Title: The Devil in Her Bed
Series: Devil You Know
Author: Kerrigan Byrne
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: March 9, 2021
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
ASIN: B0893SGC4H
He lives in secret service to the Crown—a man of duty, deception, and an undeniable attraction to a woman who threatens to tear his whole world apart.
They call him the Devil of Dorset. He stands alone, a man of undeniable power. Moving in and out of shadows, back alleys and ballrooms, he is unstoppable and one of the Crown’s most dangerous weapons. However, when he sets his sights on the undeniably beautiful Countess of Mont Claire, Francesca Cavendish, he doesn’t realize that he has met a match like no other.
TRUE LOVE WEARS NO DISGUISE
Francesca is a countess by day and stalks her prey—those responsible for the death of her family—by night. What she does not expect is to be thrown into the path of the devil himself, the Earl of Devlin. She has secrets of her own and he seems determined to lay them bare. Can her heart survive finding the love of her life and losing him when all is revealed?
My rating:
***copy provided by publisher through NetGalley***
Twenty years before, she witnessed the murder of her family and the family they worked for with her best friend killed right in front of her eyes. She barely escaped, thanks to the boy she loved and who loved her best friend. As the sole survivor of the massacre, she took on her best friend's identity, becoming Francesca Cavendish, Countess of Mont Claire in order to find the culprits for the massacre and avenge her friends, her family and the boy she loved.
She's finally close enough. With one head of the snake chopped, she's about to infiltrate the depths of the Crimson Council responsible for many crimes, not only the deaths she wants and needs to avenge...If only her two friends and their spouses would stop interfering, trying to save her. And a ghost from the past would leave her alone.
This most certainly isn't the usual, light-weight, frivolous HR. The entire trilogy is darker and grittier from what one would expect, so it comes as no surprise that the last book would be the most complex and the toughest to digest and evaluate.
Starting with the most complex, most intriguing woman of the three friends, Francesca. A woman who took on the identity of her murdered best friend to avenge her death and that of her family and all those dear to her. The woman who went to war for the memory of the boy she loved (that sentence gave me chills!). She's secretive, dangerous, skilled, seemingly fearless and strong, yet all her edges soften in the arms of the man she loves. The arms of the man she's lying to, the arms of the man in love with a ghost.
The man had so many names, identities, secrets and burdens, but unlike her (despite her having a secret identity), he was the one who had no idea who he really was. Francesca was his perfect other half, more than able to stand up to him, willing to take his hand and guide him into the light if he only accepted it...They had the same goal, they both lived for revenge...They made a perfect couple if it wasn't for his pesky blindness or unwillingness to realize who she really was (because the clues were there!) and his stubborn clinging to a memory, a ghost of a little girl he thought he loved twenty years prior.
I don't like it when my heroes love ghosts. Ghosts are hard to compete with and this particular ghost almost ruined it all. Or more precisely, the idiot man almost ruined it all, because he couldn't face the facts, the truth, or himself and his true feelings.
Was the resolution to the romance a bit rushed and slightly contrived with the sudden "memory" of who truly accepted him first? Yes. I wished Francesca would've made him grovel more, but what can we do?
Though the romance, thanks to the characters and their pasts and motivations, was dark, the suspense part was darker still. Darker, grittier, sicker...Stranger, since the reasoning and motive for and of the Crimson Council has seemingly flown over me. I didn't get the "business model". And if your throw in the depravity, the orgies and the occult, it made even less sense, unless you simply accept the adage that power corrupts.
Despite these little holes in the fabric, the story was solid and intriguing, the characters complex and layered, realistic in their motivations and interactions, the romance wasn't "easy" and the suspense rather creepy. A nice conclusion to the trilogy.
5 stars, bodyguard/military/merc/gov/cop/spy, favorites, freebie, historical, historical romance, Kerrigan Byrne, suspense/mystery/adventure/thriller, victorian
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