Late to the party, book 2

Another book that got rave reviews months ago, that I've just gotten around to reading:




In this one, a respectable widow works as secretary to a pox-scarred earl. They have an attraction, but he needs to marry in his own class and of course she is respectable, so they don't act on it. When he goes to London to work off his frustrations with a courtesan, she secretly follows him and takes the courtesan's place under a mask to be with him.

Sounds silly, doesn't it? Like sort of an erotica-y plot. I mean, really, it takes some serious plot contrivances to get a lady into a hooker's bed for a night, and would he really not recognize her under the mask? And what historically-correct lady would act this way in the first place? There's no way Hoyt could pull it off, right?

Well, she does. I'm still not sure how, but I think it has something to do with the psychological realism of the characters and how they think. When you're in the heroine's head, you can see why she does what she does. And the aftermath of the deception is, surprisingly, played out in a realistic way. These aren't just cardboard characters walking through a plot:

And there were other thoughts he could not stop. Had she met other men at Aphrodite's Grotto? Had she shared her beautiful, lush body with men she didn't even know?... Impossible to wipe the obscene images from his mind of Anna - his Anna - with another man. His vision blurred. Christ. He was crying like a lad.

I also liked Hoyt's realistic use of language, especially for the hero. He is pretty profane, and he uses anatomically stark words when he's thinking about sex, which makes sense, as I don't think too many men think of women's "feminine petals" when they're turned on.

Hoyt does far better with the central plot than with the subplots, which are sort of tacked-on and predictable. The last 50 pages is a little overcrammed with Obviously Bad Villains and their comeuppance, but that's only a little to forgive. I'm glad I came to the party for this one, even if I was late.