Name: Beguiling the Beauty
ISBN: 9780425246962

Sherry Thomas

Venetia Easterbrook pretends to be a wealthy baroness in order to take revenge on the Duke of Lexington, but she ends up falling in love with him.

Beguiling the Beauty

Lover of Romance 

This review was originally posted on Addicted To Romance

I have been meaning to read this series for the longest time and I just knew that I needed to try her out and so I decided to grab up Beguiling The Beauty through the Audible Romance Package which is the first book in her Fitshugh Trilogy. I will admit that first off, if I had known about the narrator I might have just grabbed this book from my local library, since I know they have it in print because it took 50% of the book before I starting to grow accustomed to the narrator and eventually like it. I am not sure what it was about her, its not like she had a bad voice or anything, but she just didn't "pull" me into the story like most narrators do for me. So it was a bit lacking in that area and is the main reason why this book doesn't reach a five star rating.

When the Duke of Lexington first sees Venetia Easterbrook, he is fascinated and is almost obsessed with Veneteia. She is the most beautiful woman of the Ton and seems to be in a loving marriage and knows he can never have her but will love her from a distance. The years pass, and Venetia becomes a widow twice over with two husbands and Christian wonders what happened to the mysterious woman who has held his heart for ten years. Venetia hasn't had the easiest ten years of her life, or the luckiest with the men she married. The first being self absorbed and committed suicide while leaving her with a mountain of debts and blaming her for a childless marriage. Then her second husband she had a marriage of friendship and affection but her husband was gay. Now she is a widow and is fascinated with history especially those of animals and naturalist. 

While exploring the America's with her family, she goes to a seminar where Christian, the Duke of Lexington and talks about the beauty of a woman and mentions her and her marriage situation and not in the best light. So Venetia, with the encouragement of her sisters comes up with a plan of revenge. That she will make Christian fall in love with her and then she will break his heart. But soon Venetia realizes her plan to hurt Christian in the way that he hurt her.....may just be disastrous for Venetia because she is falling in love with Christian and she dreads the day when he will come to hate her.  

Now onto the story...this book was pretty wonderful to read and boy it had so much depth and detail and Sherry Thomas KNOWS her history and you can tell once you start reading this that MORE regency romances need to be written like this one here. It had such vitality to it that snatches up the readers attention and you can't help but become intrigued by the story and the setting and these characters that tug at your heart strings. I was very impressed with the writing style of Sherry Thomas because we see what how much she really puts into this story and it almost had a feel of a older style romance and I am so grateful that Sherry Thomas writes in this way because too many recent regency style romances just are not enough "pizazz" for me to enjoy anymore but "Beguiling The Beauty" was superbly written and delivers in all the right areas for a historical romance.

I was very intrigued by the set up of this story and even though revenge plots aren't always my favorite trope to read in a romance, it really works for this book. I was pulled into this story where we see the heroine and hero come together in a unqiue scenario and fall in love with each other and find a way to get past the secrets and misunderstandings and find a love worth fighting for. From their sensual meet ups on the voyage back to England, to the letters that Christian writes to Venetia and the way that Venetia practically stalks Christian and meets up with him dancing in his arms or talking artifacts just to be close to him. We see how much they deserve a chance to find some happiness together and their road back to each other is unconventional but worth the fighting and tension to make it happen and boy the ending was so endearingly sweet.

Overall I found Beguiling The Beauty to be a stunning story that delivers a sweeping tale of desire, adventure and the test of true love!! INSPIRED AND DETAILED!

Lacey

The chemistry, tension, and angst was fantastic!! This was my first Sherry Thomas book but absolutely not my last. I can’t wait to read the rest of the Fitzhugh series. I do wish we got a little bit more at the end because it does end pretty abruptly.