Although former criminal and current Bow Street Runner Nick Gentry has spent three years tempting fate and hunting down many types of lawbreakers, he knows that his life is about to change when he spots wayward Lottie Howard, the runaway fiancée of an overbearing lord.Worth Any Price was quite readable, but I liked it only enought to barely give it a rec. My grade: B-.
Nick was hired by Lord Radnor to track Lottie down but, upon meeting her, he realizes that he wants her for himself. Faced with the prospect of returning to her much older betrothed or marrying a notorious Runner whose kisses make her heart pound, Lottie hardly hesitates to accept Nick's proposal, despite his dark past. But even as Nick woos her into his bed, his reluctance to open his heart holds her at bay.
My main problem with this book was that Nick and Lottie simply didn't "touch" me. I didn't desperately care about them and their fate. I did like them and wish them the best, but I felt distanced from them throughout the book.
Also, maybe it's a bit insensitive of me, but I didn't completely "buy" Nick's torture. I'm not sure if the truth about what had happened to Nick in the prison hulk had been revealed in Lady Sophia's Lover, but if it had, I'd forgot about it, so I learnt the secret together with Lottie. I wrote a bit about what I think makes a Big Secret plot work when I blogged about Again The Magic (basically, that the secret itself really be a big deal, and that it's not kept a secret just to keep the book going), and though it worked there, I just didn't feel Nick's secret was such a big deal that he'd be so desperate for Lottie not to know. That was something that just didn't ring true.
The basic plot of the book I did enjoy... Nick feeling he needs Lottie desperately pretty much as soon as he meets her, and doing everything he can to make her marry him, that was really good. I'm a sucker for that kind of plot. And I liked that the book after that was mostly about Nick and Lottie becoming comfortable in their marriage and falling in love. Oh, and I especially appreciated the fact that Nick had had such a discriminating sexual past, having been only with one other woman, but having learnt so much from her.
The bit of suspense with Lottie's former fiancé didn't bother me at all in itself, but I did get annoyed with Lottie's parents and her attitude towards them. It drove me mad. Why would she worry about whether they will be taken care of when they behaved as they did? If her concern had been for the rest of her brothers and sisters, ok, but she was so guilty about what she'd done to her parents and went on and on so much about how she'd betrayed them, that she came across as an idiotic martyr. Why would she ask them to forgive her, for heaven's sake? They were the ones who'd done something wrong to her, what with selling her to a pervert (they knew he was a pervert, or at least they did after she told them what he was doing to her, and did nothing). And during her and Nick's visit, come on, it was so tremendously obvious what was going to happen to her sister! She and Nick (who's a runner and should have noticed) think that there's something a bit off there and wonder what source of money they've found, that they can afford to refuse their son-in-law's help, but simply don't do anything about it. Hmph! That alone lowered the book's grade quite a bit.
I'll definitely keep reading Kleypas, but I'm not particularly crazy about her books.
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