marikitORG random thoughts, some nuts and bolts

A Lady’s Guide to Improper Behavior

Since I started it already, I guess I should just keep on updating this blog. I don't want to turn it into a pure book blog but what can I do? Books are the things that I devour one after the other.

A Lady's Guide to Improper Behavior
Suzanne Enoch
B+

A Lady's Guide to Improper Behavior is Suzanne Enoch's follow up to The Care and Taming a Rougue and the second book in her The Adventurers' Club series.

I had a hard time getting into the book at the start. Initially, I found the characters boring. Theresa is a proper lady with a lot of suitors. Bartholomew, aka Tolly, is a wounded soldier from India. The verbal exchange between them at the start showed promise but then, they went back to their old self. But when their backgrounds unraveled, I started liking them. There's a reason why Theresa acts that way. But when it comes to Tolly, she throws away all the rules in her guide. She started courting him, telling him that she likes to dance and take carriage rides, and visiting him at his brother's home. Tolly, on the other hand, also falls for Tess and even going as far as stripping away his surly self, going to a doctor to mend his broken leg and going to soirees and balls just to get a glimpse of her. But then the East India Company gets in their way, trying to destroy Tolly's reputation by proclaiming that the Thugee attack Tolly and his men suffered were just rumors. Tolly tries to find a way to clean his reputation before publicly declaring for Tess. Tess helps him out to come up with a plan and also in the end rescues him from Lord Hadderly and the East India Company.

The boring characters that I found at the start were the ones that made me like this read a lot. Tess isn't your typical proper lady and definitely not a damsel in distress type. You could also say that she's more the knight in shining armor and Tolly would be the damsel in distress. That's a different take for a hero and heroine. Also, I remember hating the first book in the Adventurers' Club series, The Care and Taming of a Rogue, just because of its heroine. I remember hating Philippa a lot. So I was glad that this time I liked Tess and thus liked the book too. I also liked a few of the secondary characters from Tolly's ex-military valet, Lackaby, to Tess' brother and grandmother, and of course to the Duke of Sommerset. I'm hoping that one of these days, one of the books Enoch will publish under the Adventurers' Club series, would be a book dedicated to His Grace.