Erica Ridley, $0.00, ISBN 978-1939713261
Historical Romance, 2014

Lady Amelia Pembroke is known to be an outspoken and bossy type, but while some people may roll up their eyes at her or consider her most lacking in feminine deportment, the truth is she is often the only person with an ounce of common sense in the room, so people tend to come to her for advice. Whether it’s her brother, the Duke of Ravenwood, needing the perfect soiree or her staff needing someone to take charge of the household scheduling, she’s on it.

One thing nags at her, though: as per the way things should be, her brother should be getting married and begetting an heir. However, she believes that he’s not going to do that anytime soon as long as she’s still a spinster. Drat, that means she will have to get herself a proper husband.

Nor would it do to be bored. While the gold in her husband’s pockets was immaterial, a large household was paramount. While her spouse was off doing lordly things, she would pit her wits toward restructuring their household as efficiently as possible. Once it fairly ran itself, she would set about providing heirs, who would doubtlessly offer a lifetime’s worth of situations to be managed. Just think of all the strange new problems she’d be likely to face! Absolutely brilliant.

“That’s not a catalog.” Her brother set aside his empty glass and plate to peer across the maplewood table. “Why the devil are you reading Debrett’s Peerage?”

“It most certainly is a catalog, and the most expedient one at my disposal. I’ve decided to take a husband. His name must be within these pages.”

“You can’t husband-hunt in a book!”

“Perhaps you cannot. I intend to make a sensible match. How do you feel about the Duke of Lambley? Relations of his are diplomats somewhere in China. I can’t think of anything more practical than a marital alliance with ties to the Silk Road.”

On one hand, it is a tall glass of water to see a heroine being the practical one for a change in such a romance. On the other hand, is it just me or Amelia is channeling “I’m a romance heroine, so I won’t enter puberty until a hot guy touches my bosom” realness, in the sense that it never crosses her mind to find a hot husband that will at least won’t require her to think of the Big Ben chiming at midnight to get pass acts of intimacy?

Benedict St John, Viscount Sheffield, is our hero and of course he doesn’t want a wife. His family traditionally holds the Christmas party of the year, and our hero can’t be happier when lightning happens to damage the place and the party is likely going to be cancelled this year. Now he has more time to fornicate with actresses, yay!

Amelia, however, isn’t amused. She has planned to get a husband, chop chop, at that ball, and she will tolerate any deviations from her well-oiled plans. She just has to get Sheffield to agree to hold that party at her brother’s place, instead, and she’d even fund the whole thing herself if she has to.

She tapped a finger to her cheek. “Are you…laboring under the misapprehension that you are debating me? To my ears, it sounds very much like we are arguing the same side. You want the holiday party. I want the holiday party. You don’t have time to devote to it. I have all the time in the world. What am I missing?”

“That I don’t want you to do it,” he blurted out. “I don’t need your money, nor do I wish my family tradition to be altered by someone who is not family.”

“Ah. Why didn’t you say so at once? That’s the easiest of all things to resolve.”

He blinked. “How?”

“You’ll pay for every penny of it, of course. You’ll have full approval of the venue. And I’ll submit a change request log to you every morning in writing, to which you can respond by dashing quick checks or Xs next to each line.”

A rushing sound filled his ears. “Change…request…log?”

“I have attended every one of your Christmas Eve balls since my come-out twelve years ago.” She held up a hand. “No—don’t apologize for not recognizing me. It is the one time a year we are under the same roof, and they are infamously glorious crushes. You’ll be pleased to know that I took extensive notes every single year, and am reasonably confident that if your venue had not burned down, I could have recreated the exact experience to a button.”

He stared at her. “You took extensive notes? On my holiday parties?”

“I would’ve been foolish not to. I was mistress of my brother’s ducal estate by then, and what better example to copy than the most celebrated fête of the year?” She waved a hand in the air. “My point is that I, of all people, am uniquely qualified to not only follow your family traditions as closely as possible without draining your time with direct supervision, but I can also recognize when elements must be unavoidably altered, and provide you with a detailed list in plenty of time for final decision-making.”

He couldn’t believe his ears. “Christmas Eve is two weeks away! How is that plenty of time?”

“Twelve days, to be precise. I doubt I will require half of that if money is no object, and you respond to my daily missives within…three hours. Does that sound like an efficient plan?”

You know, I think I like Amelia.

The Viscount’s Tempting Minx is the most inaccurate title ever, as the last thing I’d associate Amelia with is saucy behavior. If anything. she’s more like that robot girl in that really old TV show Small Wonder. This is a traditional regency, which means no hanky-panky or copping anything more than a kiss, and one thing the author does right is to fill in the pages with the right kind of chemistry to keep things interesting in the absence of heaving passions and what not. Our hero is appropriately floored and later besotted with the heroine in a most adorable manner, while Amelia is quite cute in how well she can both stand up to the hero and keep him guessing.

I like this one, but I also don’t get any sense of passion or even romance between these two, though. If anything, Amelia comes off as asexual or aromantic, so I can only wonder how a lusty actress-shagging fellow like our hero is going to be happy in such a union. As it is, this story is more like how the hero finds the perfect estate and household manager, and how the heroine finds her dream job.

Then again, this is a romance story, so who knows, the moment the hero touches her bosom, our heroine will finally experience puberty and discover the power of the horny.

So, this one is a cute and fun read, but chalk me up as someone that is too impure to appreciate the chaste marvels of the traditional regency romance and hence, vulgar enough to miss hot bumping moments while reading this disgustingly squeaky clean story.