ARC REVIEW Lady Beresford's Lover by Ella Quinn

Book Seven in Ella Quinn's Marriage Games series. Ella Quinn is good about writing books in a series but also they can be read as stand-alone. I liked it it was entertaining and witty; the characters are great I love them but the story just okay. I liked the secondary story of Silvia and Nick more than I liked Vivian and Rupert story.

Lady Vivian, The Countess of Beresford, is glad her husband is dead and that her mourning period is finally over. She has plans of owning a house away from her late husbands family and the embarrassment that comes with being his widow and having one last season in London before her self imposed seclusion. She doesn't think that finding a lover is a good idea because her husband deep scorn and has disillusioned Vivian; she thinks her body to be deformed and thinks that no man will want her after they see her deformity under her clothes. So when Rupert the Earl of Stanstead shows interest she can't help but return his flirtation.

Rupert doesn't care that everyone says he is too young to settle down, he is ready. He inherited his title young and everyone still thinks him young and they keep bringing that up. (I thought, up until they said Vivian's age, that Rupert was quite a bit younger than Vivian; that is how often they they brought it up.) Rupert was interested in one young lady but she made the decision to marry someone else, and even thought his feelings were hurt he wasn't heart broken. His father told him he would know the right woman when he sees her. When he sees Vivian across a crowded room he believes what his father told him. He won't let Vivian go now that he has found her. Sporadically through the book and so little of it and it doesn't really affect the story is a young twat who is determined to trap Rupert into marriage. I think the only purpose is to set up for another story, but I could have done without it.

The secondary story is between the new Beresford, Nick, and Silvia is a second chance story about deception, lies and manipulation. I kind of wish it was a stand alone book but it ties in so perfectly with the main story. Vivian is oblivious she decides she wants to overcome her fear of intimacy due to her "malformation" and seduce Rupert under the guise of Cleopatra. At a masquerade, coincidentally, they dress as Cleopatra and Marc Antony. Vivian doesn't realize he knows it's her and she becomes jealous of her own alter ego. Rupert works hard to prove that Vivian is the beauty he sees and her husband was a fool and everything is good until Vivian's idiot of a father tries to marry/ sell her off to another bastard.

Overall, it's not one of my favorites so far but it is a good book.