His Lordship's Secret

DNF - PG 45

Why?

(Warning: spoilers for the first 45 pages!)

The books starts off okay. Alfie has been shot...towards, though he suspects at, and we get some side characters introduced and I was settling in for a cozy read.

Then the requisite dissolute relative (that is the legal heir) that likes spending his days with prostitutes and gamblers shows up and is, generally, terrible. Just the sort of person I simply do not want to spend any time reading about.

I had spent time hoping that things would improve once we got him out of the picture and the romance option involved. Alas, twas not to be.

Alfie finds himself politely forced into a pub that participates in rigged fights. Usually to the death, at least when a specific fighter is involved. A fighter that just so happens to be there tonight.

But, it's his opponent that we are more interested in, thanks to his muscles and his hairy chest and his hips and... yes, Alfie is, indeed already lusting after this man. Before even speaking to him once. Any guesses who our love interest is going to be?

I kept reading, vaguely scanning through the fight enough to know that we almost had a man get beat to death for the pleasure of the onlookers, in the hopes that I was wrong, that he wasn't to be be love interest and that this book might be worth my time.

It wasn't and it's not.

Honestly, the extremely violent fight wasn't what I wanted to deal with, either, especially as I thought this was going to be a lot more...light than it is shaping out to be and I really don't like this level of bloodletting in my romance books. (Though, a scene like this would likely turn my stomach in a fantasy book, too.)

Anyway, between the blood and the lust, this is definitely not a book or me.