SUMMARY (Bedwyn Family, Book 5):
SLIGHTLY SINFUL overlaps significantly (chronologically speaking) with the previous book in the Bedwyn series, SLIGHTLY TEMPTED (Morgan and Gervase's story). Lord Alleyne Bedwyn (26), working as a British diplomat in Brussels, is sent to deliver a letter to the Duke of Wellington during the Battle of Waterloo. He receives a reply letter to deliver and heads back to Brussels, though he is in pain from being shot in the leg. When his horse throws him from the saddle, he hits his head and is knocked unconscious.

When we meet Miss Rachel York (22), she is practically all alone in the world, with an estranged uncle as her only remaining relative. She has recently split with her betrothed, who was a relatively new acquaintance made while she was a companion to an elderly woman in Brussels. After entrusting her pretty meager funds to him and convincing four other women to do the same, she overhears him and his sister talking and realizes that they are not the charitable Christians they appear to be (he's posing as a reverend) but are in fact con artists. They had been departing Belgium and heading for England, but she makes a quick getaway and returns to Brussels and the four women, whom she feels honor-bound to tell the truth to and in some way recompense.

The four women (fantastic characters! - they had me laughing throughout the book) are Flossie Streat, Geraldine Ness, Phyllis Leavey, and Bridget Clover, the latter of whom was Rachel's nurse for six years in her youth. They are prostitutes and have been running a brothel for the past four years, saving up money so that they can return to England and retire.

I tend to be long-winded in these descriptions, so I'll try to cut it down to the basics (and fail horribly): Rachel comes across Alleyne and the women take him in, nursing him back to health. Due to his fall, he has amnesia and unfortunately remembers nothing, including his own name; he is given a new one in the meantime - "Jonathan Smith." They also pick up Sergeant William Strickland (another wonderful secondary character), a soldier who lost one of his eyes at the Battle of Waterloo. They all head to England after deciding to visit Rachel's uncle, Baron Weston, in order to deceive him into thinking that Rachel and "Jonathan" are betrothed so that she can secure the jewels her mother left her. They will then be able to track down the evil con artists and get back their money. Of course, things don't go exactly as planned - nothing in life is ever that simple - but everything ends well and there are happy/deserved endings all around (who would expect otherwise?!).

REACTION:
I greatly enjoyed this book and thought it was a real treat, especially after having been somewhat disappointed by SLIGHTLY TEMPTED. I've looked through some of the other reviews and have seen many of the same complaints. The first is that people are tired of Balogh's repeated use of the same plot devices: fake/will-be-broken-off betrothals; in this case she goes past a fake engagement to a fake marriage (my question is, has anyone else also noticed how there is *always* a lake with a small island that the main characters row to and make love on?!?). The second complaint is that this book's plot leaned to the implausible.

My response to the first would be that I agree, but that Balogh is such a good writer that when she is able to succeed in all other ways (good writing, great chemistry, wonderful characters) I frankly don't care, but that's personal preference. To the second, I really have to protest - do we actually read these books because they are based on reality and believability? No, we read it for the romance and the chemistry, for the wonderful if-only-they-were-real-and-waiting-outside-my-door heroes and the great, strong heroines whom we can (let's face it) either imagine to be us in another life and alternate universe or a dear, dear friend, so we can share in the happiness.

CHARACTERS (main and secondary):
The book is brimming with wonderful characters. It's nice for a change to read about a Bedwyn who doesn't carry himself with haughtiness and arrogance, but instead has an easy grin and is good-humored (even before he falls in love!). Alleyne definitely changes from how we've seen him in past stories (somewhat shallow and aimless) to how he is by the end of the book (responsible, with a sense of purpose), and I think the development rings true and is well-done. I thought Rachel was a great heroine (and what a great change to have the heroine save the hero - literally). She's a strong young woman who has had a painful childhood and youth, but is hard-working and tries to be positive. I especially liked that she was friends with the wonderful female-quartet and was slightly protective of them, refusing to look down on them because of their profession (though I don't think Balogh should have had her call them "whores" in her thoughts as often as she does at the beginning).

Not only are the hero and heroine wonderful, but all of the secondary characters are well-written and add much laughter and tenderness to the story. The reunion that Alleyne has with his family is very emotional if you've read the other Bedwyn books, though I'll concede it occurs later in the book than I had expected. I also agree with the other reviewer who said that Balogh was brave in having the first romantic encounter not be wonderfully successful so that we can see the characters work through it; adds a certain reality to the story which is otherwise blissfully far too perfect to be real. I loved this book and think it is definitely one of the best ones of the series (ranks up there with SLIGHTLY MARRIED and SLIGHTLY DANGEROUS, IMO).

BOTTOM LINE:
Read it and enjoy!!! (And then settle in for the wonderful, amazing, one-of-the-best-Balogh-books and the final in this great family series: SLIGHTLY DANGEROUS. Finally Wulfric gets what's been coming to him: a woman who will make him laugh and smile - hard to believe, I know ...).

(Written December 11, 2008 on Amazon.com) ( )

Amnesiac battlefield victim poses as spouse of his volunteer nurse to save her stolen fortune. And nature takes its course.

"Slightly Sinful" is the fifth installment in the "Slightly" series. It follows the youngest son, Alleyne Bedwyn, more-or-less following the action of "Slightly Tempted." In "Slightly Tempted," Alleyne was thought lost at the battle of Waterloo, where he had gone to deliver an important letter to Wellington. The first chapter of "Slightly Sinful" shows the reader what actually happened. Shot in the leg, Alleyne is thrown from his horse and hits his head, only to wake up later in a brothel with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Rachel York, the heroine of "Slightly Sinful" is the one responsible for rescuing him. Having had all of her money (and that of her friends, whores in whose brothel she is staying - although she is most certainly not a whore) stolen by an unscrupulous con-artist, she had gone to the battlefield to steal from the bodies. Finding she is morally unable to do so, she ends up rescuing Alleyne instead.

This was not my favorite of the "Slightly" series. That said, Alleyne is one of my favorite heroes. There is something charming and sweet about him that makes it difficult not to like him. He's the kind of person you wish you knew in real life. Rachel, on the other hand, is one of my least favorite heroines. She just seems a bit slow. Firstly, she was taken in quite easily by the villain who stole all of her money. Then, she makes basically no effort whatsoever to help Alleyne discover who he is. Why didn't she contact the Hague? Once they knew he was a gentleman, why didn't she make more of an effort to find out who he was? It certainly wouldn't have been that difficult for her, especially once they returned to England. She could have taken him to London, even. While it was necessary that he not know at once for the plot to succeed, it seems a bit of a stretch that so little was done. The only thing Rachel did was write a couple of letters to her friends - which paid off in the end, showing how easy it would have been for Alleyne to discover his identity with a little bit of work. Alleyne's reluctance to find his family once he is conscious and able to walk is more understandable. His fear at finding them and not knowing them is rational and well described. It makes sense that Alleyne is willing to procrastinate until his memory returns. The subplot of Rachel's recovery of her jewels and the reconciliation between her and her uncle is well-written and interesting. But it is Alleyne's story and Alleyne's conflicts that are the central point of this book. ( )

Synopsis: Slightly Sinful is the fifth novel in Mary Balogh's Bedwyn family series of regency romances. This is Alleyne's story. He's the youngest Bedwyn brother and he's just embarked on a career with the British embassy in Brussels. On a mission to deliver a letter from Wellington at the front lines of the battle of Waterloo, Alleyne is shot. He falls from his horse and lay unconscious and dying, stripped naked by pilferers, in the woods outside Brussels. It is there that orphaned lady's maid Rachel York finds him.

Rachel has her own set of problems: She, along with a group of kindly prostitutes she has been trying to help, has been swindled by a man posing as a charitable man of the cloth. The villain has cheated them of all of their savings and fled to England; the women want their money back (and some revenge) - but first they have to get hold of enough money to get them back to England. Since she has been denied access to her inheritance by her uncle, a man she has not seen since childhood, Rachel has no money or family of her own. The women decide (along with half the city's population) to loot bodies in the aftermath of the battle in order to gather enough money for passage to England. However, Rachel finds that she doesn't have the stomach (or conscience) for the job. When she comes across Alleyne's unconscious body in the woods, she brings him back to the brothel and nurses him back to health.

When Alleyne regains consciousness, he finds that he's died and gone to heaven: he's being nursed by four whores and one beautiful angel (our Rachel). The only trouble is, he can't remember who he is. A warm friendship forms between the ladies and their handsome patient, and they all end up concocting a scheme wherein Rachel and Alleyne pose as a married couple in order to deceive Rachel's uncle into giving them her inheritance. But pretending to be married is more difficult than they first realize: their feelings for one another grow and they find themselves longing to make the marriage a real one, only Alleyne still has no idea of who he really is or whether he is already married to someone else.

The action in this book overlaps that of Morgan's story in Slightly Tempted. All the time Morgan thinks he is dead, he is really just a few blocks away, convalescing in a house of ill repute. I really enjoyed this book. I liked Alleyne's character from the previous books - he was the handsome, fun-loving, jokesy Bedwyn. I have always thought the amnesia plot device is pretty cheesy and very soap opera-esque. However, I was able to take it in stride in this book - probably because Mary Balogh is such a good writer. I actually got caught up in it. It was hard to see Alleyne so unhappy in this book, struggling to figure out who he was and how to deal with his feelings for Rachel when he was really not at liberty to make a commitment to her.

I liked Rachel also. Probably what I liked most about her was the changes she went through learning to let go of her feelings of hurt and bitterness toward her uncle. She comes to love him in spite of herself. The secondary characters of this novel were pretty entertaining, although I thought the concept of four "hookers with a heart of gold" a bit of a stretch. Everything worked out a little too neatly with one of them being a master cook, one a master gardener, two of them passing off as gentle ladies, etc. However, romance novels are a kind of fantasy and it is still satisfying to see everything tied up in a neat little package at the end.

Another interesting thing about this book is that Alleyne pretty much falls in love with Rachel at first sight. I don't always buy into that kind of thing, but in this book I think it worked pretty well. At first, he falls in love with her as a sort of savior/angel and then they develop a true friendship over the weeks of his recovery. He finally comes to love her more fully as they spend time together as a "married couple."

My favorite parts of this book, though, were the scenes at the end when Alleyne regains his memory and returns home to Lindsey Hall. The romance in the story was nice, but I felt that the entire novel was really moving toward the final point of Alleyne's reunion with the Bedwyns. There was an overall feeling of anticipation throughout the entire novel, growing more intense toward the end, when he is finally reunited with his family. And, yet again, the best bit was when Wulfric sees him again for the first time and hugs him. ( )

HARD COVER