"Ten Reasons To Stay" is a continuation to a subplot in Only a Duke Will Do. In Duke Simon mentions wanting to help his half-indian cousin reclaim his rightful inheritance as the Earl of Monteith and by the end of the book has helped to find evidence for that. Ten Reasons picks up a few months or so after that when Colin has just moved in and trouble besets him. From the way Colin was described in Duke I had expected someone...less brash? Less intimidating?...and was pleasantly surprised by the rather piratical Colin Hunt. The story is quick and has more plot conveniences then in the other Heiress titles--but its a short story so that's forgivable. I liked Colin a lot and I mostly liked Eliza. She was very ready to jump to conclusions, so that kind of grated on me. I guess only Eliza's Uncle Silas can really be considered as another character since he has the third most lines...our of four characters who talk, probably deserved less latitude then Eliza gave him. He was damned lucky. I would have tarred, feathered and sent him ot Newgate previous affection or not.

No familiar faces pop up, but Louisa, Simon and Mrs. Harris are all mentioned. I found it amusing that the original creator of the Heiress books used none of her own creations in the story while the other authors felt free to. ( )

*I won this from a contest on Sabrina's blog, The Goddess Blogs*

Loved this book! The chemistry between the main characters was amazing. I love the School for Heiresses series, so now I want to get the anthology this was originally published in and read the other stories. ( )

Ten Reasons to Stay

The Characters:

Eliza Crenshawe
Colin Hunt

The Story:

A quick, and I do mean quick, little love story. Eliza and Colin have great chemistry from the first page. It does border on insta-love but I can look past it for them. The way the uncle flips plays out rather strangely.

Overall, I enjoyed the story.

The Random Thoughts:

3 Stars ( )

Posted on my blog I Heart Romance

This novella was a very quick read for me. I was able to read it in a couple of hours or so. While this had a very promising plot, I thought the story was ok. Maybe because it is a novella and the author had to shorten the storyline - it just didn't work for me. I like my romance to be well developed and not a lust at first sight type of thing. Normally, I shy away from novellas because of this reason. However, I love Sabrina Jeffries' work so I decided to give this a shot.

The story starts of as the heroine, Eliza sneaks into the stables of Colin to "borrow" a horse in the middle of the night. Of course, she is caught by Colin and so starts the steamy interrogation. It ends a couple of days later with both h and H proclaiming their love for each other.

That last sentence really felt fake to me and felt very implausible. I can imagine attraction but not proclamations of love, no matter the circumstance.

I gave this romance 3 hearts because of the hero and heroine. I love the sparks that flew between the two. The interaction between them was exciting, I thought. I love Eliza's spunk. Their interactions and come backs were very entertaining. Without that, I would have put the book down.

I also love Colin. He is trying to put the past behind him after his anger and hurt when his wife died. And I could see that Eliza was the right woman to make him love again. For a novella, this had a couple of steamy sex scenes. I thought both were written very well.

Eliza's uncle is the villain. Apparently, he owes a lot of money to a brewer who will not accept any payment other than Eliza's hand in marriage which is precisely the reason why she run away from her uncle. I honestly thought this villain was weak. I mean, in the end, the villain accepts his mistakes and promises to change his ways when Colin demanded that of him. This was very, very disappointing.

Again, this brings me back to the romance which was pretty much unbelievable. I recommend this novella to those who enjoy a quick read and a spunky heroine. ( )

I did enjoy this novella--it was a cute, quick read--but it was too short in terms of plot and character development to get more than a three-star rating from me. I liked the characters, but really would have liked to have gotten to know them better. I have read many of Jeffries' novels, though none from this series (yet! They're definitely on my TBR list, especially after this teaser); it's possible that there was more about Eliza's character in the series' other books than we got in this one. I enjoyed the author's writing in this book--it was entertaining and witty--I just wanted a bit more from it. Hard to do in a novella format, though. ( )