Customer Reviews

The Dangerous Lord (Lord Trilogy, Book 3)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

What a great book! My friend lent me this book and while I had never read any of Ms. Jeffries work before, I figured why not? Why not indeed! What a talent she is and what a wonderfully funny, sexy and intricate tale she has woven. The two main characters, Ian and Felicity, are great together. What starts out as a battle of wills between the mysterious "Lord X" and her most recent target of gossip, Viscount St. Clair, soon turns into the Viscount's cautious courting of the reluctant gossip columnist. In turn Felicity (aka Lord X) wants to know all the secrets of Ian's past, most importantly of the 6 years he's been mysteriously missing from England that no one seems to know the details of. Ian is determined to keep his secrets AND have Felicity as his wife and the courtship is an interesting one - to say the least! I also liked the fact that Felicity was a strong female character and Ian wasn't your typical chauvinistic and egotistical male that you tend to find is some romances.

After seeing gossip printed about him in the gossip rag, Viscount St. Clair is determined to find this Lord X and stop him. He finds Lord X all right, but is shocked by Lord X's identity.

Penniless Felicity Taylor is forced to write gossip columns to provide for her four younger brothers. Living a double life, Felicity lives as a pauper during the day but goes to parties and balls at night to obtain her information. When her friend is on the verge of accepting Lord St. Clair's proposal, she is forced to write about him to stop the marriage.

Ian is forced to find a wife and produce a male heir within 2 years. After his attempt at marriage fails, he is immediately drawn to Miss Felicity Taylor. Knowing full well she is Lord X, Ian demands marriage. Felicity refuses. Until Ian compromises her and she is forced into marriage.

What follows is a fun ride for Ian and his fiery bride. Ms. Jeffries has written an entertaining tale and although Ian isn't a lovable character, Felicty and her charming brothers make up for it. I highly recommend Dangerous Lord and look forward to more from Sabrina Jeffries in the future.

Holy Moley! I'm going to have to start downgrading my other ratings if people are putting out books like this! Definitely five stars across the board. If anyone ever sneers that some people read -- sniff -- _romances! _ hand them this book. It's so well-crafted, so intricately plotted and actually contains real humor! Yes, I said humor! The characters are delightful and people I want to meet, with incredible chemistry between them. The setting is very much a part of the plot and the situation; the dialogue is sparkling. I so admire how there seems not to be a wasted word in the entire book as the plot keeps lunging forward, pulling me with it. Honestly, I could not put this book down.

Do I have anything at all to nitpick? Perhaps the final chapter wasn't needed, but for those who require a celebration to top off the happy ending (I'm not giving anything away; this is romance after all), you have that as well. If only they'd have put a cover with a little more pizzazz on the book (the clench back cover is really quite pedestrian, as opposed to the incredible romance within). To sum up: BUY THIS BOOK! And congratulations, Sabrina Jeffries on a job well-done. (I just did a search on Amazon.com and found that there are two more books in this series... and one of them, The Pirate Lord, is out of print! How could you have your publishers do this to us? Argh. I'll find it somewhere...)

I can't remeber that last time I had so much fun reading a regency romance. The Dangerous Lord grabs the reader from the first page and keeps you entertained until the end.

Felicity Taylor is a young woman who is forced to provide for her family the only way she can...by writing a gossip column as the infamous Lord X. She has four brothers and a household staff who are dependent on her gossip column as a means of financial support.

Ian Lennard needs a wife and Felicity's gossip column has caused his fiance to elope with another man. Ian tracks down Lord X and is stunned to find that he is a she.

The characters lead each other on a merry chase as they think up ways to thwart the other's plans. The end result is a great love story with lots of attention to detail. The Dangerous Lord is a wonderful story and very entertaining.

On the whole, this is not a bad book, but it is the weak link in Jeffries' "Lord Trilogy." Unfortunately, THE DANGEROUS LORD lacks the brilliance and wonder of its predecessors.

Left penniless and in debt by her father, Felicity Taylor replenishes the family coffers by writing a gossip column for a London newspaper - incognito. (Sound familiar Julia Quinn fans?) When her mousy little friend is about to marry the notorious rake Ian Lennard, the Viscount St. Clair, Felicity strikes out wielding her wicked gossip pen. In her scandalmonger column, Felicity accuses the viscount of keeping a mistress. After all, the devilish man does own the home, and an attractive woman does live there - with an infant! Such a vicious attack inflames St. Clair and he sets out, for revenge, against the camouflaged columnist.

Though Felicity and Ian are both likable characters, their likableness is just not enough to carry the story. The author casts them as two people who analyze every situation. They examine every circumstance -- either together or solely. They talk, they scold, and they sermonize. Their endless moralizing completely clouds whatever chemistry the two lovebirds might have.

What a shame the author chose this path, because her story had great potential. Felicity's four young brothers are one of the story's highlights. Each scene with these little devils is marvelous; too bad the author didn't exploit these rascals further! Jeffries' earlier books in the trilogy - THE PIRATE LORD and THE FORBIDDEN LORD supply the other secondary characters. Unfortunately, the author did exploit these supporting characters. The drawback? If not familiar with Jeffries' earlier books, the reader may have trouble figuring out whom all these people are.

And that incredible ending! Egads, but Felicity Taylor is marvelous - what a woman, what a wonderful woman, let's all hear it for Felicity and her plan to save the day!

Yes, I was disappointed in this book. Sadly missing was the delightful wit, the feminine bedevilment, and the electrified sexual tension, the qualities that were so noteworthy in the parent books.

Grace Atkinson, Ontario - Canada.

After reading the excerpt and several of the reviews, I expected an highly engaging read. Ian's need to marry and produce an heir provided the necessary tension, but the rest seemed contrived and a patchwork of scenarios from other romances. The humor was rather flat and I didn't get very interested in any of the characters. I kept reading to find out about the great mystery that darkened Ian's soul - it was certainly a tragedy that could warp a young man. If this was the best of Ms. Jeffries as some of the reviewers suggest, I probably will not be looking for more of her books.

Ian Lennard, Viscount St. Clair has a deep dark secret. To escape it, he fled England to become a spy on the continent. Six years later he's back and on the hunt for a bride so that he can fulfill the stipulations in his father's will and claim his birthright. (He has to produce an heir before he's 32). Because of his traumatic past, Ian is very secretive and private. So when he learns that an anonymous gossip columnist, Lord X, has been spreading rumors that he's taken a mistress, he's reasonably upset and determines to hunt the man down and make him recant. Imagine his surprise when he finds out Lord X is actually the nom de plum of Felicity Taylor, the struggling sister of four who lives off her meager earnings from the newspaper. There's instant attraction between them, as well as antagonism, and Ian begins pursuing Felicity. She, in turn, wants to know all his secrets. He tells her that he hasn't taken a mistress, that the woman Felicity chanced to see with him and whom she has accused of being his mistress is no such thing. She doesn't believe him. The following romance between this two revolves around Ian telling Felicity the truth, Felicity never believing him, and Ian paying for it.

Love is blind they say. Because the heroine of this story is awful. There's a fine line between being strong and being a shrew. Felicity Taylor has obviously mistaken the latter for the former and crosses that line again and again until she's long lost to the company of dimwitted, obnoxious, "feisty" heroines I so despise. As a gossip columnist, she brags about puncturing the egos only of those who deserve it, of exposing the sins of spoiled rich men for the greater good of deceived women everywhere - these are all excuses, mere bluster to cover up her unprincipled, selfish, hypocritical, meddlesome, self-righteous, disrespectful, and damaging rumor mongering. She's a silly gossip, a precursor to the parasitic paparazzi, and her efforts to elevate her "job" to some sort of art form or religious vocation are ridiculous. She's so in the wrong, is so unaware, so unrepentant. In short, I can't stand her. Other books have featured writer heroines without resorting to this perversion of the profession. I don't know why Felicity has to be like this.

I'm equally bemused by the fact that I actually enjoyed most of the book. Considering my reaction to Felicity, I know this sounds crazy. But even with such a wretched heroine, Jeffries manages to suck me in with the way she writes this story. Ian is a great guy, and so sexy. Even though I wish he'd bestowed his affections on a worthier partner, there's still tons of chemistry in their interactions, so that, while I'm reading I don't let Felicity bother me too much. It's more in describing her character in retrospect that I start to get really annoyed with her. I have no idea why Ian likes Felicity - she slanders him in print and to his face, preaches to him about her nonexistent good works as a gossiper, judges him when she has absolutely no moral high ground whatsoever and doesn't know anything about him besides her own preconceived notions that he's a philandering rake because she's convinced that all noblemen are scum, threatens and blackmails him, never admits she's wrong, violates his right to privacy, acts like his secrets and his past are her personal property to exploit, manipulates his friends so they turn against him, breaks up his engagement with her lying column... ugh. It's disgusting.

I'm even less pleased when the two heroines from the previous books in this series butt in to join forces with Felicity, speculating about and condescending to Ian, championing and praising Felicity and, worst of all, playing matchmaker (Sara's more the problem here than Emily.)

If all this wasn't bad enough, when Ian proposes to her, she refuses him for the stupidest of reasons. She's dishonest with him and with herself, playing mind games instead of being an adult. She operates from the premise that everyone is guilty until proven innocent and goes through the whole book demanding that Ian prove himself to her. She's got a bee in her bonnet about the woman she thinks is his mistress, knows he's hiding something, and is determined to get this secret out of him if she has to pry it from his cold dead fingers, all while blowing the whole issue up with her speculations and irrational jealousy. He tells her the woman isn't his mistress until he's blue in the face, and even though she has no reason not to believe him, she never listens.

But still I tore through much of the book. Maybe I was able to just discredit everything that Felicity says without giving her the consideration she doesn't deserve, gleefully waiting all along for a delicious comeuppance that will have her groveling at Ian's feet. Sadly, I'm left hoping. And when I realize no comeuppance is forthcoming, my interest wanes. After Ian finally gets Felicity to marry him, the spark goes out of the story. The last 100 or so pages were really hard to plow through. Ian has an evil uncle who's trying to ruin Ian's efforts to marry because if Ian fails to produce an heir the estate will go to the uncle. Ian's dark secret also involves this evil uncle. The unraveling of the secret is a disappointment, given that it entails Felicity getting her way and having Ian grovel at her feet instead of the other way around. At this point, Felicity stops treating Ian like crap and decides she must heal him. There's irony for you. Once she starts acting decent, it's far too late for me to care. Poor Ian in turn wants to be a martyr and has an attack of conscience, thinking he's maltreated Felicity - when he really hasn't. He tries to give her what he thinks she wants, an annulment. All this would be hilarious if it weren't so maddening. It's no wonder he doubts himself and feels horrible after all her mixed messages and guilt trips. I'm beyond annoyed that he feels the need for self-flagellation, apologizing to Felicity and bending over backwards for her. His deep dark secret comes out, there's a rather awkward resolution that dispenses with the evil villain, and our hero and heroine get to enjoy their happily ever after. I can only regret that Ian has to be stuck with Felicity for the rest of his days. The secondary characters are interesting and entertaining - even Felicity's siblings, which is a shocker for me. I love her servant, Mrs. Box, too. The only woman, besides Lady Brumley, who talks any sense. And Ian is a great hero, a well drawn character who's able to carry the book a lot of the way, but Felicity ultimately sabotages it. Sad.

If you like to fall in love with your heroes laugh aloud when you read a romance and not be kept up all night reading this book is for you.

Sabrina Jeffries has found a perfect match for the notorious Ian Lennard with gossip columnist Felicity Taylor. They are well matched in temperament, intelligence and in their loyalty to their families. It was an interesting. There is enough conflict to make the story line interesting and not so much that your left wondering why they ever got together. This book is a great Sunday afternoon read.

Ian, the viscount of St. Clair is a man of secrets. No one knows how he spent his time abroad during the war on the Penisula and no one is privy to is private social life either. He keeps things tightly under wraps...that is until he wants to marry the wrong girl.

Felicity has heard all the rumors about St. Clair and when there is smoke there's fire. She is sure Ian is not suited for her friend and she is determined to prove it with "fact". Getting some dirt on the Viscount, however, will be an easy job for her, she has had a lot of experience researching secrets for her gossip column. She writes all her little on dits under the pen "Lord X" and will prove he is unfit saving her friend from a loveless match.

Ian is aghast to see his life speculated on in "Lord X's" column. The gaunlet is thrown and Ian is determined to find this fellow and put him in his place...only he finds that the he is really a she. An enticing, infuriating she.

The battle of public opinion begins...each thrashing at the other. Speculations fly! They set to ruin each other...that is until he decides that they should marry....

I liked the story, good delivery. It was a good way to spend the afternoon. Why not five stars? There were a few consistency errors (like at one point her hair is reddish, then its like coffee spilling over pillows...which to me suggests black, and at one point her hair was held up by two knitting needles and then later it was two pencils.) I also get bored with silly arguments. They should just do "it" and get over it. I talked to the book a few times in frustration over this...funny it didn't listen.

In addition to this book you should buy The Lady Lies by Samantha Saxon.

In 1820 England, in the gossip rag The London Gazette, columnist Lord X exposes the questionable dealings of Ian Leonard, Viscount St. Clair. The rumors spread, which ends Ian's engagement to the shy Miss Hastings. Though not upset that he no longer will marry Miss Hastings, Ian is irate that some idiotic noble could disrupt his life when he needs an heir.

Ian searches for Lord X only to find him to be the beautiful Felicity Taylor. He decides she will have to provide him with an heir but Felicity wants nothing to do with him. Willing to use blackmail to achieve his goals, Ian threatens to expose Felicity as being the notorious Lord X. As they negotiate a marriage contact to settle their dispute, neither one expected to fall in love.

THE DANGEROUS LORD is a humorous Regency romance starring two powerful combatants. The story line is witty, entertaining and fun. The lead couple is an enjoyable pair, as their battle of the sexes will provide sub-genre fans with much pleasure. The secondary charcaters add depth and motivation to the lead protagonists. Several minor players deserve their own tales be told by the bewitching Sabrina Jeffries.