Maid of Dishonour, or Why to Fall for Southern Charm

When she’s very, very bad…

Gina Carrington knows exactly how to have fun! But when she slept with her friend’s brother, the off-limits Carter, she quickly discovered she’d overstepped the mark. …life is so much more fun!

Years later Gina sees Carter again, and can’t help but wonder what the harm would be in one more night… He’s available, gorgeous, and behind that laid-back Southern charm there’s a wild side even she can’t tame! But Gina has secrets which she can’t hide for ever – will their chemistry be strong enough to keep Carter by her side when they come to light?

Secret affairs and dark pasts always make for gripping reading, so revisiting an affair that went wrong sounds like the perfect plot for the third in the series.  The whole Gina-Carter thing had been hinted at and set up in the previous two books (The Unexpected Wedding Guest and Girl Least Likely to Marry) so I’d been dying to find out what had happened.  And when it did I was torn.  Torn between Gina, who was reacting to Carter’s rejection, and Marnie, Carter’s sister who lashed out the only way she knew how.

Neither Gina nor Carter are anywhere near perfect, but boy do they have some perfect chemistry!  That reunion night was steaming to the point where I may have had to take a breather due to commuting at the time.  I also liked the fact that he tried to take some of the burden from Gina about their past; it takes two to tango and he admitted that.

But when Carter sweeps her away to do the marketing for his business, and hits her full on with that Southern charm, it takes off.  The unravelling of their past and the building of their future, intertwined with the thread of concern about how Marnie will react, was gripping and charming.

Being a Wedding Season Quartet book, I love how the pinnacle of each novel seems to tie in with a different wedding.  And I was really impressed with the way that Heidi Rice is happy to leave certain storylines untied – it makes the link between her book and Kimberley Lang’s (and more importantly between Gina and Carter’s sister Marnie) even stronger.  I literally devoured this and then immediately pounced on Last Groom Standing. 

As a series, I’m impressed by the way that all the books fed into each other and – with the authors’ permission (*cue puppy dog eyes*) – I’m hoping to include the series in my analysis of weddings in popular culture for the International Association of Popular Romance Studies’ Annual Conference in Greece next year…

Mills & Boon Boy 6:

Ed (aka Jekyll&Hyde)

Reaction to Photograph Request:

Wanted to do two sets of photos: one suited up (Jekyll) and one complete with leather jacket and cigarette (Hyde).