The Forbidden Rose

The Forbidden Rose Joanna Bourne

This is a weird one for me to review. One on hand, it didn't always work for me as a romance. On the other, I freaking loved it.

William Doyle is an English spy, sent to France to assassinate the Marquis de Fleurignac, who has come up with a list of English nobles--nobles that are being picked off one by one at home. The servant girl he finds speaks French too well to be what she claims, but he knows she will lead him to what he's looking for

Marguerite de Fleurignac survived the burning of her chateau, but her network that smuggles aristocracy out of revolutionary France has been compromised--she must tell the others before they're arrested. She doesn't trust the man who looks at the rubble of her home with too calculating an eye, but he may be her only chance at survival.

So, this one was a bit too insta-love for me, and I never really bought into their chemistry. Also, the steamy bits were...not that steamy. BUT. The story is incredible. The politics and intrigue in this one! Where it doesn't always work as a romance, it shines as a spy novel. I also like that what was keeping them apart wasn't the fact they wouldn't just say what needed to be said, or they had closed themselves off to love-- their main obstacles weren't emotional, but the turmoil of revolutionary Paris and their greater causes. When they were apart, they were physically apart (like when William is arrested for being a counter-revolutionary) there are a million sides and games being played-- that's where this novel shines and that's what's added the rest of Bourne's Spymaster series to my TBR.

Book Provided by... my local library

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