To Love a Thiefby Julie Anne Longreviewed by Cybil SolynApril 2005, 355 pages, Publisher: Warner, ISBN: 0466614262 Back Cover Blurb: Ensnared: Lily Masters has a gift for picking pockets and telling stories- skills that come in handy for surviving London's slums. She's proud of providing for herself and her lively young sister, Alice, and she's never been caught. Well. there's always a first time.
Enticed: Gideon Cole is a brilliant barrister with an unfortunate weakness for clients who can't pay. His latest charitable misstep: buying the freedom of a daring, beautiful thief. To repay the debt, Lily agrees to his proposition: pose as the object of his desire and help him snare a wealthy bride. All he has to do is transform the impudent Lily into a diamond of the first water.
Enthralled: But the education of Lily could cost Gideon his carefully planned future. While she plays cards with his invalid uncle and Alice charms the servants, the honorable Gideon is harboring less than honorable thoughts. For sweet, stubborn, and sensual Lily has a way of slipping past a gentleman's defenses – especially when she's stealing his heart!
Gideon Cole has a Master Plan. He is going to marry a wealthy and well connected beauty, save his sister from her abusive marriage, inherit the most coveted land in all of England, and use his wife's money and connections to become rich and powerful. Unfortunately this plan has recently met a snag. As a soft hearted barrister who can't seem to stop taking free cases, his pockets are sadly to let, and with a new rival for the hand of his selected bride he can't seem to keep her attention on himself! That is until the beautiful thief, Lily Masters, tries to pick his pocket and he decides to risk it all by rescuing her off the street and forcing her to become a rival that his intended bride will want to fight over him for.
What an amazing book! Julie Anne Long has only published one other book (The Runaway Duke, now on my TBR pile), but she writes like a master. I love a good romance story, but I love a book even more when it is well written. Long's prose and allusions are wonderful. Her hero Gideon is a secret poet, and as I read To Love a Thief I kept wondering if Long harbored a secret passion for poetry as well because the words were just so beautifully strung together.
It's been a while since a romance novel has held my attention so completely strictly through the interaction of hero and heroine. This book has some interesting secondary characters and a good plot, but it's the dialogue and relationship of Lily and Gideon that are firmly front and center. The chemistry between the two ignites the pages and makes this novel impossible to put down! This book is HOT, but in a very sensual way. When Lily and Gideon finally give in to their mutual needs its like a thunderstorm finally breaking overhead. The electricity is intense, but the release for both the characters and the reader is well worth the wait.
Bottom Line: To Love a Thief may be one of the most wonderful Pygmalion stories yet to come out of the romance genre. Julie Anne Long may be a newer author, but she is someone not to miss!
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Cybil Solyn, csolyn@rakehell.com
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