This Week in Trashy Reads #8

Trashy Read #8: Lord Perfect, by Loretta Chase

How awesome is Loretta Chase? Pretty damn awesome. I'm pretty sure she can take just about any cliche historical romance plot and create a book that's funny, charming, and a blast to read. She mastered the form with her amazingly perfect Lord of Scoundrels (one of my favorite books I've read this year). And although some of her books are kind of hit-and-miss in general, they are always a lot of fun.

Lord Perfect is a really fun book. The morally upright (and very bored) Benedict Carsington (aka Viscount Rathbourne) is in change of his super-precocious adolescent nephew, Peregrine. The two end up meeting the gorgeous widow Bathsheba Wingate and her clever daughter Olivia. Benedict and Bathsheba are ridiculously attracted to each other, but his family is Very Important and she comes from a horrid family known as the Dreadful DeLuceys. Peregrine begins taking art lessons from Bathsheba and eventually learns that Olivia plans to run away to find some family treasure. He hopes to stop her by going along, but gets dragged into her schemes instead. So Benedict and Bathsheba end up going after them and, of course, end up falling in love.

The story is very charming. Benedict isn't like most alpha-male historical heroes. Rather, he's a little stuffy at first but eventually opens himself up to show a good sense of humor and a strong heart. Bathsheba works hard to make a life for her and her handful of a daughter. And then, there's Peregrine and Olivia, who I hope really get an eventual book of their own. Because there is no way those two can't grow up, find each other again, and fall in love. At least in my mind that's what happens.

So anyway, as usual, Loretta Chase does not disappoint. She's quickly becoming my go-to romance writer. I adore her, and if you haven't checked her out yet, I'd really recommend you do.

Next in Trashy Reads: Although I have a glorious pile of both historicals and contemporaries to read, I'm quite taken with more "serious" books right now. So it may be a few weeks until our next entry. But who knows? Maybe I'll be in the mood for a trashy read before then...