Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas

A devil's bargain

Easily the shyest Wallflower, Evangeline Jenner stands to become the wealthiest, once her inheritance comes due. Because she must first escape the clutches of her unscrupulous relatives, Evie has approached the rake Viscount St. Vincent with a most outrageous proposition: marriage!

Sebastian's reputation is so dangerous that thirty seconds alone with him will ruin any maiden's good name. Still, this bewitching chit appeared, unchaperoned, on his doorstep to offer her hand. Certainly an aristocrat with a fine eye for beauty could do far worse.

But Evie's proposal comes with a condition: no lovemaking after their wedding night. She will never become just another of the dashing libertine's callously discarded broken hearts -- which means Sebastian will simply have to work harder at his seductions...or perhaps surrender his own heart for the very first time in the name of true love.

I am finding it somewhat curious that my reading patterns seem to be changing a bit. How you may ask? Well, this is a reread, and I don't really do rereads as a rule. Last year, I only reread one book and that was Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie. The only reason I reread that one was because the library had it on audio book and I wanted something to listen to, so I picked that up. I didn't reread anything in 2008 or 2007, and in 2006 there was only one book - The Summer of My German Soldier, which I had originally read when I was back in high school - some twenty years before.

Every now and again in the past I have thought about rereading other books, and even a couple of times I have reborrowed a book, but in the end I never got around to reading it. At the moment, I have one book out from the library that I read and loved last year and I am intending to read again soon, and I just finished one book last week, and I am already listening to the author read it which counts as a reread.

I originally read this book about two and a half years ago, when I was madly glomming anything I could find by Lisa Kleypas. These days I have to wait for each new book from Kleypas, as there are only two books from her backlist that I haven't already read because they are a bit hard to get hold of here. I read this book in one sitting and loved it, with just a small issue in terms of the suspense subplots. This time, instead of racing through it, I took a little bit more time to savour the relationship that develops between Sebastian and Evie, and to take note of the little things in their relationship development. Whilst I still remembered the big scenes in the book (the billiard room scene and the scene where Evie makes Sebastian lose their bet for example), there were many smaller scenes that were the stepping stones to those marquee moments in the book that were worth revisiting.

Even though I think that I enjoyed different things this time around, the book itself still stood up well to the reread, and I still rated it at 4.5/5. Evie and Sebastian still go through the wringer (d'uh - the events in the book haven't changed at all!) but I didn't mind so much this time around. If there was one scene that seemed redundant this time around it was the scene between Daisy and Cam Rohan. It was a fun scene and all, but given that I have now read both of their books it didn't seem to need to be there. It is but a minor quibble though.

Now I can go back to just revisiting the 'good' bits until it is time to reread the whole book again.