I was a little wary of Gwen at first. Nice girl turning wicked can go so bad so quickly after all. However I shouldn't have worried quite honestly, Gwen's idea of becoming wicked was only rough-hewn at best. Without Alex there to challenge her, I suspect she wouldn't have followed through at all honestly.

Duran paints a truly miserable picture for Gwen. There was no Earthly reason for both of her grooms to cry off; indeed a lot of their appeal for Gwen was the surefire bet they were--they were in desperate need of funds and she is a very rich lady (3 million pounds--I don't think I've ever seen quite so much saddled on one girl in a historical novel before!). We only hear about what happened with the first guy, Trent, but we see what happens with the second guy, Pennington. And the moment Gwen realizes that it would all happen again she cracks. I don't blame her. She is a picture perfect candidate for wife, yet she couldn't give herself away in marriage!

Gwen hysterical and planning her new life was absolutely hilarious. She takes such delight in something as small as insulting a man's kissing habits that it was hard not to smile and root for her. Indeed throughout the novel she is a marvelous delight with each new experience--innocent isn't quite the right word, but after a decade of living in self-imposed obliviousness she's like a butterfly. She knows the world, but is seeing it through brand new eyes. Her interactions with Alex were priceless--especially in the beginning as she sought to convince him of her plan to be independently rich (and 'wicked') and he tried to both show her that her efforts were minimal and self-defeating at best...and at worst encouraged her to deeper thrills. If he wasn't a fictional character I truly think that Gwen would have him tearing his hair out and strangling her.

There are a couple of subplots running through, to give the story a deeper meaning (and explain some of the circumstances), outside of the personal growth both characters exhibit. Alex's brother making a bad land sale, and Gwen's second ex-fiancee running off with her late brother's ring mostly, though the latter is quickly resolved and the former is a very tangled mess that confused me moreso then anything else. Gwen's growth from "nice" girl who smiled through everything and Alex's acceptance of what happened to her brother is touching. I felt bad for Alex, even if he was using it partially as an excuse.

Two things bothered me about this novel however--the first is that Gwen receives two (or three) secret admirer love letters near the beginning of the novel. She accepts this as ordinary, so I'm assuming she had received some prior. They're never explained as to who had sent them, they were just...tossed aside. The second is more of a pet peeve. I'm never in favor of the trope where the hero (or heroine) suddenly realizes that all these years of knowing the other, they were secretly in love with them but didn't realize it until that very moment. No thank you, I'd have preferred if they cared for one and other all those years and then it became a deeper love.

This was my first time reading Duran, but I definitely will be checking out her other books!