Since their unfortunate liaison, Lily is unable to trust in anyone, let alone a man, and unwilling to involve herself in an intimate relationship. Not only that, but the girl’s fortune-hunting father, apparently known as a great lover, apparently was not. Lily has been led on a merry chase for two years in search of her daughter and is being bilked of her fortune by him. You see, she is the mother of an illegitimate girl, the father of whom has kidnapped her. While at the beginning of the book he is an all-too typical romance hero – arrogant, emotionally stoic, and tragic, he grows to become not only strong but supportive, tender, and giving – in short, truly an heroic figure. With that out of the way, Alex becomes the sort of hero not often encountered in historical romance.

Remarkably, the author allows Alex to love Lily before she loves him, or admits that she does. By the time Alex realizes what Lily means to him, she has been thrown off his estate, he has been kidnapped, she has knocked him unconscious, she has clothed herself as the biblical Eve, and all other sorts of scandal Alex never believed he’d come to actually enjoy. The sexual tension is palpable immediately and the pay-off intense and often (there’s nothing worse than incredible tension and a stingy pay-off, is there?). The shenanigans these two involve themselves in are inventive and exciting. Both have reputations that precede them – she is thought to be the mistress of the owner of a successful gaming hell and he is known to be rigid and cold, having lost his spark since his fiancé was killed two years earlier in a riding accident.

Then Came You is the story of Lily Lawson, a seemingly decadent woman who is determined that her sister not be forced by their parents into a loveless marriage with Lord Alex Raiford. And, how did someone who hadn’t yet become a mother know so well the fears, longing, and love we mothers have for our children?

Perhaps I fell in love with it as well because I was a new mother, and the pathos of the story is, in great part, derived from mother love.Īfter meeting the author last year, I was even more impressed by the book because, when she wrote it, Lisa Kleypas was a fairly sheltered young woman who hadn’t experienced much of the passion so wonderfully expressed. Different than most of the romances I’d read, it featured a heroine more tortured than the hero, a so-called “fallen” woman with a wicked reputation. I first read Then Came You in 1993, shortly after discovering romance, and it is one of the reasons I fell in love with the genre.

Lisa kleypas lily lawson