Review: Brazen

In this companion story to Seducing the Governess, investigator and former military assassin Gavin Briggs, is on the hunt for a missing heiress. Lady Christina is one of his employer's two long-lost grand-daughters. He's been hired to bring her back to the old man in exchange for a sizeable sum of money. But Christina has other ideas.

She is being blackmailed. Someone claims that her adopted brother isn't dead as everyone believed --and that there's information about him which could ruin her family. She plans to confront her blackmailer and find her brother before she'll even consider meeting the grandfather that cast out her mother years ago. Briggs agrees to help Christina in her mission; and she agrees to go with him when the task is done.

Christina seems to be everything Briggs despises in a woman. She is high-class and refuses to be docile. But as he gets to know her better, he sees that she is really fiery, loyal and down-to-earth. Slowly, he gives in to his desires for her... but never allows himself to dream of a future with her. He's haunted by the many deaths at his hands as a sniper. Not only that, but as a younger son, he'll never have a title to give the beautiful widow.

Christina had such a terrible marriage, she really had no idea what passion could be. Until she fell into bed with Briggs. It becomes quickly apparent that their feelings for each other are mutual. But it never really occurs to her that it could be more than an affair. I like it when a hero thinks himself beneath the heroine. Unfortunately, here, the heroine seems to agree (at least for a long time) --and that was a turn-off for me. Christina is all the great things Briggs thinks she is, but the fact that she dismisses him as a candidate for marriage so thoroughly made me disconnect from her and like her substantially less. It also didn't help that she considered reneging on her deal with Briggs more than once. Bad form! And Briggs needs the money that her grandfather promised him --to take care of his sister and her young child.

The passion and the sex were hot. And there was pretty good action... although the particulars on the reveal of the villains were a bit murky for me at the end. I liked Christina's loyalty to her brother and I sympathized with her unfortunate history. But when all was said and done, I found her impetuous and selfish --and I didn't think she was worthy of Briggs.

You don't have to read Seducing the Governess to understand what's going on here, but I think I preferred that book to this one. 3 1/2 stars.

*ARC Provided by NetGalley

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Brazen

by Margo Maquire

Release Date: November 29, 2011

Publisher: Avon