Scandalous Desires by Elizabeth Hoyt

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Continuing along in my binge of Maiden Lane in time for the live show (see my review of Wicked Intentions for the information), I started the weekend with Book 3, Scandalous Desires by Elizabeth Hoyt. This book continues with the setup started in book 1, Silence and the notorious River Pirate Mickey. Update: I have retroactively applied this book to the Romancing Summer Challenge for the historical romance prompt.

I really enjoyed this book and was torn on how to rate it. I really adored Silence and her taking care of Mickey's daughter Mary Darling. I also loved Mickey and how drawn he was to both Silence and Mary, especially after they started living with him for protection. It took some time, but once Mickey really opened up to Mary, he was such a great father and I loved the moments between them. I really enjoyed Silence and how she handled the situation. She didn't really give in to her desires right off the bat and made Mickey work to be a better man and give up the pirate pretense.

Where this book fell short for me was the other plot stuff. Once again, just too much. I really wish that the drama with the Vicar of Whitechapel was taken care of before the end of the book so we could see more of Silence and Mickey coming to terms with their feelings and really settling into their HEA. There were too many twists and turns and I feel like a couple of the plot points could've been removed. While I didn't feel that their relationship was lacking anything for me to believe in the HEA, I wasn't completely satisfied at the end. 

I guess I should've done this part earlier, but Silence found Mary Darling on her doorstep at the end of book 2. Things happen and Mickey's enemies (mainly the Vicar of Whitechapel) find out that not only is he drawn to Silence, but that she has his daughter. He kidnaps Mary Darling to protect her, fully expecting Silence to come along. It's a little manipulative, but I love how strong she was in showing him that she wasn't one of his crew and would follow is demands blindly.

I was sad too that another great side character was killed (it happened in book 2 as well, but I didn't really get into it). I hope that doesn't continue in the future books. I still really enjoyed it and am overall enjoying the series so far. From what I've heard the series is set up in kind of 3 book chunks. This would conclude the first chunk, which I would term the Foundling Home chunk. Everything kind of dealt with the setting up the home and dealing with the Vicar of Whitechapel. I'm excited to continue on my binge! I immediately jumped into book 4, which I know is a favorite for a lot of people.

Have you read Scandalous Desires?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Scandalous Desires, Elizabeth Hoyt, 4-stars, 0 days, eBook, 370 pages, published in 2011