Review: Improper Relations – Juliana Ross

Improper Relations by Juliana Ross
Series:
Release Date:  April 23, 2012
Publisher:  Carina Press
Source:  NetGalley
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Dorset, 1858

When Hannah’s caught watching her late husband’s cousin debauch the maid in the library, she’s mortified — but also intrigued. An unpaid companion to his aunt, she’s used to being ignored.

The black sheep of the family, Leo has nothing but his good looks and noble birth to recommend him. Hannah ought to be appalled at what she’s witnessed, but there’s something about Leo that draws her to him.

When Leo claims he can prove that women can feel desire as passionately as men, Hannah is incredulous. Her own experiences have been uninspiring. Yet she can’t bring herself to refuse his audacious proposal when he offers to tutor her in the art of lovemaking. As the tantalizing, wicked lessons continue, she begins to fear she’s losing not just her inhibitions, but her heart as well. The poorest of relations, she has nothing to offer Leo but herself. Will it be enough when their erotic education ends?

Reviewer’s Thoughts:

I always like when there is a heroine in a historical novel that is willing to step outside that propriety box women were placed in and ask questions about sex.  While our heroine doesn’t go set down a path to ask those questions deliberately, she’s given an opportunity that she can’t pass up.

Hannah, left penniless after the death of her husband, if forced to beg for the position of companion to her husband’s aunt (for which she does not get paid), doesn’t know much about relations between a man and a woman other than the brief encounters she had with her husband (who donned a cap in bed.  LOL!) and the wisdom imparted to her by her mother.  With that knowledge, Hannah is glad to not have to engage in the activity.  Her thoughts on the subject change when she witnesses a tryst between her late husband’s cousin, Leo and one of the housemaid in the library.  Fueled by the housemaids response and Leo’s willingness to school her, Hannah embarks on a sexual awakening she never expected to experience.

Hannah is a woman who is beaten down by circumstances but when an opportunity such as Leo’s “lesson” becomes available, she jumps on it.  She’s open and willing to let Leo and his experience guide her in her education.  It was interesting that as much as she needed her companion job to keep a roof over her head, she was willing to do what she needed to do to be with Leo, including putting her job and her heart in jeopardy, without getting any kind of commitment from Leo.  It didn’t take much to realize Hannah was going to be the one that, quite literally, got screwed over in the big climax.

The sex lesson were hot and Leo gladly took on the role of being Hannah’s teacher.  She was a most disciplined student!

My only wish for this book was a little bit more emotional development of the characters on the pages we were reading.  I needed to read Hannah’s feelings for Leo or the see her struggle between her building feelings for him and the fact that his family was trying to marrying him off to someone else.