Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

After losing her husband to a rogue French agent, Charlotte Moncrieffe wants to make her mark in international espionage. And what could be better for recovering secret long-lost documents from the Palais Garnier than her stealth dirigible, Gossamer Wing? Her spymaster father has one he won’t send her to Paris without an ironclad cover. 

Dexter Hardison prefers inventing to politics, but his title as Makesmith Baron and his formidable skills make him an ideal husband-imposter for Charlotte. And the unorthodox undercover arrangement would help him in his own field of discovery. 

But from Charlotte and Dexter’s marriage of convenience comes a distraction—a passion that complicates an increasingly dangerous mission. For Charlotte, however, the thought of losing Dexter also opens her heart to a thrilling new future of love and adventure.

Comment: Here is one more book I can't remember why I've added to my TBR but it probably has to do with the marriage of convenience trope.

Charlotte Moncrieffe is a young widow who is also a trained spy and all is ready for her mission in France except it would not be believable for her to travel alone and her superiors find her a man who could be her husband. In fact, she knows about him, for they have been exchanging letters upon her requests for his devices but nothing would prepare her for how attractive he is, both physically and for her personal senses. Dexter Hardison has a title he often ignores which makes him a good husband on paper but he finds it an extra that he and Charlotte work out so well in person as they do in letters. The question is, while on this mission, can they separate what is real and what is fake in their relationship?

In this story we meet two people who had been exchanging letters which, of course, is an easy way to establish that a certain connection was already there. I didn't doubt that Charlotte and Dexter would be a solid couple because the understanding of who they were was already there, even though the exchange wasn't necessarily personal.

Thus, the idea of the romance was immediately established as stable and I was eager to see how getting to know one another in person would add to the connection. I think that, at first, this was well done, and I was convinced that they would slowly learn about one another in a romantic way. What was being shared about their personalities in the beginning also made it look as if they would be likable characters and I was quite interested in what was happening.

I will say that this is the first book I try by the author and I had no idea about her style, but in the beginning all seemed to go well. I should also mention that this impressed me in spite of the fact I'm not terribly fond of spying plots and two or three books with this theme I have read in the past months have not been that impressive, but I hoped this element here would not be that important anyway, with the focus on the romance, I hoped.

Well, my enthusiasm was soon lost, I'm afraid, because the interesting and vibrant tension between the protagonists practically disappeared after their "marriage". The dynamics between them, while kind of believable for that situation, no longer seemed appealing and the intimacy between them too quick and without the same "mood" as before. How they interacted with one another no longer felt appealing and I could easily ignore the sex scenes.

In regards to the plot, which I confess I never really paid attention to, there was indeed a lot of spying business and other secondary issues related to the mission that I skipped here and there in order to get to the romance, but like I said, that wasn't winning the story over for me anymore either. I wasn't fond f the idea of giving their enemy a POV because it meant that I knew I'd not like the person and it made it easier to just glance at those paragraphs, making a few more pages I was not interested in reading.

This experience got to the point of me being almost ignorant of what was going on with the plot. I've forced myself this finish and not even the (usual) fun details about the world building compensated. I simply consider it a success that I've finished because there are more elements I didn't like than the ones I did. I really think the plot lost interest once they went on with their mission and, supposedly, that is when the fun times would start, so... one less on the pile.

Grade: 4/10