This was surprisingly good. The beginning was a bit clichee, the young widow Bea and the handsome Lord get in an accident when their carriage brakes. They flee the snowstorm into a barn and things get hot quickly. But that kind of makes sense for them both. And the characters have more depth than I first thought. The handsome Lord is actually almost blind but tries to hide this. This leads to a lot of misunderstandings. Bea is a widow, who was treated badly by her late husband, he abused her and she never again wants a man to tell her what to do. She celebrates her new freedom and opens a debate club in her home. A likable fierce heroine. I also liked Taris, and how his character developed. His sister in law from the previous book was also very likable. The writing of Sophia James was quit good. Much better than I expected in this genre. How she describes the characters emotions feels very real and the short sex scenes are very sensitive with little details. Often in romance this is not the case, emotions are often exagerated, this was not the case here for me. I just feel that fifty more pages would have been good to give the novel more depth. Bea overcome her trauma of her abusive marriage and went from a lonely landlady to a wellknown woman of London's society a bit quickly. The crime story was a bit underdeveloped and solved too easily. But besides from that a nice read.