Love With the Perfect Scoundrel by Sophia Nash

Love With the Perfect Scoundrel is the third in Sophia Nash's Widows Club series. It's an English historical that starts off with a bang when the heroine, Grace, is injured in a carriage accident and Michael Ranier saves her from freezing to death. The novel moves quickly and there were a couple of interesting twists in the plot.

Before I tell you what I liked about the book, I do have to say that there is not much original about the plot. It seems to be several often used plot devices cobbled together. There's the wrongly accused fugitive hero, the heroine saved from certain death and stranded with the hero during a blizzard, the blacksmith who turns out to be something more... Throw in a couple of disadvantaged children and a rather ordinary villain and you may wonder why I bothered finishing it.

What makes this book better than average is the characters. The heroine is marvelously done. She is cold on the outside, but so vulnerable inside. The author made me feel I really knew her and I liked her a lot even when I was wincing at the mistakes she made. This is really a story of Grace Sheffey becoming who she was meant to me. The hero is rather typical, in spite of his troubled past (which is a bit too complicated in my opinion), but likable. The secondary characters, however, are excellent, from the stableboy to the woman who works at the orphanage. Nash really has a knack for making the most minor characters seem interesting and unique.

A fast-paced historical with an exceptional heroine, I'll rate it 7.0 out of 10.