365 books in 365 days Challenge ... Book #351

A Vow of Obligation - Lynne Graham
Mills & Boon Modern
Harlequin UK, 2012
ISBN: 9780263890662












My rating

From the back cover:

"From making his bed...
On a mission to steal Navarre Cazier's laptop to save a fellow chambermaid's reputation, Tawny Blake is caught red-handed! Blushing brighter than her flame-coloured hair, she's sure she'll be fired. Then Cazier presents her with a shocking proposition...
To lying in it!
The infamous billionaire needs to stop the prying media digging into his scandalous past, and Tawny is the perfect diversion. The seduction of society beauties has always come effortlessly to Navarre, yet getting feisty Tawny to wear his ring, even if just in public, could be his greatest challenge yet!"


Lynne Graham is one of the authors I have read the most of in this challenge, and certainly one of my all time favourite M&B authors. So even though her last book was not for me, I will always read her new releases!

The heroine Tawny rather foolishly believes her friend's tales that one of the guests of the hotel she works at has indecent pictures of her, and convinces Tawny to try and steal it so she can delete them. But Tawny is caught by Navarre, the hero, and then discovers that what her friend told her was a lie. Although she tries to protect her innocence she knows that Navarre doesn't believe her. Navarre is not sure what to think of Tawny, but he knows he can't risk letting her out of his sight while she potentially knows damaging information about him. Seeing the chance to solve a current problem, he agrees not to report her if she will act as his fiancée for a while to deflect unwanted attention from his personal life. Tawny reluctantly agrees, but their mutual desire for one another soon turns into blazing desire that neither of them want to deny. However things end badly when Tawny's heart is broken by Navarre's lack of trust in her despite what happened between them. And, her later discovery that she is pregnant only makes things worse.

This is a difficult review to write as I found the book a little up and down. It starts off very poorly, I was frowning in frustration to be honest, but it picked up and started to be really enjoyable with a nice witty feel, only then it plummeted down again with the [unnecessary] unexpected pregnancy plot. It ended quite good though!
The heroine is nicely portrayed, with some fun little quirks and a believable personality - she is definitely the best thing about this book. The hero is frustratingly domineering, but it does work within the story.
The opening scene in this book is what almost put me off  - we are led to believe something that isn't very appealing, when it turns out not to be the case I breathed a sigh of relief, but the actual truth makes the opening scene, on reflection, even more distasteful. I know I am being very evasive, but I don't like giving too many spoilers away.

Overall, this isn't a bad book at all and very enjoyable at times!

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