I have loved the mystery of Chief Inspector Carlton Morley. He has a duality to his personality, which was very intriguing and engaging. Prudence Goode was a great character. I enjoyed her innocence and free spirit. I loved the way she sought out passion and pleasure before her marriage. These two together were amazing. They helped heal each other and find something that they were missing. Another wonderful story in this fantastic series.

I have been waiting for Morley’s story since The Highwayman. He has appeared in the other books in the Victorian Rebels series and we have learned about his background bit by bit. We know he walks the line between the dark and the light like all the other men in this series. Morley’s demons are lurking below a razor thin surface. He is also lonely and weary. He has given up on the dreams he had of ever having a wife and family.

Kerrigan Byrne doesn’t shy away from the brutality in the world in which these characters live. And she always brings the heat between her main characters.

Prudence Goode finds out her fiancée is not the man he appears to be. She decides she wants to have one night in which she can have a man of her choosing.

While investigating a murder, Carlton Morley finds himself in the right place at the right time to assist Prudence in her one night of freedom.

All this occurs with consequences.

My favorite part of A Dark and Stormy Knight is the interactions between the other men and Morley. You can feel the love and mutual respect in their banter.

Thank you NetGalley and Xpresso Books for the ARC

Oh My God! shades of Batman! Finally we get Chief Inspector Morely’s story and it was worth the wait! This book had two of my favorite tropes that you don’t see a lot in historical romances. First, the moral, uptight hero who has been celibate for a long time❤️❤️❤️. Second is the one night stand and now the H and h need to marry because she’s pregnant. I also love a heroine who has HAD IT and decides to take control of her life. When Kerrigan Byrne is writing these tropes you get perfection!

I cannot tell you how happy I am that Carlton Morley finally got his own book. He needed his story told.

As the “Knight of Shadows”, the seemingly straight laced Chief Inspector Morley, has a chance encounter and night of debauchery with one soon to be wed Lady of “Goode” standing.

Miss Goode, about to me married to a man whom she believes will never be faithful, and whom will never give her the pleasure she craves, decides to have one night of unadulterated pleasure before accepting her fate.

With this steamy beginning, Kerrigan Byrne takes us again into sinful and luscious world of The Victorian Rebels. Bad boys really can be good, with the right lass! Ms. Byrne has quickly become my go-to writer of historical fiction.

I am in absolute awe at how well Kerrigan Byrne can write! This story touched my heart so deeply and I could feel the pain that Carlton felt growing up, I could feel the helplessness, the lack of hope, love and caring that was denied him. The prologue is very intense!! Yet, he rises above it all and you want nothing but to cheer him on as the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard and as the Shadow Knight.

The way he and Prudence meet is quite unusual but oooooh my lord, it sure made me want to fan myself! lol So delicious!! Three months after that first meeting, they meet again and that's when the adventure begins. Fraught with danger and suspicions, both Pru and Carlton must learn to trust each other, something Carlton has always had a hard time with. Breaking down his barriers and unlocking the steel around his heart is what Pru wishes with all her heart. I loved both characters and she is exactly what he needs in his life!!

I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.

I liked this book a lot. Pru and C. were really good together, and even if the plot at the beginning seemed to be not so believable, in the end it was also a fast paced story and love won :) I am wondering about the next characters, maybe Honoria and the doctor? We will see.....It would be sad if this were the last one and I'm not going to meet the old friends again...

Questo libro mi é piaciuto parecchio e Pru e C. stavano bene assieme, nonostante l'inizio del libro mi aveva lasciato piuttosto insoddisfatta, alla fine il ritmo é stato sempre alto e l'amore ha vinto, come al solito. Mi stavo anche chiedendo chi saranno i due personaggi del prossimo libro, sperando che ce ne sia uno perché mi dispiacerebbe non incontrare piú gli altri vecchi protagonisti, a cui mi sono affezionata. Magari Honoria e il chirurgo? staremo a vedere....

THANKS NETGALLEY FOR THE PREVIEW!

Overall - 4.5
Heat - 4

A Dark and Stormy Knight is the seventh book in Kerrigan Byrne’s Victorian Rebels series. Sir Carlton Morley has pulled himself from the gutters of London to be a respected Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard. By day he protects the city with the law as his weapon. By night he stalks the streets as the Knight of the Shadows, a vigilante for justice. While investigating a case as his alter ego, Prudence Goode literally falls into his lap. He doesn’t have time for distractions, even beautiful raven haired distractions like Pru. However, he finds her irresistible and in her he finds his one weakness.

Kerrigan Byrne has become a one-click author for me, because she writes historicals that are full of action, passion, and emotion. I’m especially a fan of any romance that gives me a good mystery as a subplot to the love story, and Kerrigan always manages to weave the two stories together in a most enjoyable way. I came late to the fandom, so I have not read all of the novels in this series but when I saw this drop on NetGalley I had to snatch up A Dark and Stormy Knight.

Fair warning, I usually try to remain as professional as possible when I write these reviews, but I just have to exclaim one thing. This hero is literally Victorian Batman! His double life as the Chief Inspector and the vigilante gave a lot of insight into the type of man Carlton was, and I loved it. Carlon was as sexy as Bruce Wayne and as mysterious as Batman, with all the buttoned up propriety of a Victorian gentleman. After a lifetime in the gutter he felt duty bound to save those who could not save themselves any way possible. Before he meets Pru his entire being is consumed with finding justice for victims of crime, mostly out of penance for those he could not save. I am a sucker for this type of hero and Carlton sucked me in from the first word on the page.

Prudence is a typical sheltered and pampered miss from a good family. Her father has a small title and is the Commissioner of Scotland Yard, making him Carlton’s direct superior. I don’t want to spoil their meeting, but I can say that the manner is definitely not how one would expect to meet the daughter of a police commissioner and it’s probably my favorite first meeting between a couple in 2020. I struggled a bit with connecting to Pru since she was a bit more one-dimensional than Carlton in the beginning of the book. We don’t get to know much about her other than the fact she was engaged to a philandering Earl and she’s always felt like an outsider in her family. As we go along in the book, Pru eventually finds her way out of her shell and she becomes a very strong and likable character in the story.

The mystery surrounding this story was told very well, and Kerrigan kept me guessing right up until the reveal. I liked how this mystery plays a big role in Carlton and Pru’s relationship, and eventually leads Pru to demanding exactly what she deserves from him. What did bother me in a very minor way was that in the later half of the book a lot of the relationship between Pru and Carlton gets fast forwarded, I think in service to getting the mystery solved on page. This means that we miss out on 2 weeks of them bonding that I would have liked to see on page. I prefer to see major milestones and initial bonding on page, and not skipped over with a quick time jump.

Overall, I loved this book and I’m giving it a 4.5, just because I was a glutton for Carlton and Pru and I really wanted to see more of their love story get page time. This only slightly diminished my extreme love for this book, and my general fandom for this writer. If you love dark and steamy historical novels like Sarah Maclean’s Bare Knuckle Bastards series or the Highland Guard series by Monica McCarty you’ll love this series and this book. I dare you not to fall in love with Victorian Batman ;)

Review to be posted on Smitten By Books at Publish date.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Despite my rough start with Kerrigan Byrne’s books, I’ve come to appreciate her willingness to explore the dark side in her books, even if I don’t always love her characters. But given her tendency toward the anti-hero, I was worried when I heard A Dark and Stormy Knight was Morley’s book, given I found him a welcome presence of moral uprightness in the midst of darker characters.

But much as there is something to like, or at least sympathize with, underneath the facade of most of the other Rebels (however reluctantly I admit it), Morley as a hero gets an edge that is consistent with the character we’ve come to know: dedicated to justice. In fact, I felt for him when I learned of the skeletons in his closet.

However, I did feel like Prudence was a bit ordinary, only being fascinating due to the circumstances she finds herself in, an issue I feel is prominent with the Rebels and their heroines as a whole: the men are the bundles of issues, and the women are their source of stability, and as a reader who likes more complex heroines, especially after book one in Kerrigan’s other series, I found her a bit lacking.

However, speaking of the Rebels and the women, I did like the banter between the recurring characters. It’s especially funny how the fact that Farah and Morley once courted was handled. And while I can’t help but find it all absurd, I love how you get these little reminders of what the other men did to get with their women, when Carlton is in the thick of his predicament with Prudence.

Byrne excels at weaving suspense into her books, and this one is no exception. I spent the whole book wondering who it could be, especially since there didn’t seem to be anyone who stuck out as obvious aside from Prudence. But when all was revealed, I was in shock, especially because of the way this character was presented as largely inconsequential initially.

While not my favorite of the series, I feel Byrne’s objective strengths are on display here, and any flaws I’ve noted are due to my personal preferences. If you’ve loved the series thus far, you won’t be disappointed with this one.