Seven Minutes in Heaven by Eloisa James

Witty and elusive Eugenia Snowe has all society begging for one of her premiere governesses-except the powerful Edward Reeve, who bursts into her office with his arrogant demands.

No question that Eugenia enjoys crossing wits with the brilliant inventor, but Ward wants far more than a governess. He wants Eugenia, and he’ll stop at nothing to have her-including kidnapping.

Will Eugenia lose her heart in the most reckless gamble of her life, or will she discover the sweetest pleasure she’s ever known?

All it will take is seven minutes...

Book 3
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Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Erica – ☆☆☆☆
Seven Minutes in Heaven is the third installment of the Desperate Duchesses by the Numbers series. Having read the previous installments, I can say my reading enjoyment was better by knowing the other characters and their stories. However, I believe it would be easy to fall into the story if read as a standalone.

A governess story is always a tasty treat. Reeve becomes the guardian to his little brother and sister after their mother passes away, and he's in need of a governess. Their grandmother wants custody of the children, so he needs to make sure he can prove they are in the best of care when they're with him. This sets the story for how our Hero and Heroine meet.

After being widowed, Eugenia establishes herself by becoming an independent businesswoman. She runs a governess registry, where those looking for a governess come to her to hire one. I connected easily to Eugenia, because she seemed content with her lot in life, happy with the job she had created. She carved her own life for herself, even if her occupation became her sole focus.

Reeve, too, is paving his own path – as the illegitimate son, he worked for his money and felt he needed to 'marry up' in order to fit into the status he believed he should be.

Sparks fly immediately between Reeve and Eugenia. Even though it has the flavor of being insta-love/lust, the angsty feel erases it. Reeve believes Eugenia as lowborn because she works for a living. He wants her, but in his mind she doesn't fit the type of woman or lifestyle he thinks he should have. He's up for an affair with a widow, but has no plans of marrying who he believes to be beneath him.

I truly enjoyed Eugenia's character. She was realistic when it came to romance and the love she still felt for her dead husband. She had a healthy dose of self-respect. She was malleable enough to bend to Reeve, but intelligent enough not to unless it was rational. She was a good balance to Reeve's stubbornness. There's plenty of hot and steamy between-the-sheets action between the couple, as well as some humorous banter.

I won't go in-depth in to the plot, because I don't wish to spoil the story. As for pacing, it was a slow start for me, where I struggled to fall into the story. Around the halfway mark, the pacing picked up and I read the last half in one sitting. While the story was most certainly on the predictable side, which is the norm in historical romance, I am a fan of Ms. James's writing style. She always gives just enough detail to set the scene, without bogging it down in the inane. This is also the same when it comes to flowery purple prose – while written in a beautiful flow, it's not over-the-top.

Recommended for historical romance readers and fans of Eloisa James.

ELOISA JAMES is a New York Times best-selling author and professor of English literature who lives with her family in New York, but can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. She is the mother of two and, in a particularly delicious irony for a romance writer, is married to a genuine Italian knight.

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Seven Minutes in Heaven (Desperate Duchesses by the Numbers #3) by Eloisa James to read and review.

Four Nights with the Duke by Eloisa James

As a young girl, Emilia Gwendolyn Carrington told the annoying future Duke of Pindar that she would marry any man in the world before him—so years later she is horrified to realize that she has nowhere else to turn.

Evander Septimus Brody has his own reasons for agreeing to Mia's audacious proposal, but there's one thing he won't give his inconvenient wife: himself.

Instead, he offers Mia a devil's bargain...he will spend four nights a year with her. Four nights, and nothing more. And those only when she begs for them.

Which Mia will never do.

Now Vander faces the most crucial challenge of his life: he must seduce his own wife in order to win her heart—and no matter what it takes, this is the one battle he can't afford to lose.

Book 2
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Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Erica – ☆☆☆
This is hard for me to review, as I think reading six 400-page Historical romances back-to-back over the past several days has burnt me out on the genre. With that being said, I adore Eloisa James' easy writing style and voice, so it hurts a bit to give a critical review.

What I loved about the book: The initial blackmailing was highly inventive and not something I've read before. Showing how Mia and Vander were in the past during their parents' indiscretions would have added some much needed development, but this portion of the book was excellent for adding scandal. Young Master Charles, Mia's nephew & Vander's ward, while crippled, he was a strong little character (I would have enjoyed seeing more time between him and Rose). The Arabian horse deciding he was in Mia's herd, therefore Charles was Mia's foal. Vander's drunk, adorable uncle was a bright spark. All of these things kept me reading and reading and reading. They brought light and life to an otherwise 'meh' storyline.

Four Nights with a Duke started out splendidly, hooking me from the first page. The going back into the past to when Thorn, Vander, and Mia were 15 was a humorous yet heartbreaking scene. True to life and how young teenage boys would behave. While I could see how this could shape Mia's self-esteem, if she truly were in love with Edward, he obviously enjoyed her personality and looks for two years. So after nearly 400 pages of Mia hating her body while everyone was screaming its praises, I couldn't take it anymore. This should have stopped at the halfway point of the book, because it was no longer about being blind to her charms but rather fishing for compliments while hitting the reader in the face with it... repeatedly.

All the trappings of Historical Romance were absent: Scandals. Marriage-minded mothers. Balls. Operas and theater. House parties and dinner parties. The Season. London. A vast cast of characters (there were few characters shown on the pages). While I'm not sad I missed any of that, since it becomes tedious and repetitious, the story took place on their bordering estates with little else happening.

There were times I adored Mia, and other times I couldn't stand to read one more word of her pages upon pages of ruminations. In fact, Vander had a ton of inner monologue as well. Both of them repeating things already thought chapter after chapter. While I loved the underlying premise of the story, it got bogged down in the same thoughts and actions and redundant scenes. I felt the plot wasn't evolved enough to support so many pages, with no extra story threads woven in. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. The plot was good, and a novella is still a full story told without the excess of redundancy to make up word count.

Every chapter began with a passage of Mia's current work-in-progress, as she is a novelist. Truthfully, while these passages could be funny, I began skipping them. One chapter would end mid-scene, and then the next would start, where the reader would have to read about the WIP or a letter to the editor, then it would dive right back into the scene we just left. It was jarring and unnecessary, especially when it cut a heated scene in half. It was cute the author was clearly making fun of some of the ridiculousness that reviewers point out in Historical Romance, able to make fun of herself. Mia adored the books of two of her fellow authors, who were clearly Lisa Kleypas & Julie Quinn judging by what they were named.

All in all, I did enjoy the book, but after reading so many Historical Romances back-to-back, and by this author, I began to see the flaws and the redundancy and it stalled my reading enjoyment.

Four Nights with the Duke is a decent addition to the series, and I look forward to the next.

Recommended to those who are fans of Eloisa James, but don't expect anything you haven't read before, and I feel bad saying so.

Genre: Historical Romance

Also Available in the Desperate Duchesses by the Numbers Series

Book 1
Buy Links

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For reviews & more info, check out our Three Weeks with Lady X post.

Eloisa James is a USA Today and New York Times bestselling author and professor of English literature, who lives with her family in New York but can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. (Her husband is an honest-to-goodness Italian knight!) Eloisa's website offers short stories, extra chapters, and even a guide to shopping in Florence.

Connect with Eloisa

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Erica reviewed her personal copy of Four Nights with the Duke (Desperate Duchesses by the Numbers #2) by Eloisa James for this post.

Three Weeks with Lady X by Eloisa James

Having made a fortune, Thorn Dautry, the powerful bastard son of a duke, decides that he needs a wife. But to marry a lady, Thorn must acquire a gleaming, civilized façade, the specialty of Lady Xenobia India.

Exquisite, headstrong, and independent, India vows to make Thorn marriageable in just three weeks.

But neither Thorn nor India anticipate the forbidden passion that explodes between them.

Thorn will stop at nothing to make India his. Failure is not an option. But there is only one thing that will make India his.

The one thing Thorn can't afford to lose – his fierce and lawless heart.

Book 1
Buy Links

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Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Erica – ☆☆☆☆
Eloisa James is a favorite of mine when it comes to Historical Romance. I enjoy the author's voice, the easy flow of the story, the fast pacing, and the way she gives just enough but not too much description. Most of the books feature a strong sense of family, whether it be making sacrifices for the family you already have or the quest of creating a family of your own. All the characters are humanly flawed and relatable.

India was not your typical woman of the era. As an orphaned lady, she had more freedom to conduct business and pave a way through life than if she had to stick to the societal rules of the time. Basically, without an overbearing, marriage-seeking mother, India was left to grow and prosper. Focused, hardworking, but more naive than she thought herself to be.

Thorn was the illegitimate son of a Duke. He was abandoned by his mother, left to work and live on the streets, until his father found him and brought him home. Clearly this would lead to many issues. He wanted a reasonable wife, where they would have many children he would personally raise, and have a calm, honorable life.

In order to catch a wife, Thorn hired India to rehab his entire country estate. Three Weeks with Lady X turned into more than either expected.

My favorite parts of the book were the notes being passed back and forth. The banter was great during dialogue, but this is where the chemistry truly shined. Another amazing addition was Thorn's ward, Rose. The little girl sparked life into the novel, bringing about unintentional humor.

While I enjoyed the book, the reason I can't rave about it is because it dragged on at points, many moments of repetition where I wished the pacing would pick up. Since it wasn't an involved storyline, I'm not entirely sure the plot was able to support so many pages. This is historical romance, where you KNOW the hero and heroine will get their HEA, and it's about the journey for the reader. But the journey has to maintain its entertainment value page after page, and it became repetitious with Thorn singing the praises of Lala, a woman who was a complete stranger. Frankly, there were only so many times I could read where they had a misunderstanding about what the other meant during proposals between Thorn & India. Once was enough. Twice was pushing it. Three times and I was fed up and ready to read another story.

There was a side romance that was sprung at the 50% mark, finalizing at the 75% mark that most would find enjoyable. But, to be honest, I skipped it entirely wanting to get to the meat of the story.

Do I recommend this author? Yes, especially to those who are new to the genre and for those who have been pushed away previously with how wordy and filled with flowery over-description with some novels in the Historical Romance genre. Eloisa James creates a page-turning, easy read.

Will I read more in this series? Yes, who wouldn't want to read more about Vander?

Genre: Historical Romance

Eloisa James is a USA Today and New York Times bestselling author and professor of English literature, who lives with her family in New York but can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. (Her husband is an honest-to-goodness Italian knight!) Eloisa's website offers short stories, extra chapters, and even a guide to shopping in Florence.

Connect with Eloisa

Facebook  ~  Twitter  ~  Google+  ~  Website  ~  Goodreads


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Erica reviewed her personal copy of Three Weeks With Lady X (Desperate Duchesses by the Numbers #1) by Eloisa James for this post.