The Spymaster's Lady by Joanna Bourne

Rating: 3 1/2

She's braved battlefields. She's stolen dispatches from under the noses of heads of state. She's played the worldly courtesan, the naïve virgin, the refined British lady, even a Gypsy boy. But Annique Villiers, the elusive spy known as the Fox Cub, has finally met the one man she can't outwit...

British spymaster Robert Grey must enter France and bring back the brilliant, beautiful-and dangerous-Fox Cub. His duty is to capture her and her secrets for England. When the two natural enemies are thrown into prison, they forge an uneasy alliance to break free. But their pact is temporary and betrayal seems inevitable as the fates of nations hang in the balance.

Review: I feel pretty guilty about my rating of this book. I know it's been a huge hit in the romance reader community, but I had trouble with this one. First, the good things: it was well written, and very unusual -- never read a book with quite this kind of theme before. There were several parts that I thought were fabulous (on the stagecoach before separating, and when he saves her in England in the ally-- both parts were amazing), but a couple of fabulous portions do not a great book make. The heroine's speech patterns were distracting to me, and I got a little tired of her trying to kill the hero. By later half of the book I was starting to skim (which I hate to do), and I found all the details thrown at me in the conclusion too much too late. I wish we had had all those details doled out over the course of the book. Over all, I found it enjoyable, and since I have the second book on my shelf already I'll go ahead and read it, but I won't be dashing for it anytime soon or likely buying more.