Lord of Pleasure (Rogues to Riches #2) by Erica Ridley

Lord of Pleasure by Erica Ridley

Blurb:

In the Rogues to Riches historical romance series, Cinderella stories aren’t just for princesses… Sigh-worthy Regency rogues sweep strong-willed young ladies into whirlwind romance with rollicking adventure.

Nondescript “good girl” Miss Camellia Grenville only ever opens her mouth when forced to sing at her family’s musicales. That is, until the night she infiltrates the ton’s most scandalous masquerade ball on behalf of her sister, and finds herself in the arms—and the bed—of the one man she’d sworn to hate.

Irresistibly arrogant and unapologetically sensuous, infamous rake Lord Wainwright always gets his way. When he accepts a wager to turn his rakish image respectable in just forty days, he never anticipates falling for an anonymous masked lover...or that discovering her identity would destroy them both. 


I've read many books by Erica Ridley already and on the whole I always enjoyed reading them but somehow this  book didn't do it for me. It is still nice to read but I found myself skipping pages and I couldn't really get into it.

Alright, many of the historical romances are not very realistic and you just have to cut them some slack because they are just, well, romances. Most of them work out for me well despite that because the romance part is the reason why I read those books, I need my HEA and everything around it and reality wasn't always that accomodating.

Unfortunately apart from being very nice and likeable, Lord Wainwright, our eponymous Lord of Pleasure, is not very convincing in his quest for bettering himself. Well, he is convincing in his wish to become respectable but in my eyes he appears to be a bit pathetic.
Miss Camellia Grenville is sweet and nice and everything else but especially at the end, it was a bit too much and she took more risks than I would have felt were even remotely realistic. Maybe I'm too critical and should rather applaud Camellia but somehow - nope.

Apart from that the book is well written, it's just a problem with the story and its characters that makes it less fitting for me, other people may be less critical there (and more romantic) and might enjoy it much more.

★★★