One Night with You by Sophie Jordan

Lady Jane Guthrie once loved Seth, the new earl of St. Claire, with all her heart only that instead of loving her back, Seth focused his attentions on her younger sister Madeline and, by the time Madeline's ambitious nature broke Seth's heart, Jane was nearly invisible to him.

After a loveless marriage, now a widow, Jane lives under the thumb of her brother in law, who would like nothing more than make her his mistress. Eager for a night of freedom, Jane accompanies two of her friends to an scandalous masquerade ball given by a notorious prostitute. Just is her bad luck that, at said ball, she encounters 2 men: Seth and her brother in law (who has a really funny name).

Trying to run away from her brother in law, Jane takes refuge in an empty room where she shares a heated kiss with Seth.

Seth, for his part, is in town with the sole purpose of finding a wife - the ball was an idle diversion - and he has only one requirement: that said wife will take care of his sister as he would himself - he feels guilty because of an accident that befell his sister when they were children; but then when he sees this masked beauty (Jane) in a golden dress he's drawn near - he nicknames her Aurora, by the way, because she won't tell him her name, obviously.

Next day he meets Jane in the park and he's inexplicably drawn to him too. Only that Seth doesn't care for Jane and her family given her little sister's betrayal of him (never mind that before he fell for the pretty face of Madeline, Jane was pretty much his best friend).

Anyway, after a bad encounter with her brother in law - with the funny name - Jane decides to become 'Aurora' again and goes to search for Seth and they have a clandestine meeting (read sex). And then Jane disappears and does her best to avoid Seth. Until she finds out she's pregnant.

I could go on, really I'm only about two paragraphs away from the end. But I'll stop myself.

The pace of the book is off, Jane's attempts at rebellion are lukewarm at best and Seth, though not entirely the worst of jerks out there, he does some pretty bad stuff to Jane and he NEVER grovels! This story was ripe for groveling but no groveling happens! At all!!!!

I thought I was going to like this book, I even cried a little at the beginning because, over all, Jane is pretty likable (as is Seth's sister Julianne); but then it started to get kind of... dumb. I was also very annoyed at the fact that Seth said the same things, word by word, to both Aurora and Jane.

This is the first Sophie Jordan that I've read, so I don't know how it fares in comparison to her other books but I don't feel motivated to read more.

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