Elizabeth Hoyt is BACK, y'all! I've read everything she's written and this felt both familiar (gritty, violent Georgian Era London, powerful men and the independent women who love them) but also like nothing I've ever read from her before. Look, this is the 21-year-old sunshine debutante Dom paired with the 33-year-old grumpy heir presumptive to a dukedom alpha sub I never expected to read, and holy sh*t if I didn't love it.

Lady Elspeth is the sister of Julian's childhood BFF Ran. If you read the first book in the series (Not the Duke's Darling), you know that Ran was accused of killing Julian's sister and beaten almost to death; this kicked off a family feud that's been going on for over a decade when this book opens. Elspeth was raised unconventionally by "Wise Women" in Scotland. Her current quest involves finding a manuscript that she thinks belongs to Julian's family. He's also looking for a different book in his family's libraries. This leads to a lot of close proximity in several libraries and a few close encounters over salacious literature (we ARE reading a Hoyt, if you please!).

There's some plot around assassins sent after both Elspeth and Julian, but the meat (heh) of the book involves the D/s relationship between the two. I was completely convinced by their dynamic. Honestly I never thought I'd write the words "Hoyt alpha sub," or that I would be that into them, but this is where we all live now.

This objective review is based on a complimentary copy of the novel.