The Edge of Impropriety

I’m part of Keishon’s TBR challenge. Unfortunately, I haven’t been a very good participant despite my best intentions. However, I decided to post a book review today, but it’s of a library book.

Yeah, I read books from the library, usually when I’m not sure I’ll enjoy it. Don’t worry, I buy lots of books too. But, I do figure that here, anyway, the more romance books I check out the more romance books our library will buy. And I’m much more free about checking out books than buying them.

Anyway, on to the review of Pam Rosenthal’s The Edge of Impropriety.

I thorough enjoyed this book. I thought the characterization was nuanced and thoughtful. Rosenthal doesn’t really like black and white characters. Even her villain is given depth. (In fact, given his awful acts, I felt the author was almost too generous with his motivation.)

The opening is powerful. I won’t avoid prologue spoilers, though if they bother you, you’d better stop reading. But it begins with a man and woman who are obviously former lovers, even though she is married to the man’s older brother. You come to learn that he is actually the biological father of her oldest child and heir, and it is extremely painful to him that he cannot have a relationship with his son.

By the end of the prologue, the parents have died in an terrible accident and the hero becomes the guardian of his biological son and his niece.

Fastforward ten years. I think Rosenthal excels in describing the complicated relationships among the hero, his son/nephew and his niece. Because the hero’s feelings about his son/nephew are so complicated, their relationship is not easy. In fact, it is painful. (The son/nephew does not, of course, know about his uncle had an affair with his mother.) I thought her handling of these familial relationships was deft and insightful.

While you might think that the hero sleeping with his brother’s wife is a dealbreaker in terms of the hero’s character, Rosenthal convinces me that while he made a mistake, he was not a cad or villain or weakling. He is quite young, among other things. I actually really felt for the son/nephew’s mother who seduced him.

I was much less interested in the romance, to be honest. Don’t get me wrong, it’s well done and the sex scenes are quite hot. But the above drama totally captivated me.

There’s a secondary romance between the son/nephew and a governess, that’s quite nice also. The heroine is a romance novelist and a jaded widow. She and the hero begin a sexual relationship that comes to mean a lot to them. At the same time, she is being blackmailed, for she has a sordid past to hide.

The writing is wonderful. The heroine herself, I really liked, as she is not angst-ridden (though I can love angst) but matter-of-fact despite having been betrayed by men who should have protected her.

I highly recommend this, even if it’s the hero’s relationships with his family, rather than the heroine, that fascinated me.

The Edge of Impropriety is up for a Rita, I believe, and I hope it does well.

ETA: There was a dueling review at Dear Author. This is probably what sparked my interest in the book. Jennie and Janine gave the book an A and A-. They seemed much more interested in the actual romance than I was, and have lots of interesting things to say about the book.