How to Woo a Reluctant Lady

by Sabrina Jeffries, 345 pages 

Lady Minerva Sharpe has no intention of being manipulated into marriage by her grandmother's threat of disinheritance.  She decides, instead, to place an ad for a husband in a ladies' magazine.  This should be sufficiently appalling and cause her grandmother to rescind her demands which would, in turn, allow Minerva to retire quietly to the country where she could continue to write Gothic novels in peace.

Giles Masters is annoyed that Minerva's favorite villain is acting out scenes from his life.  When he sees her ad for a husband, he decides the quickest way to get her to stop writing about him is to marry her.  When Minerva turns down his real proposal and proposes a false engagement instead, Giles decides this might be his chance to woo his reluctant lady.

Okay, so the title on this one seemed a little goofy to me, but the book was a lot of fun.  It's the third in Jeffries's "Hellions of Halstead Hall" series, and the love story is tied up in the mystery of the murder/suicide or just plain murder of Minerva's parents.  There's a nice balance of intrigue, witty dialog, and steamy scenes which kept me interested to the end.  (In other words, I didn't run into that point in the book where I was thinking "Is this done yet," a point I usually hit in romances.)  This will be a good one for historical romance fans.