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Having binge-read the first two books in the series, I bogged down on this one, and took a break -- but came back and finished happily. Pandora was a delightful secondary character in the earlier books, and though I wondered whether she could carry a book on her own, the answer is yes.

I like this very unconventional heroine, though if she was written for a male audience I might accuse her of having manic pixie dream girl tendencies. But watching her engage with a mainstream Victorian culture which she is ill-prepared for, by her isolated upbringing, has many pleasures. Not the least of them is that I can now say I've read a romance novel in which married women's property laws are a central roadblock to the lead pair's happiness, and Victorian women doctors save the day.

I'm looking forward to the final book in the sequence, in which the female doctor character is heroine; if Kleypas had sat down specifically to target me and get me to read romance (as obviously she did not), she'd be going about it all right.