Ballantine, $6.99, ISBN 0-345-48761-3
Historical Romance, 2006

The Sinful Nights of a Nobleman is not much of a story, really. It is a slow-paced story that is really about molehills made out into mountains.

Devon Borcastle, as one of the mythical, beautiful, and powerful Borcastles, is the hero of this one. Our heroine Jocelyn Lydbury’s father once attempted to get Devon over to dinner, hoping that Devon would be moved by the act and presumably by Jocelyn’s looks into making an offer for her. Devon spurned the invitation for a night of debauchery with his favorite kind of women. But that was a few years ago. These two meet again at a weekend dinner party and they end up being compromised due to some mix-up. They have to get married. Devon valiantly insists on thinking that he’s not a man cut out for monogamy while some secondary character plays the crazy villain so that there will still be a story after the first 100 pages.

This is a simple story and when I’m done with it, I wonder what all the fuss is about. I mean, Devon is all talk when it comes to believing that he’s not cut out to be a husband but that man has no problems being one so there’s not much conflict to be found there. I don’t know why he feels that he’s not a husband material, I don’t know why he doesn’t make a move on Jocelyn for so long when he has no problems being attracted to her… come to think of it, I don’t know what is going on in Devon’s head even by the last page of this book. He is just sort of… there. It’s the same with Jocelyn. She’s just there. There is very little character development, just plenty of going through clichéd scenes in the most uninspired manner possible.

The two characters go through the motions, the secondary characters all coo and gasp according to the script about how there are no mightier and more beautiful people in existence than the Borcastles so everyone has better watch out for the next book, and the story flounders for a while, going nowhere very slowly, before ending dutifully on the dot and telling me to go buy the next book in the series.

I think that somewhere between her last few books, the author has sort of lost of the point and started thinking that she has to churn out burger patties at the line as fast as possible or something.