TO KISS A COUNT by Amanda McCabe is the third book in her Muse Sister trilogy. Thalia Chase has watched her two sisters’ fall in love and have adventures and all she really wants is her turn and one man.

Marco, Count di Fabrizzi, is on a mission to find something of great importance to his home country of Italy, but he can’t get Thalia out of his head. These two were made for each other and the excitement in getting to see them together was a lot of fun.

My favorite part of the book was anytime Thalia and Marco found themselves alone. He couldn’t keep his hands off of her no matter how hard he tried. And although not explicit at all, their exchanges were HOT!

“Cara, I waned you once – forget about me,” he said, his accent heavy as fine satin. Suddenly, quick as a lightning strike, he seized her by the waist, lifting her off her feet as he twirled her around. Before she could even draw breath, their positions were reversed, and he held her captive.

She tightened her grasp on his hair, holding on as the whole world tilted around her.

“But you would not listen,” he murmured in her ear, his warm breath stirring her hair. She shivered, her thoughts turning hazy and unreal. “I will not warn you twice.”

And he kissed her, but not just any kiss. His mouth crashed down on hers, hungry and hot. Thalia’s lips parted, his tongue darting out to seek hers, to taste her deeply.”

It was easy to fall in love with Marco and be delighted that Thalia finally got her adventure. I would suggest reading the first two books in the series: TO CATCH A ROGUE and TO DECIEVE A DUKE. While I do believe that the story flows well as a stand alone there are a few plot points that make sense due to what happened in the first two books. This is my only real complaint about this book. There is a lot of back story and if I hadn’t read the first two in the series I might not have been able to enjoy this one as much. Plus, they are both fantastic reads and very enjoyable.

This book is perfect for reading on a sunny spring day, just be prepared to daydream about handsome Italian Counts and hot kisses in darkened hallways. ~ Carrie

After a slow start, things get hot when an American sea captain tempts a proper English lady.

Cilla’s a widow who’s trying to build a career as a wedding planner. She has no desire to get married again; her first marriage proved she was a bad judge of character and showed her how dangerous it is to rely on a man financially.

Captain Samuel Breedlove shows up at the engagement party that Cilla’s organized for his fiancée. Unfortunately for Samuel, his fiancée, Annabelle is planning to marry another man—an earl who owned the ship Samuel captained and who left Samuel to die on an island in the Caribbean. Annabelle thought Samuel had abandoned her, and her parents—American farmers who have recently become wealthy—are furious that the man they’d loved as a son would treat their daughter so shabbily.

Samuel’s hurt the most by Annabelle’s parents’ rejection. He decides it’s up to him to stop the wedding—not because he loves Annabelle but because Raventhorpe, the man she’s engaged to, is a murderer. The only person who seems to believe him is Cilla, so he enlists her help, even though her future livelihood depends on the wedding being the event of the Season.

Cilla doesn’t immediately agree to help him stop the wedding. After all, it’s in her best interests for the wedding to go ahead. The stories Samuel tells her about Raventhorpe worry her, even though he has no proof to back up his claims that Raventhorpe is a murderer, but she’s also worried that she’s allowing herself to be seduced and used, just as she was by her first husband.

It’s always a thrill to read a historical with a working hero and heroine. Samuel is American, and his industrious attitude is pitted against the lazy wastefulness of titled British men. Cilla was disowned by her father when she first married, so she wasn’t raised to work but has to because of economic necessity.

Samuel recognizes and appreciates what this contradiction means for Cilla.

“Even though she had fallen on more difficult times and had been forced to seek employment, she knew her own value. And for some reason, he found that quiet confidence impossibly attractive. Very strange indeed for a man who had traditionally sought women who needed the strong arm of a male to guide them. Perhaps his time on the island had changed him more than he thought.”

The story is slow to start, though. We spend more time in the characters’ heads than we do seeing any action—of any kind—and the hero and heroine are only alone a few brief times in the first hundred pages. The secondary characters—Annabelle and her family—dominate the story’s beginning. Every time I thought I’d get to see more of Cilla and Samuel, there’d be yet another wedding conversation between Annabelle and her mother instead.

I also had a difficult time buying the set-up. Annabelle’s parents practically raised Samuel and spend a lot of time talking about how they couldn’t believe he’d abandoned their daughter. Yet they did believe it when Raventhorpe showed up at their door and said that was what happened, even though they’d never met Raventhorpe before. Whenever Cilla and Samuel ask them why they’d believe Raventhorpe’s word over that of a man who was part of their family for a decade, they essentially shrug and say “Raventhorpe’s an earl.”

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to feel for this family. They’re not portrayed as heartless people, so they’re either unbelievably simple or the author was being too obvious about pulling the characters’ strings for the sake of the plot. Unfortunately, the bulk of the book’s beginning is about them, which made the beginning frustrating as well as slow.

The story finally gets going after about a hundred pages, though, and things heat up between Cilla and Samuel. Cilla helps Samuel undermine the impending marriage, and she decides that Samuel can teach her how to tell the good men from the bad ones. From this point on, we see a whole heck of a lot of Cilla and Samuel, including their…er, various fluids. The story becomes mostly about Samuel teaching Cilla about sex, and a little about Cilla teaching Samuel about love.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s definitely an emotional connection between them. But the connection is mostly made through their sexual chemistry, so if you like graphic sex, and lots of it, this might be the book for you. ~ Katrina