cover image Never Kiss a Notorious Marquess

Never Kiss a Notorious Marquess

Renee Ann Miller. Kensington, $7.99 mass market (310p) ISBN 978-1-4201-4461-1

Miller delivers memorable characters in the third Infamous Lords Victorian (after Never Dare a Wicked Earl). Twenty-year-old Caroline Lawrence is a young lady of means in 1878 England. She’s also a closet suffragette and secret journalist in a time when women are expected to be seen and not heard. When she’s injured at a suffrage rally, Caroline literally falls at the feet of James Trent, Lord Huntington, a man of less than sterling reputation—there are rumors that he murdered his late wife. James has tired of high society’s ways and mostly retreated to the country to finish raising his three younger and somewhat troublesome siblings. He never expected to swoon for a green-eyed women’s rights advocate. The pair of them waltz around their attraction, weaving a web of well-intentioned lies and intrigue that threatens to strangle them. When she returns to London, James’s teenage sister follows her, and he must plunge back into the social world he hates—including dealing with his delightful dragon of a grandmother—to get them back. This tale of love and social progress, though sometimes trite, comes across as mostly light and sweet. (May)