Lisa Madison is determined to marry this season and while she admits that her number one choice is her longtime family friend, Robert Langley, she knows that it might be time to give up her childhood crush and move on with her life. She believes that if she pretends to no longer care for him than Robert will be forced to realize his own feelings for her and sets about trying to take the ton by storm. When Lisa goes to visit her friend, Mrs. Morgan, she is confronted by the demons from her past as one of the men who was in on the plot to marry her and her sister's and kill them off for their money, is still out there and he is determined to get ahold of Lisa. She is nearly raped and kidnapped but Robert manages to come to her rescue just in time and from that moment on he vows never to leave her alone and put her at risk. Lisa's sister's and brother-in-law's see an opportunity to get Lisa and Robert together a lot so that they will both come to realize their feelings for each other.
But Robert is convinced that the men in his family are cursed to have unhappy marriages as his grandmother and his mother both cheated on their husbands and he believes that whatever marriage he has will be destined to end in heartbreak and infidelity. So to prevent The Suitor from hurting Lisa Robert appoints himself his guardian, since he is apparently more suited for this than a professional, and has trouble watching her become the belle of the ball as she is courted by a number of eligible men. He is forced to realize that Lisa is not the innocent and childish little girl with stars in her eyes, but a beautiful and mature young woman who will make some man a wonderful wife and he begins to wonder if that man will be home. However, he still can't risk an unhappy marriage and Lisa fears that Robert will never come around to the idea of marriage and time is running out as The Suitor becomes more desperate and makes one last ditch effort to make Lisa, and her money, his own. Robert must confront his own demons and fears in order to save the woman he loves.
Lisa was stupid. It sounds harsh and blunt but within 25 pages I knew that I was not going to like Lisa. She was naive, annoyingly so, but convinced that she was worldly and that lead her into lots of avoidable danger to the point where I couldn't help but lose all sympathy for her. her naivete made me question how she could truly know her own feelings in regards to Robert and equally, how anyone could actually fall in love with her in return. Robert spent a good part of this novel as the veritable dog in the manger, refusing to admit he has any feelings for Lisa but growling (literally) at any man who even dared to look at her. I know this is a romance novel staple, but I just did not buy into it in this novel because it seemed so superficial and because the reason behind his fear of marriage was just so ridiculous. There are quite a lot of ridiculous motives behind heroes' fears of marriage in romance and I guess I am just not amused by ones that show so little thought behind them, like the author just picked something out of a hat.
Needless to say a relationship between a childish moron and a jealous moron was not destined for greatness. Almost all of their interactions seemed to involve him being angry at her for either being in the presence of another man or doing something to put her in danger and they did not come across well in either situation. Their relationship was based on the feelings she had sustained for him from her childhood and his dick being attracted to her. The sex was infrequent, not that hot, and as with most of this book I could have done without it. Her sister's and their husband's were found on every other page and I wondered if this book was written in order to show the reader how great they were all getting along. The Suitor was a holdover from her previous books in the series and there was a bit of information dump to explain things. He also provided plenty of opportunities for Lisa to showcase her stupidity and really was just an excuse to get Robert and Lisa together and only showed up at the most shockingly convenient times.
Rating: An unpleasant read, but it was fast and there were humorous moments even if the characters were impossible to like.
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