** spoiler alert ** I really loved this. It was immensely enjoyable.

The author's writing, while sometimes a tad hard to follow, was entertaining and humourous. The banter between the characters, particularly the hero, Puck, and his brother Jack, was witty and light, while at the same time, didn't make the problems the characters faced seem like non-issues.

There were many small descriptions and such that Ms Michaels incorporated into the writing, which made it that much better. Such as the description of a characters' features being smeared across his face, as well as Puck being considered 'as dangerous a a dandelion'.

The story starts with Puck basically blackmailing two gentleman after witnessing an event the previous year, which occurred in the first book in the series. At first, this scene seemed completely irrelevant to the story, and the reader honestly has no idea why this person is talking to these other people. It isn't until much later that the reason for this is revealed, and it's a very 'aha!' moment. The opening scenes finally made sense and the cleverness of the author is even more appreciated.

The characters had a lot of depth and grew and changed with the flow of the novel. They weren't perfect, but nor were they so flawed that readers dislike them.

My favourite character was by far the hero, Puck. He just had this passion and zest for life that was beautiful and endearing. He didn't have a tragic upbringing, and nor was he a tortured personality like so many historical romance heroes; he simply enjoyed life because he could. The author definitely gave Puck a more romantic soul than I've previously seen and it was wonderfully worked in Puck. I thought it was sweet the way he was so smitten with Regina, and I imagine it must have taken the author a lot of time to equally balance Puck's charm with his romantic tendencies so that he wasn't a devil-may-care charmer with no regard for anything, but neither was he a sap. He had a certain way with words, but I personally didn't feel that he was anything less than serious when he wanted to be.

The heroine, Regina, was another great character. She felt guilty about the disappearance of her cousin due to her agreeing to attend the ball at which the cousin was abducted, and insisted on being involved with the investigation every step of the way. However, I didn't feel she was reckless or that she stupidly threw herself into danger. When she was told she should stay, for her safety, she did, and it was wonderfully refreshing to not have a heroine who needed rescuing every other page, especially when it's not the heroine, but someone else, who's being held captive. Regina was also headstrong as well as having a brain between her ears, and never behaved in an immature manner, nor did she result to manipulation to get what she wanted.

Yes, she lied to her mother, but that was necessary for everyone's safety, and considering the fact that her mother was a terrible drunk, there wasn't much else she could do as the woman was barely lucid let alone logical. That said, Regina's mother, Leticia, was really quite pitiful. It was hard to not feel sympathy for her. She'd been sold into marriage to cover he father's gambling debts, and her husband was a mentally and emotionally abusive ass, as was his mother who lived with them until her death (previous to the heroine's birth, but it still factored into the rest of Leticia's life). I was a little irritated when she began drinking again towards the end of the novel however. I thought they'd finally managed to get her together, but it turns out it wasn't supposed to be.

I can't say much about Regina's cousin, Miranda, who was the person is need of rescuing. She was abducted after only one scene in the novel and then said only 3 or 4 sentences after she was rescued 20 pages from the end. She did come across as very silly in the beginning but we have no way of knowing how her experiences changed her, so there's no way I could comment on her character except for that initial first impression. That said, I'm not particularly interested in her future and am hoping very much that she is not the heroine opposite Jack in the final novel in the series, if only because I don't think their characters would match at all.

The villain in all this, was Regina's very own father, who was a despicable excuse for a human being. Not only did he deal in human trafficking (of petite, blonde women), but when he discovered that one of the women abducted by his crew was his own niece, he determined she would fetch him an even bigger price than the rest of the other women, and so kept her captive as well. Quite frankly, there isn't a violent enough death for people like this, so we'll have to be content with the fact that he did, at least, end up dead.

Despite this, I suspected Reginald very early on, from the moment he first "found out" about her abduction, so it came as no surprise that he was in fact, the mastermind of the whole operation.

The author wove an amazing, magical love story into all this darkness, between Puck and Regina. Their romance and love for each other was completely believable; a truly wonderful thing to witness. I didn't feel there was any of the popular "will I/won't I?" pull for either of them, and they didn't dance around their attraction to each other or their subsequent emotions. Of course, there was that wonderful 'we can never be together' feeling for a time, but once Regina was positive of her father's guilt, there was really nothing keeping them apart, and there was definitely no deliberate hurting of feelings in order to keep the other from being hurt by something bigger and badder in the long run.

In the end, this was a spectacular novel, with happiness and sorrow, love and hate and a wild race against the clock, and it leaves me desperately craving the final novel in this series by Kasey Michaels. I would recommend this title to anyone, even if they're not particularly enamoured of historical settings, and would rate it 5 out of 5 stars.