus, handsome and a little bit of jerk. But in a Darcy-eque way that makes the heart do a jiggity-jump.

Like Miss Gordon’s Mistake, much of the book takes place on the road going from bad to worse situations that, in Scandal Bound’s case at least, are funny. Maybe not lol funny, but at least of the fast-turning-the-page variety. There are also villains (a couple), great romantic tension, and a wonderful pay off in the end.

5 Stars 4.75 out of 6 Fast paced action with powerful H/h, this one is destined for the read again pile