Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Review: At the Spy's Pleasure (In the Crown's Secret Service #2) by Tina Gabrielle

Book coverAt the Spy's Pleasure (In the Crown's Secret Service #2) by Tina Gabrielle
Purchase link: Amazon

My rating: star star star

Heat rating: Flame  Flame  Flame


Every gentleman has his secrets…

London 1821

After years of marriage to a selfish man who preferred gambling to his young bride, Jane, the widowed countess of Stanwell, now seeks what she was long denied-a satisfying lover. Naturally, a lady needs a list of eligible candidates, which doesn’t include the dangerously handsome (if far too arrogant) Gareth Ramsey…until he steals a sinful kiss from Jane’s all-too-willing lips.

Reputed as an arrogant barrister, Gareth’s real occupation is as a spy in the service of His Majesty, and his suspect is on Jane’s list of possible lovers. With her life in danger, there’s no safer place for Jane than with him-and in his bed. But Jane is as distracting as she is infuriating, and keeping her by his side while he pursues his mission might just endanger them both…


After A Spy Unmasked, I was really looking forward to this book, especially after reading the blurb but unfortunately, Jane ruined it for me.

I found Jane to be willfully naive and intentionally ignorant, and when she got over that (many thanks to Gareth!) she became stuck in the past and intent on protecting herself without giving Gareth the benefit of the doubt. To make matters worse, when she found herself in a rather awkward situation, rather than coming forward and telling Gareth the truth in dealing with the matter, she decided to go down the path of deceiving another man in a misguided attempt at being noble and giving Gareth what she thinks he wants. She refuses to communicate with him, shutting him out rather than allow him to work things out with her. All of this annoyed the living daylights out of me.

Aside from thoroughly disliking Jane, the story was well written and the mystery though not quite as intriguing as in A Spy Unmasked, was interesting to read about.

I loved how much of a brute and alpha male Gareth is. Ms Gabrielle managed to make him thoroughly alpha even in a Regency setting. There are moments when I wanted to shake Gareth and tell him to come out of his stubborn misconceptions of what love and relationships were all about and just admit what we could all so plainly see. That might have helped things along the way with Jane too. Sometimes a guy just needs a good shake to get some sense into him. :-)

Overall though, I am enjoying the series because I love Regency spy stories. If there's a third book, which I think there will be, probably Daniel's book, I'm all over it.

View all my reviews

The other book in the series:

bk2


About the author

auTina Gabrielle, an award-winning author, is an attorney and former mechanical engineer whose love of reading for pleasure helped her get through years of academia. She's the author of adventurous Regency romances In The Barrister's Bed, In The Barrister's Chambers, Lady Of Scandal, and A Perfect Scandal from Kensington Books. "A Spy Unmasked" is the first book in her new Regency romance series, "In The Crown's Secret Service," and will be released from Entangled Publishing on November 10, 2014. "At The Spy's Pleasure" will be available in April 2015. Tina's books have been Barnes & Noble top picks, and her first book, Lady Of Scandal, was nominated as best first historical by Romantic Times Book Reviews.

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