I liked this book but I didn't all out love it. I don't know if I liked it more than the last one, but I did enjoy it. Rhys is a very lovable hero. Very tortured (yay for angsty heroes!) and Merry was an incredibly capable heroine. I completely believed their chemistry.
What brings it down to a four star was one of the things I had a problem with in the first one. It takes forEVER to finally get the info out about Rhys's past. We get a smidgen of information and then that same smidgen is basically repeated with different words for most of the book. We finally get more details in the last 30%. We need more. Every time the issues are brought up -- for both characters -- we need a little more, not the same thing reworded. It made the story bog down a lot in the middle and that could easily have been avoided. We don't need to save
all the revelations for the end.
That said, they're a sexy, unique couple and I'm interested in their future. Merry, a stable master's daughter, is now a lady. Rhys has an uphill battle with everything pertaining to his title. Like the previous book, there are a lot of things I want to know going forward. There's this whole rebuilding thing and how they'll deal with societal pressures. It seems these things stop just when they're getting really interesting and we don't get an epilogue.
One good thing is that Bellamy became more human in this story and there was a nice excerpt from the next book. There's also a mystery to be solved and I'm hoping all the couples can come together in some way so we can have that epilogue that we've needed so desperately in books 1 and 2.
And, happily, the next one is only a month away. :D