Review: To Desire a Devil, Elizabeth Hoyt

Miss Beatrice Corning has lived a very proper life in the household of her uncle, the Earl of Blanchard.  That is until a sick, crazy man bursts into their home, demanding to see his father.  This man is Reynaud St. Aubin, the true Earl of Blanchard, long thought dead.  Even though he is determined to take his inheritance back from her uncle, who has always loved her, Beatrice can’t help but be attracted to Reynaud, particularly since his youthful portrait has ensnared her imagination every time she walks by it.  The man she discovers now is no longer a carefree youth but a hardened man who has suffered through unimaginable atrocities, yet her heart is captured before she even knows it.

I really enjoyed the first book I read by Elizabeth Hoyt, To Beguile a Beast. I liked that it was different, that the hero and heroine weren’t what I expected.  Unfortunately I found the opposite in To Desire a Devil, and am left wondering just what happened here.

This quartet of novels centers around a massacre that happened while all four of the heroes were fighting in the Colonies.  The one who betrayed them all supposedly had a French mother, and the only man there with a French mother was Reynaud.  They know he didn’t do it, but they have to figure out who did.  And that’s all wrapped up in this installment, as it’s the last of the quartet.  It’s clear that this overarching story is secondary to the romance plot, but they do fit together, so that part worked out well.  I also still really liked the fairy tale excerpts at the beginning and how the concept was woven into the rest of the story.  And I loved that Beatrice was a bookbinder, even if she seemed a little too bland the rest of the time.

Honestly, it was the romance that bugged me about this book.  This is, for me, a classic case of the lust = love problem.  I can’t figure out anything that the hero and heroine have really in common and I didn’t believe in them.  Maybe men fall in love with their nurses, but most of their interaction in the book seemed to consist of Beatrice asking Reynaud to tell her about how he was tortured, and the intimate parts. There were too many intimate parts for my liking, let me just say that.  Outside of those, there wasn’t really any chemistry in their conversation and nothing to indicate that they were going to last.  I just felt disappointed, which is sad, because there was a lot of potential here.

I have another book in this series and I do intend to read and review it, but let’s just say my expectations are very, very lowered.

I am an Amazon Associate. This book was sent to me for free by the publisher for review.