Slightly Dangerous - Mary Balogh (Bedwyn Saga #6)

At last, we have arrived: the final book in Mary Balogh's Bedwyn Saga.  Getting around to the eldest sibling in the family, Wulfric, the Duke of Bewcastle, Balogh puts forth a time jump--while the first five books in the series happened in quick succession, this one takes place more than two years after the fifth book, and all the other siblings are well settled into married life by the time Wulfric gets around to falling in love.

The heroine here is Christine, a widowed woman who is living with her mother and sister after a split with her husband's family over the circumstances surrounding his death.  Christine is clumsy and speaks her mind, and seems to be entirely unsuitable for "civilized" society, except that everyone likes her anyway.  She's dragged into attending a house party to even out the numbers, and of course Wulfric is attending as well.  Their paths continuously cross, and the two grow closer but don't seem to realize it because they're continually fighting.  After the party is over, they go their separate ways, only to reunite months later...

I liked the second part of this book, at Lindsey Hall, much better than the first part at the house party.  However, as much as I liked this pairing in concept, I felt like Balogh didn't really succeed with chemistry between the characters.  She was apparently going for a "kiss you or kill you" sort of vibe, but I never felt any romantic or sexual tension underlying the sniping between Christine and Wulfric.  The sniping was amusing, to be sure, but there didn't appear to be any actual "burn" involved with it.  And while I loved the concept of Wulfric falling in love with someone who was evidently completely unsuitable for him, and loved the incidents of him coming to Christine's rescue when she landed herself in embarrassing scrapes, I didn't really see the relationship evolving on Christine's side.  Additionally, the subplot involving Christine's reputation as a flirt and her friend Justin seemed overplayed to me, given how little of an impact it had on the book.  It was supposed to deal with Christine's Tragic Past, but honestly it wasn't even that tragic and seemed to have been thrown in for melodrama more than for any true tension or plot propulsion.

Overall, this was an okay book, but it certainly wasn't worth plugging through all of the other okay books of the series for.  This wasn't the best historical romance series to me, and I'm not sure if I'll pursue Balogh again in the future.

3 stars out of 5.