This book was seriously awful. The writing is fussy and stilted - the kind where a contemporary author thinks that she'll sound more historical if she uses five words where she could use one.

It starts off with a real bang - Emma watches John Clayton have sex with his mistress; it's a real quicky, and both of them seem kind of bored. Then Emma storms into the house and demands to see John, the viscount, so she can confront him about the evictions he's ordered. They end up making a deal: John won't evict the tenants if Emma will have sex with him.

After that, I was expecting the rest to be really uninhibited and erotic. But no, it's not. That leads to a seemingly endless serious of encounters where Emma cleverly avoids having sex with John, and John gets more and more exasperated by it.

There are a few twists to the plot, and they are all deeply cliched. There's a duplicitous brother, an evil mistress, and an even more evil vicar.

What really got to me is that John is constantly thinking, "Well, after a lifetime of obeying nobody, why is it that this Emma says jump and I say how high?" or "Isn't it strange that I usually hate being nagged, but I love it when Emma nags me!" And both of those things ARE very strange, and they require a little more explanation than "just because" or "true love makes people enjoy being ordered around and nagged."

So aside from this not-all-that-erotic, not-all-that-convincing reforming a rake story, the end is just...laughable. But I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise. ( )