I received an arc of this via netgally to review.
I feel like 3 stars doesn't convey very well that I did enjoy this book for the most part. It was very easy to read and it had a lot of the elements of historical romances that I tend to enjoy. It just didn't rise to the level of originality and storytelling where I felt like I would rate it 4 stars.

The first part of this book started off a bit too fast for me. There was so much going on in the first part of this book and I would have preferred for their to be a little bit more establishment of the characters of Joe and Hazel. The fact that the beginning of the book was so quick made it hard for me to feel like I really knew the characters that well throughout the whole book.

What we did learn about Hazel and Joe I did really like. I liked seeing the way they interacted with the people around them, especially the children. I think that can be one of the best ways to introduce their personality to the reader and I think that has done well here.

I thought the plot with the Lord was interesting but a little messy at parts. I never got a really good sense of his motivation and I wish his reasoning was expanded upon a bit more so I could understand it more. I also felt like some of the other side plots felt a little disjointed and it made the book almost seen it was originally a collection of short stories. I also thought this was slightly repetitive in some parts. I think that may be partially due to its length because I felt like it could have been a bit shorter.

Also just something minor, it seems like this series will follow all four of the ladies who were stuck at this party at the beginning of this book but we don't get to know any of those other ladies in this book. In romance series set up like this, I like to get to know the characters that will get their own books so I'm excited for their stories, but that's a minor complaint.

I don't know if I would read more books in this series but I think I would consider reading more books by this author. This was pretty good and I liked it for this most part, it just wasn't quite a four star read for me. ( )