Slightly Sinful - Mary Balogh (Bedwyn Saga #5)

Plowing along through the Bedwyn books, I've finally come to this: Slightly Sinful, aka the amnesia book.  I call it this on the premise that, if an author writes books for long enough, sooner or later they're going to come to a place where they just have to give a character amnesia.  It seems like Balogh hit that point here, because when we find out where Alleyne Bedwyn has been since he vanished in Slightly Tempted, and that has been cavorting with four prostitutes, one young lady posing as a prostitute, and a one-eyed sergeant, because Alleyne hit his head and doesn't remember who he is.

Our heroine is the young lady pretending to be a prostitute, Rachel York, who ended up with the prostitutes because one of them was her nurse before she was fired and lured into a life of sin.  After Rachel's fiance steals both the prostitutes' money and Rachel's, Rachel is left stranded in Brussels with an approaching war and at the mercies of the prostitutes, who are indeed quite merciful.  When she encounters Alleyne during an attempt to rob the dead and brings him back, the prostitutes even take him into their house, as they do the one-eyed sergeant who helps Rachel retrieve Alleyne to begin with--a sequence that was a nice tie-in to the preceding book.  And when Alleyne can't regain his memory, he decides to help Rachel recover her money one way or another.

The amnesia actually lends a bit of an uncomfortable dynamic to this book for me, because one of the things that Alleyne can't remember is whether or not he's married.  We, as readers, know that he is not.  However, Alleyne doesn't know that.  He doesn't offer to marry Rachel because he can't be sure that he's not married.  And yet he proceeds to engage in a sexual relationship with her, which really made me question his morals.  Apparently the Bedywns are so moralistic that they marry for love and then never stray from their marriages--and while Alleyne can't remember that he's a Bedywn, he can remember everything else, so why does this behavior suddenly seem like it's okay to him?  Hmmmm...

Other than that, this book seemed a bit happy-go-lucky.  The prostitutes all have hearts of gold, the one-eyed sergeant is willing to pay for Alleyne's living until he remembers who he is, the uncle who's blatantly lied to and who the characters are, essentially, trying to rip off forgives everyone and welcomes them into his home.  While the four prostitute characters were absolutely lovely to read about, very amusing and engaging--presumably to replace the other Bedwyns who are missing for most of the book--everything just seemed so sweet and false.  It didn't really ring as a good story with various dimensions, though it was still an enjoyable read and I think still better than the first few in the series.  It probably helps that I'm partial to the amnesia trope, as well.  I didn't like it as much as the book before this, but I'm still planning on finishing out the series--after all, Wulfric is finally up next!

3.5 stars out of 5.