To Beguile A Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt

I spent the whole day reading. Talk about bliss!

So I just finished To Beguile a Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt and decided to get some of my thoughts down cause I'm awake and it's day light and I'm hyper.

Good times.

Cindy Blurb: Helen Fitzwilliam is a wonderful heroine in the fact that she is nothing like what I have read before. Sure she's all good and sweet and stuff but get this. She's the long time mistress of a Duke and has two children from the relationship.

I know!

Then, the hero is a tortured (literally) soul with a horribly scarred face who has holed himself up in a decrepit castle.

So down to brass tacks and all that, the heroine has decided she must flee the Duke and knows that the Duke will try and keep her by stealing her children from her.

A friend of the H/H sends Helen to Scotland to the above mentioned castle to act as a housekeeper for Sir Alistair who is of course a grouchy grump but true love will prevail and all that.

The good news is that I enjoyed the story for the most part.

Anyone that knows me knows I don't like kids in my romance books. Not only were these kids not just a peripheral thing, they had their own little stories within the bigger story. Ugh. I powered through and enjoyed the little boy Jamie only because he seemed right for his age whereas the girl Abigail was 9 and moody. Basically too much like me as a child. Poor thing.

I liked that the heroine had a past and it wasn't something anyone was going to be able to sweep under the carpet. She makes no apologies for who she is or how her life has turned out. She just knows that she needs to move towards happiness before it's too late.

Sir Alistair could have become one of those heroes you've read about more than once. A small scar on the face and they feel marred for life and unworthy of love. Alistair's scars were immense and people fainted when they looked at him and children screamed. He knew what his reality was and had somehow etched out a way of life that was lonely and sad but was his.

He also wasn't charming or overly sentimental. He was rough spoken and like I said above, a bit of a grump which made him wonderfully different from most heroes. I was also surprised at his reaction to Helen's revelation later in the story. Most heroes would hold their tongue and maybe leave the room for a few hours. Not Alistair. He was brutal, not to be evil but because he is so immersed in reality that he sees everything Helen's revelation means.

All that said, the story was missing something for me. That zip that makes a book a keeper and one you'll want to re-read again. As much as I enjoyed this book I can't say I would re-read it but if you love historical romances and don't mind kids in your story then I say give it a try for something different from all the other historicals out there.

C+/B- Can't decide. So I guess I'll have to tag this one under both grades.

Cause I'm lazy.