If He's DangerousIf He’s Dangerous by Hannah Howell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

received as an ARC from Kensington
3.5 flames

The beginning of this book sucked me right in! Lorelei Sundun is relaxing in her father’s rose garden when all of a sudden, there is a naked man in the garden with her! He just appeared, poof! She figured too much sun could make a girl imagine anything, now couldn’t it? But he was a real as could be. And along with being naked, he was in trouble.

Sir Argus Wherlocke had special abilities. His whole family did, actually, and someone had found out about those abilities. And that someone wanted to know how it was done. Two weeks of torture later, and they were no closer to figuring it out-so Argus used his newest ability, that of spirit walking. He didn’t find his family, though, he found a beautiful red-haired miss who promised to help. But how could she?

I would say the first 75 pages or so are fantastic. After that it slows down a bit. Lorelei does, in fact rescue Sir Argus, but once he is rescued, the business of finding his family begins. So she hides him in the guest cottage on her father’s lands. For like 2 weeks. And thinks no one will notice. And although the sparks are flying between Argus and Lorelei, I wanted it to progress a bit faster. We got a great look at Lorelei’s daily life, and a great look at their personalities, but it felt more like a sweet romance, than the mysterious suspenseful read it started out as. It wasn’t enough to have an intrigue plot off to the side-so much more could have been done with that. It would have been different if the beginning of the book hadn’t started off so fast-paced and mysterious.

***mini-spoiler***

The only thing I didn’t like, was that Argus and Lorelei talked many times about their “relationship” (Lorelei knew he was ‘the one’ but Argus felt Wherlock’s couldn’t marry) and I felt that Argus agreeing to a sexual relationship was not only out of character, but it made me really mad, as he had no plans on marrying her, the daughter of a duke. That’s the main reason this book wasn’t a 4 for me.

But with that part aside, this is a very sweet historical romance, with a bit of the paranormal thrown in, and an intrigue plot thrown in as well. I enjoyed it, and I really liked the side characters, but I thought it was absolutely ridiculous that while Lorelei was being held hostage with a knife to her back, she and her father both magically spoke Gaelic all of a sudden so they had a “secret language” where she was able to share the villain’s plan. Right.

I will definitely read the rest of this new trilogy, as I really liked the characters, but I will expect more of a sweet romance, than an exciting and intriguing suspense story.

This book releases June 1, 2011

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