"Totally entertaining"

With the battle raging against Napoleon who recently escape from his prison, Lord Alleyne Bedwin, a diplomat working for Sir Charles Stuart, relocates to Brussels. Though frightened to do so, Alleyne agrees to deliver a message from his employer to Wellington at the front and return with the response. He marvels how his courageous older brother survived twelve years of this hell called war. However, he is shot on his return and though he tries to concentrate on getting to his sister as he is her chaperone in Brussels, he falls unconscious onto the forest ground.

Alleyne awakens in a Brussels brothel where his angel of mercy is Rachel York. She lives amongst these ladies ever since Reverend Nigel Crawley conned her and left her broke. Though he suffers from amnesia, Alleyne wants to help the woman he plans to marry once he regains his memory. Posing as a married couple, Rachel and Alleyne return to England to expose Nigel as a fraud, not yet realizing the sinful scandal nor the danger their masquerade causes the two of them.

The fifth of six "Slightly" tales is a wonderful regency romance that charms the audience due to a delightful lead pair and a fabulous support cast hat brings back many star players from the previous entries. Mary Balogh keeps the amnesia gimmick fresh through the interrelationship between Alleyne and Rachel. Sub-genre fans will find SLIGHTLY SINFUL totally entertaining and will eagerly await the next and final book in this series.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted April 21, 2004

Summary

Meet the Bedwyns--six brothers and sisters--men and women of passion and privilege, daring and sensuality....Enter their dazzling world of high society and breathtaking seduction...where each will seek love, fight temptation, and court scandal...and where Alleyne Bedwyn, the passionate middle son, is cut off from his past--only to find his future with a sinfully beautiful woman he will risk everything to love. As the fires of war raged around him, Lord Alleyne Bedwyn was thrown from his horse and left for dead--only to awaken in the bedchamber of a ladies' brothel. Suddenly the dark, handsome diplomat has no memory of who he is or how he got there--yet of one thing he is certain: The angel who nurses him back to health is the woman he vows to make his own. But like him, Rachel York is not who she seems. A lovely young woman caught up in a desperate circumstance, she must devise a scheme to regain her stolen fortune. The dashing soldier she rescued from near-death could be her savior in disguise. There is just one condition: she must pose as his wife--a masquerade that will embroil them in a sinful scandal, where a man and a woman court impropriety with each daring step...with every taboo kiss that can turn passionate strangers into the truest of lovers.