I have a weird relationship with category romance. I purchase a lot and then it lingers. They are such quick reads when they are good, and such terrible slogs when they are bad. (I realize this is true of most anything.) They use tropes like secret babies and marriages of convenience and sometimes they do it so well and sometimes I want to yell at the book.
So, I picked the late Sandra Hyatt's Lessons in Seduction which was excellent and really should have had a warning label since I started late on a Friday night and next thing I knew it was quite late/quite early and I needed to sleep but I wanted to keep reading. I polished it off for breakfast the next morning. Adam is prince and heir apparent in [fictional principality] and Danni is the daughter of one of the royal drivers so has known Adam since she was five.
Digression: I tend to love the boy/prince next door type stories when done right (which this one was, IMO) but have grown wary because there is a sub-set of these where there is some special night when the two characters are sixteen and talked (or, um, did not talk) under the stars and then ten years later they cross paths and because of this one night forgive each other ridiculous behavior. Like kidnapping.
So, Danni works for the Grand Prixe but sometimes subs for her dad as a driver in a pinch. A few years ago, Adam spilled his drink while she was driving and he fired her. But her dad was feeling under the weather so she takes over a shift one night while Adam is on a date and can't stop herself from making a comment about his technique (or lack thereof). Adam is amused because as prince people mostly don't talk to or about him like that so asks her to please give him some pointers since he has reached that point where it is time to do the royal duty and get himself a wife. Danni accepts, and, as you might suspect, in such proximity they find themselves fighting an attraction to one another (which they have decent reasons for fighting).
(The blurb, which I read later, implies that it is Danni's "commoner" status holding them back. The discussion about their reasons for not dating happens late enough in the book that I don't want to reveal it, but that is not the case.)
This book just came out last year, so it wasn't really lingering in the TBR pile too long, but it was a lovely trip nonetheless.
Rants About New (and old) Things
