Shameless (Banning Sisters Trilogy Series #3) Book

If a Regency could read like an Indiana Jones adventure, this is it. It's definitely different and in a good way.

This is the first of her novels for me. Apparently it's the last installment of a series but it holds up as a stand alone novel. First 100 pp. were terrific: gripping opening, engaging H/h, though hero is darker in tone danger-wise than most of what I read. The story was suspenseful with unexpected things happening one after another. This review will lack clarity bec. I am not going to spoil the twists and turns if I can help it.

There's crackling tension. He's a state assassin on the run from assassination by his former handlers, she's a notoriously misbehaved young lady who will not be ruled by any man (in a time when married women were the legal chattel of their husbands, D'oh!). There are threats of kidnapping, debauchery by auction and every conceivable threat of murder/death: stabbing, shooting, garroting, drowning, being buried alive, etc., yet it all forms a coherent whole and a very fast-paced story.

There's no explaining ANYTHING without spoiling it so I can only say that this is a truly entertaining adventure-romance. Oh, and I can say, great writing, use of dialogue, the language was a treat.

Last great thing: back in society, the heroine Beth outdoes herself behaving like an incomprehensible bitch and I really started to dislike (read: detest) her but whammy! come to find out that while I was hating on her there's a last, unexpected plot twist and they achieve a HEA.

I will say, all in all, I got tired of the heroine's incessant contrariness. They were in peril time and again and she never does what he says, tho' he's the one who knows how to stay alive when there are goons out to get you. (But kudos to the author if she wanted me to feel as tense and as irritated at her as the hero presumably did.) Many times, I admired her contrariness on principle, she defends him rather than run and insists he save other women not just her, etc.; other times I wish just once she'd sit the fuck down, or duck the fuck out of the way or shut the fuck up. In other words, I don't love bratty heroines. But I did like the chemistry bet. H/h and given all the evil the hero did in his former life, perhaps she is his proper penance.

Ultimately, the brat bugged me too much to be 5 stars.