Dare, Tessa - Goddess of the Hunt

[oyceter]

Lucy Waltham has long been in love with her brother's friend Toby, but he seems to think of her only as a little sister. She decides that the best course of action is to seduce him, especially as he seems intent upon proposing to someone else. Unfortunately, she hasn't had much practice in seduction, so she decides to try on her brother's other friend, Jeremy Trescott, Earl of Kendall, first.

The beginning of this book is a fairly standard but fun Regency romp, in which Jeremy keeps trying to deny his attraction to Lucy and completely failing, having slight angst over her adoration of Toby, and overall being rather lost. Lucy is adventurous, loves hunting, and is trying to get rid of her reputation of being "one of the boys" to be more attractive, but there's not much makeover in the book, thank goodness.

One unexpected bit was Lucy's eventual friendship with Sophia Hathaway, her romantic rival, and I had a lot of fun reading about the two girls giggling and laughing with each other.

Then there's an abrupt switch in plot type in the middle, which I was first pleasantly surprised by. Sadly, the pleasantness of it decreased rapidly as Jeremy began to revert to somewhat annoying behavior thanks to his Angsty Backstory (why am I not surprised that a) he has one and b) it makes him behave badly?). I didn't believe the motivation for him to act as he did, it took away much of the initiative that Lucy had had in the first half, and the entire conflict largely depended on the two not interacting, thereby depriving me of a lot of the fun of the first half.

Overall, not bad, but it doesn't end nearly as well as it began.

(Also, I was annoyed at mentions of the West Indies. Yay, your relatives run plantations there. Let me count how many ways I do not find that sexy, exotic, or romantic.)

Links:
- oracne's review