Rumors of being shot by a spurned mistress might burnish the reputation of a rake, but for Kit Pennington, determined to add to his family’s honor by winning a seat in Parliament, such salacious gossip is nothing but a nightmare. To regain his good name, Kit will have to track down his mysterious attacker and force her to reveal the true motivation behind her unprovoked assault. Accepting an acquaintance’s mistress as an ally in his search is risky enough, but when Kit begins to develop feelings for the icy, ethereal Miss Cameron, more than his political career is in danger. For Kit is beginning to suspect that Fianna Cameron knows far more about the shooting—and the reasons behind it—than she’s willing to reveal.
As their search begins to unearth long-held secrets, Kit and Fianna find themselves caught between duty to family and their beliefs in what’s right. How can you balance the competing demands of loyalty and justice—especially when you add love to the mix?
Comment: I became aware of this author because of another title of hers. In fact, I got curious about book #4 in this Pennington series because it seemed it would feature a gay couple and the blurb of that book seemed promising. Still, this is a four book series and while reading the other blurbs, all had a little something that made me think "why not" in trying them too, so that is why I'm starting with this, book #1.
In this story we meet Kit Pennigton, the third sibling of four and the youngest male. He is an idealist and good-hearted man, despite his young age, and he feels he could do a lot if he were to get into politics, especially if his older brother helps him.
He was not counting on being shot by a mysterious woman, though. That got him attention of others but he is determined in discovering who she is and in the process he meets Fianna Cameron, an Irish born woman, now a mistress of a man Kit knows, who might help him with the Gaelic inscription in the pistol the mysterious woman left behind after she shot him.
The truth is that the identity of that woman is actually Fianna, and she is bent in finding the man who caused her father's demise. However, she thought Kit was the man she sought until she realized too late he is far too young. She was looking for Kit's uncle but now she made herself get close to Kit to learn where his uncle is, can she really ignore the feelings that seem to be true between them?
This is the first book by this author I tried so I didn't have any expectations about her writing style. In terms of writing, the story was easy and fluid enough and it was quite a novelty of sorts to have the plot centered on vengeance based on events set in Ireland. This is not very often seen, even in historicals, so I was curious to learn a few more things.
However, the main goal was still to develop the romance and other things had to be secondary. Well, this is what I thought, but in reality, a lot of the content is focused on Fianna's desire to get revenge and how she ignores everything else to pursue that. I mean, this is fine, I can certainly sympathize with her and her motivations, but she was so bent on doing this, it seemed as if she was punishing herself so much for things out of her control and which she might have misunderstood. Then we have Kit, such a great guy, so eager to do the right things, he is caught up in all this and I can also accept he would want to help her, not by committing a crime, but by helping investigating what happened, and how that affects his own reasoning.
I think the idea of this novel and of this sort of "opposites attract" is quite ingenious but I'll be honest. I kept thinking about another book I had before, which had a very similar relationship dynamic but that I didn't like.
I kept thinking that - despite the differences in both books - it was so irritating the heroine was apparently so dismissive of her choices, that she seemed to act uncaring for what her choices have led her into, even if Fianna here did them for what she perceived as a cause, unlike the other heroine. I mean, of course there are things to be considered (woman's lack of rights, the continuous clash of Irish and English cultures and power dynamics, personal assumptions, etc) but I would say the setting wasn't leveled with the romance to make any situation caused or thought by Fianna to be something that could be solved as easily as it ended up being.
This means the relationship between Kit and Fianna, even allowing for cultural (and even social) differences, was still a little too weak for my taste. I think my biggest issue with them as a couple is that their interactions never had a stable feel to them. Or they were at odds, or they were in love, I feel there was no natural progression of their feelings. Kit did feel a little naive at times and I liked him as a character, as a person, but he wasn't always as determined as by the end of the book, so his personality didn't shine as much as it could.
Still, I'd say my biggest disappointment was with Fianna. Call me prude, call me goody-two-shoes but I just can't sympathize that much with women who make the kind of choices Fianna did for such a weak reason as she did. I mean, the reason is worthy for her, that I can accept, but she could have tried to make her revenge happen in a different method. It felt so...self destructive. Sure, psychologically speaking, why not, she was in the right frame of mind to go into a self destruction mode over what happened to her parents when she was a child but... it surely doesn't make for a likely HEA if one of the members isn't in the right frame of mind to believe in that.
Kit seemed to fall in love while Fianna was just happy someone cared about her but I confess I struggled to believe she was going through the process in an intrinsically romantic manner. It felt as if that was happening because the author made it so, not because the chemistry was written so well that the only possible choice had to be that one (a HEA for them).
Thus, between the lack of balance (in my opinion) in the relationship and between the character's personalities, I have to say it wasn't such fun to read this book. The plot isn't too complicated to follow but it felt as if things were supposed to be dramatic, to be contrary on purpose. Except for some scenes here and there and Kit's relationship with one of his brothers, everything else was dense and problematic and didn't make for such a great story.
I do hope the next installments, which I still plan on reading, will be more appealing to me.
Grade: 5/10
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