Yet another dip into a different genre for me. I came across this one courtesy of fellow author Diana (D. Wallace Peach) who reviewed it during her promotional tour for her latest release The Necromancer’s Daughter, which I reviewed last week! The blurb sounded enticing, with Diana’s review highlighting the hilarity on offer, and I’m so glad I picked it up, it was a great fun read.

Blurb

Genoa 1820

Rule One: There will be no kissing. Rule two: You will be fully clothed at all times…

Widowed Lady Fury Shelton hasn’t lost everything—yet. As long as she produces the heir to the Beaumont dukedom, she just might be able to keep her position. And her secrets. But when the callously irresistible Captain James “Flint” Blackmoore sails back into her life, Lady Fury panics. She must find a way to protect herself—and her future—from the man she’d rather see rotting in hell than sleeping in her bed. If she must bed him to keep her secrets, so be it. But she doesn’t have to like it. A set of firm rules for the bedroom will ensure that nothing goes awry. Because above all else, she must stop herself from wanting the one thing that Flint can never give her. His heart.

Ex-privateer Flint Blackmoore has never been good at following the rules. Now, once again embroiled in a situation with the aptly named Lady Fury, he has no idea why he doesn’t simply do the wise thing and walk away. He knows he’s playing with fire, and that getting involved with her again is more dangerous than anything on the high seas. But he can’t understand why she’s so determined to hate him. He isn’t sure if the secret she keeps will make things harder—or easier—for him, but as the battle in the bedroom heats up, he knows at least one thing. Those silly rules of hers will have to go…

SO here is my review:

The Unraveling of Lady Fury by Shehanne Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I will say now that Regency Romance is not my regular fare, although I have read a couple. This one was considerably steamier than those, but I was prepared for that!
Lady Fury is a wonderful creation – a strong, smart, sassy woman with a dubious background she works hard to conceal, having successfully married into genuine aristocracy. Unfortunately, her husband has inconveniently died and the only way she can keep her hands on his fortune is if she was pregnant with his heir. Also unfortunately, she isn’t. Fury, however, is determined to rectify that.
Holding a little book stuffed with secrets, she is in the perfect position to blackmail a number of aristo lords into doing her bidding, which in this case means acting as sperm donor to conceive that heir as fast as possible. Naturally, things don’t go to plan. Enter pirate captain Flint, currently a slave of one of Fury’s marks. Oh, and he happens to also be the scoundrel who broke her heart and left her behind, penniless (and pregnant) on the docks a few years earlier.
As circumstances have it, Flint is the most able of the men on offer, and so Fury is forced to make a deal with him. The expected sparks fly, along with raging emotions and unpredictable twists and turns to this turbulent relationship. Both characters are vividly drawn, and at the mercy of their individual pre-conceptions (pun intended). The supporting character of Susan is always there to help, although I did wonder why she was so loyal to Fury.
Told to a large extent in dialogue, the spats between characters were alternately hilarious and poignant. I did find some of Fury’s assumptions and predictions rather difficult to follow at times, leaving me to want to give a 4.5-star rating, but of course I’m not allowed to be that precise.
The story ends in the satisfactory manner one hopes it will, although it seems impossible at many times that it will. Kudos to the author for getting us there!


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