Deepest Desires of a Wicked Duke

The Wicked Dukes #3

by Sharon Page

SINLESS
Ten years ago the Duke of Sinclair called off his wedding to Portia after revealing his debauched past and dark carnal desires. Portia has never known love since. Now she is in Sin’s presence again, on a secluded island, witness to an orgy of sexual delights that thrill her in ways she never dreamed possible...
 
SINFUL
Sin has never forgotten Portia’s beauty or innocence and he is shocked to find her tied to his bed when he arrives on Serenity Island. But he soon finds his long ago love curious, then aroused, by the carnal acts all around her. Sin has secrets he can never reveal, but in Portia he discovers a sensuality that knows no bounds...

Genres: Romance, Historical, Erotica, Historical Romance, Regency, Erotic Romance, BDSM

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Sharon Page is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of numerous novels of historical and erotic romance. She is a two-time, consecutive winner of the National Readers’ Choice Award, winner of the Golden Quill and the Colorado Award of Excellence, and a multiple finalist for the Daphne Du Maurier Award. She has twice received the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, and is a four-time finalist.

Married with two children, Sharon Page holds an industrial design degree and has worked for many years for a structural engineering firm. When not writing, she enjoys reading with her children, downhill skiing, and mountain biking. Writing romance has long been her dream and she is thrilled to share her stories.

Reviews

[Jilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagine that Jane Austen's Persuasion and Agatha Christy's And Then There Were None had a porn baby. This is the result.

Set in Austen times, we have the duke nicknamed Sin, and a saintly virgin girl named Portia meeting up 10 years after they had a broken engagement. Sounds like Persuasion, huh? Except, instead of being at sea for those 10 years, our duke was engaging in the kinkiest fuckery known to mankind at that time period. (I'm just guessing that we've come up with new stuff since then. We are innovators after all.)

They end up on a deserted island, in a castle, where the mysterious host leaves all of the guests notes that they will pay for their sins. They are stuck on the island by a huge storm. And then, the murdering starts.



What better way to pass the time until they can get a rescue boat than to have wild sex in the room next door to the dead bodies? It's romantic.


Even sexier when it's your son's dead body in the same room

Oh, did I mention that this island castle party thing is an orgy? Yeah, it is. So, there is debauchery going on all over the place, along with the stabby stabby kill kill. Actually, I guess "stabby stabby kill kill" pretty much sums up the events of this little soiree.

This smutty book is so outrageous that you will actually have a lot of fun reading it. Unless you really are used to reading Austen and Christy. Then, stay away. Stay far away.

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[Laurie (barksbooks) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review and the rest of the crap I write can be seen @ my blog Bark's Book Nonsense . Stop by and say hey.

I was innocently perusing Netgalley when I accidentally stumbled upon this book. Somehow I hit request and now it is mine ;)

When I drafted this review I was too lazy to look up the title and saved the file as “The Randy Duke”. Now, I know I haven’t read a historical romance in a long time but I don’t remember them being anything like this one. It starts out with the hero revisiting his path to self-destruction and involves a visit to a party where he walks in on his best friend who is doing a very naughty thing to a woman’s backside.



My, how things have changed while I was away reading my innocent little horror tales!

If you’ve ever wondered what those stiff upper class historical romance gentlemen get up to when they leave the fancy ballrooms, this book fills in all the blanks in vivid detail!

Hell, if I had only known I may have been reading little else. Ahem. Anyway there is a story here. Let’s see if I can find it . . .

Portia, a firmly on-the-shelf spinster, is just living her life, saving orphans and such when one day she is kidnapped, brought to a secluded island and awakens to find herself stuck in a house where a non-step orgy is about to occur. Her innocent eyes are shocked by the sights she spies but also very, very intrigued. Especially when she sees her old flame and former fiancée, The Randy Duke or Sin, as he prefers to be called, is also milling about and is as handsome as ever.

Oh my. Betcha know where this is heading!

After he broke off his engagement with Portia, the supposed love of his life, for reasons, Sin has spent the past ten years throwing orgies and indulging his darker urges. But alas, when he sees Portia again he wants what he feels he doesn’t deserve because of his oh-so-dark and tainted past. As he struggles with those feelings, he does his best to keep her safe and figure out who kidnapped her and brought her to sex island. And then someone is murdered, smothered by boobs fergodssakes, and a game of super sexy Clue begins.

I’m not going to lie, this book is not going to be to everyone’s taste but I thought it was a joy to read. I’ve always loved the game of Clue and its over the top silly characters and this book seemed to take a lot of inspiration from it. There are greedy women, callous and arrogant men, a few misguided souls, quite a few murderous intentions and there’s a lot of kinky sex going on even as people continue to DIE. I basically loved it all. But I especially loved the complicated sexual tension between Sin and Portia. There was a lot of pain there for the two to wade through and all of it Sin’s fault because he had no willpower, was very broken and had very little self-esteem when they first fell in love. I don’t know if I totally buy into their HEA but I’m okay with that because there were some genuine feelings of love behind the whole mess and I do feel like Portia was a good match for The Randy Duke and went into it with her eyes wide open and well aware of his faults.

If you’re looking for a decadent, erotic read and can suspend your disbelief about, well, about most of the things that happen here, then this one is for you!

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Release Date : October 25, 2016
Story Rating ~ 4 Stars
Hero Rating ~ 4 Stars!
Heroine Rating ~ 5 Stars!
Heat Level ~ 5 Stars!
Ending ~ 4 Star!
Overall Rating ~ 4 Stars!

OH MY! This was one sinfully erotic historical read! It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book by Sharon Page and I’m glad I got the chance to read it.

This story revolves around Sin, The Duke of Sinclair and a young woman named Portia Lamb. They were very much on love and were planning on getting married but Sin's past with some help from others got in the way and the marriage was called off leaving Portia devastated.

10 years have gone by, Sin has thrown his life into sex and orgies. Portia has thrown her life into saving abused children but neither of them has ever really gotten over the love they shared.

One day Portia receives a message about a little girl needing help. She and her maid are in a very bad part of town when Portia is kidnapped.

Sin also receives a message that Portia has been taken to Serenity Island and Sin must attend the orgy if he wants to save her. He is told that he needs to go to the docks where a small boat is waiting to take him to the Island.

Once on the Island, he runs into a lot of people that he has been involved with at the many orgies he has attended over the years. He also finds Portia who has been tied down to the bed in his appointed room.

As the story revolves, it seems all the guests and the few servants that have been hired to attend the party have gotten notes that say that they will pay for their sins. As the orgy is just beginning, one of the guests has been murdered. No one knows who the killer is and one by one they are being murdered and with the weather being very bad there is no way off the Island.

Sin and Portia team up to find out who the killer is. I must say that I had a feeling who the killer was but there was a few twists and turns that I did not see coming.

The orgy scenes are VERY NAUGHTY! As a matter of fact they may be too much for some readers. I can’t stress this enough, if you are not into TRUE EROTICA then DON’T read this book. You can call me jaded if you want because I can honestly say I LIKED IT!

My favorite character of this book was Portia. She did do a few dumb things but they were all in the name of helping others. She was quite intelligent, courageous and caring. I loved reading about how Sin introduced her to pleasure and how she turned into a brave and passionate woman.

In the end, things worked out perfectly for Portia and Sin and now I find myself wanting to read the two previous books in this series. I truly hope I get a chance to fit them in because I’m all in for reading a sinfully erotic historical romance.

Special Note : Even though this is the third book in the series, I read it just fine as a standalone.

*I received an ARC from Kensington Romance, Erotica via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.*

[Sher❤ The Fabulous BookLover · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ 15%.

It would’ve been nice to have an actual story, not just a bunch of sex scenes. Not feeling this one at all.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story reminded me of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None If it weren't for the sex addicted hero, a blinded by love heroine and a bunch of not so bright people engaging in orgies while a killer is on the loose, that is.

I could not at all connect with these characters in any way--emotionally or otherwise. You have a hero who had been abused as a young man. Terrible? Yes. However, he grows up to become a Duke, moves to London and meets a girl (the heroine) whom he falls madly in love with. So there may be a light at the end of the tunnel after all, right? WRONG.

After a night of debauchery, he decides he can't marry her because 1.) His sordid past and 2.) he simply can't seem to control his appetite for wild sex and multiple partners 3.) The heroine is just too "good" for that.

Excuses. Excuses. He was a sex addict. Plain and simple.

As so, he dumps her and moves on to live the next 10 years throwing orgies. Meanwhile, the heroine never marries and becomes a spinster.

First of all, right there this "hero" was no longer a hero in my eyes. IMO, this is the guy who is usually the jerk in romance novels. Through out the book the author continuously tells you that he's always loved the heroine and will always love her. But not enough to man up, tell her the truth about his past, keep it in his pants and work on building a future with her, right?

Give me a break.

I find the heroine a complete idiot for giving this guy another chance.

It wasn't a terrible story, it did keep me wondering who the killer is and why they did it. But as for the rest...I have to say it was almost comical. I read as far as the reveal of the killer--because honestly, I had to know who it was if I made it that far--but gave up on the story after that.

Note: This tale was given to me in exchange for an honest review.

[*CJ* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh wow.
I thought I was reading a historical erotica, but what it turned out to be is a dark super erotic romance.
Portia is a lady from lower gentry who works for living and helps young women in need. When she gets a call to help a woman in distress, she responds and turns kidnapped into a sinful game.
She then meets her ex fiance, Sin, who broke their engagement for a life of debauchery. She initially thinks he kidnapped her, but then a more sinster plot unveils.

Wow this was hot. I mean from the REALLY descriptive orgy scenes, threesomes, foursomes, voyeurism..everything in a historical setting was smokin!.
Point to be noted that the hero is engaged when he first cheats on the heroine, feels guilty and then breaks engagement. Since then he's done every depraved sexual act, from blood play to being penetrated. He then continues the hedonistic lifestyle for ten years apparently trying to forget the heroine.
The heroine pegs the hero.
Also he has a past filled with molestation by his mother and sister in law so be careful for possible triggers.


As I said, this was very much grave than I would have ever expected. Entangled with the story was a murder mystery, loads of scenes of perversions, and a rekindled love.
The heroine understands the hero's lascivious needs and tries to fulfill them.
THIS BOOK WILL NOT BE FOR EVERYONE! But I enjoyed it :)

NOT SAFE AT ALL
4/5

[Sandy Kay Kay · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a romance for those who want them steamy and explicit and find kinky (or at least not plain vanilla) sex and orgies to be sexy. There is a LOT of sex in this book, not all of it involving the hero and heroine (see my reference to orgies). The "hero" in this story is into throwing orgies. In fact he is known to have the best orgies in London. I am not sure if there is a plain vanilla sex scene in the entire book, and the book is full of sex scenes and sex talk. The heroine is an innocent who rescues children from the bad parts of London and brings them to the foundling home her family runs. The backstory is that the hero and heroine were in love and engaged 10 years before the story starts but that the hero broke off the engagement because he didn't think he would make her a good husband.

They find themselves together on an island they can't leave in a house party where the guests and staff are dying one by one.

I didn't care for this book at all. I prefer more romance than sex and this book was just not my style. I hadn't read any of the earlier books in the series so I didn't know in advance that this was going to be one of the steamier historical romances. However, I know that many women enjoy reading steamier romances and the mystery that goes along with the romance is very interesting as is the hero's past and how that contributed to his kink. Those readers would likely enjoy this book a lot more than I did.

I received this book as a free e-ARC from NetGalley.

[Kelly G (Now Accepting Book Boyfriend Applications) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whew! Ok so I read a 1 🌟 review of this book and knew that I had to check it out. Basically they young Duke of Sinclair meets and falls in love with Portia, a non-titled not rich girl. They get engaged, but then he is led astray by those who don't want him to marry her..... he breaks the engagement and then goes into a total downward spiral.

10 years later she is kidnapped and he is lured to this party.... an orgy party! (which he tends to enjoy but had no plans to go to). And he finds her there tied to his bed. The craziness starts when others at the party start turning up dead. And then they are trying to figure out who is behind it. It was so good! Now the review that I read went on about the orgies and said that he watches her in the orgy and he does things with other people in front of her..... that is not true at all. I can tell you that there is no sharing and no cheating (with the 2 main characters) in this book. Do people start randomly having sex wherever they darn well please with anyone they want? YES!!! And it is HOT AF! Portia does see this happening and it intrigues her! She sees multiple types of sexual encounters during her time on this island and it gets her so riled up! And they basically learn together that she doesn't want to be the prim and proper Duchess IN the bedroom! This was a new to me author and I am quite intrigued to go and look at some more from her!



Story 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Spice 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Swoon 😍😍😍
Angst 💔💔💔

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was poking around on netgalley, looking for something light and fun, and found “Deepest Desires of a Wicked Duke” by Sharon Page. I requested the book and received a free copy in exchange for an honest review. The description sounded interesting – a good and noble woman kidnapped to be part of an orgy, dumped in the lap of her ex-fiancé. But, what it didn’t mention is that this book is basically a closed-door murder mystery, much like Agatha Christie’s “And then there were None” – but, with small bursts of erotica thrown in.

Overall, I like the idea of the book. The story’s setting and plot provide an interesting mix of the mystery and erotica genres. There are a lot of common writing tropes from both genres – a Madonna/Whore paradox, a reformed rake, people faking their own deaths, revenge, multiple murder weapons, etc. And I like how the setting was updated from the Agatha Christie novel to give it an erotic flair by making the island the setting of an orgy.

To me, the mystery was the strongest element of the book, since it was providing the momentum and movement to the plot. The erotic elements were very short and interspersed, sometimes in the most unlikely of times (ie right after someone is killed) and were mostly a paragraph or a page long – graphic, but not long enough to bog down the plot. Though the writing and language would sometimes make me giggle, such as when the heroine asks the hero to “bang me senseless…bang into me so hard you shake the bed.” As far as the erotic elements go, there was a LOT more anal play than I would have expected, and lots of hints of bondage, but none that happened. There were also clothed man/naked woman, group sex, voyeurism, dildos, and oral elements, to name a few. For the most part, though, as I said before, these scenes were short and often oddly placed.

I also hope that, at some point, there is another round of editing, because the ending felt very stilted and unevenly paired with the rest of the novel. Once they return to land, the meeting of the friends and families, seeing an orphan on the street, the modeste, and the ball – leave the heroine feeling like a fish out of water – a sense the reader shares. These scenes are rushed, often confused, and don’t wrap anything up, which is probably the best way to describe my entire opinion of the book. It is good, but sometimes confusing, and left me hoping this book would be better than it was.

[Megan Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I honestly don't know what just happened to me. I thought I was getting a book about a girl who's like omg I do like orgies! and her bf was going to be like omg dreams totally come true! But that went out the window in about ten seconds. It actually turned out to be a murder mystery, but a pretty good one. I only guessed one of the killers. So, for a romance novel, pretty decent plot. On the other hand, for a book that I thought I was getting orgy scenes from, it denied and even shamed. So that was actually pretty upsetting. On the other side of that though, I did stay up all night reading it and it did have a really good pegging scene, was well written, and I got the one before it out of the library because why the hell not? So make of that what you will, I suppose.

[D.G.]

DNFed @ 31%

Is this supposed to be "And then there were none" but with an orgy? I was looking for a steamy historical romance but so far this is nonsense.

[Amanda Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Deepest Desires of a Wicked Duke” was a very hot read – almost bordering on erotic, but the most interesting aspect of the plot was the murder mystery. Ten years ago, Sin and Portia were to be married. Portia was a young, do-gooder who helped her family rescue innocents from the street and instill them in her family’s home for waywards. Sin realized that he still wanted to be a young, man about town and was not ready to settle down. He broke off the engagement to Portia and broke her heart. He didn’t realize until he saw her again, that his heart was broken too.

Sin engages in all manner of sensual exploits. Nothing is too wild for him. Portia is kidnapped in Sin’s name and wakes up tied to a bed on an island, furious that Sin had her kidnapped. But Sin wasn’t behind the kidnapping. There are many others also stuck on the island, presumably for a bacchanal-like party where any kind of drinking or sex act is encouraged. When others on the island start being murdered, Portia and Sin have to find the killer before they are his or her next victims.

The chemistry is palpable between Portia and Sin. You get to learn more about their background and as a reader, I did feel that Sin probably made the better choice in letting Portia go. He would have married her and fallen in with a bad crowd and broken her heart. Reunion stories usually aren’t my favorite plot device, but this one worked. The mystery was intricate and was probably the best plot device in the book. I would recommend this to a reader who enjoys a book with heat and a well-done murder mystery mixed in as well.

I received a complimentary copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

[Kathryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is legitimately one of the worst books I've ever read. It was so bad it was actually entertaining (hence the two stars), with the story line inspired by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. But with 100% more orgies.

[K · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is like the historical island porn version of Clue. Only dumber.

[Renaissancecat22 · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is more for people who want some creativity in their porn and less for people who want some extra smut in their romances. If Celeste Bradley and Sabrina Jeffries aren't doing it for you anymore, I'm not sure Sharon Page is the solution. I mean, sure the characters have a lot of sex. But it's described with all the passion of someone transcribing a pornographic film or a 12-year-old writing on fanfiction. I suppose the hero's dark, tortured backstory was meant to justify all the sex but it ultimately played a minimal role in the story besides that set up and ended up being brushed aside far too easily. If you think this is the kind of romance that really unpacks complicated issues of abuse and trauma... haha, nope. No one's characterization makes any sense, least of all the good, pure, innocent (you could make a drinking game of the repetitive descriptions in this book) heroine who nevertheless jumps pretty readily into a variety of sex acts... with props.

The real reason to read this book or, at least, the reason I finished it is the way it parallels And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. I'm not saying Page should ditch romance and write mysteries but that was definitely the more compelling part of the story. As with And Then There Were None, you spend enough time with the characters that your suspicions work to keep you in the dark as to the identity of the real culprit. But Page also overplays her hand. I guessed the identity of the killer
pretty early on even after he had "died" because it was so suspicious that the corpse's face couldn't be identified. I did not predict that he was a Depraved Homosexual because I didn't think we were still doing that in 2016. Also, they gave the "cook" away when she didn't die but I'll give the author credit for the rest of the reveal about her secret identity and motives but there were still parts of the mystery left to reveal that kept things interesting. Though the final reveal was too rushed to be very satisfying, as was the final resolution for the H/h when he decided to "reform."

[Krys · Rating 2 out of 5]

WARNING: This novel contains several scenes of a sexual nature and I would not recommend this novel to anyone under the age of 18 for this reason.

Let me begin my review by saying that I am not a prude by any means. In fact, I enjoy a good erotica novel just as much as the next person. However - there is erotica. And then there was this. This book was filled with so much sex that it not only became repetitious, it became downright unrealistic. I also firmly believe there is a big difference between erotica and smut. This book crossed the line so far into the smut side of things that it became downright vulgar. There would have been other ways of saying the same thing that would have made this story equally as hot, but not as vulgar.

The overwhelming sex aside - I sincerely hope this book has had at least one more round of edits since the copy I read. The author did have a decent writing style when she wasn't selling herself and her story short with pages and pages of sex, however she was also apt to repeating herself or changing details entirely just a few pages later. For example - there is an entire scene where Portia helps another of the women present after an encounter and puts her to bed - she then spends a few moments speaking to Sin outside of the woman's bed chamber. A few pages later the author talks about the woman not knowing another death had occurred as Portia had put her to bed. There were other instances of this same thing - the author saying the same thing she had previously said just a few pages earlier.

Another problem I had with this story (which again could and possibly already has been corrected) was the way the author would also completely change details from one page to the next. For example, in one scene Sax tells Sin that he didn't have to break his drinking glass, and then a few pages later as the group is racing up the stairs he is drinking again. Or when one moment they are standing outside someone else's bedchamber only to have Sin suddenly sprint off "racing up the stairs" to stand in front of the same door they already were in front of.

I will give credit where credit is due - I very much enjoyed the 'whodunit' mystery aspect of this story. With each body found, the plot only became more interesting. I think this would have been a much better story if there was less attention paid to the sex and more attention paid to the over-all story.

Overall, I firmly believe that another round of edits will help this story immensely (if not already done so - I can only review the copy of the novel as I have it), and I do believe this will appeal to those reader who like a "smuttier" form of erotica. It just was not for me.

DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.

[Julia · Rating 1 out of 5]

No.

For most of this book, it was one of those “hate-reads” that is so bad that you love it. The orgies! The cluelessly in love MCs! The mysterious murders! The actual notes left by the murderer! At some point I told my friend that the murderer was CLEARLY the Phantom of the Orgy, and that there had better be catacombs. It was a delight of bad writing.

And then the sex scene really started, and WHOO BOY was it also bad! Like, so bad. Deliciously bad. The kind of scene that needs to be read out loud in a pub meet up of romance-reading librarians. We made plans to do just that post-pandemic.

But then, SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER the murderer turned out to be two people, and one of them was a closeted gay man who was driven to help the other murderer with the real motive because he was in unrequited love with the straight MC, and then he was immediately killed and fell off a cliff. Just to make sure.

And I lost it. I don’t care how bad a romance you’re trying to write. You can do it without being a bigot. Adding in a bury-your-gays trope and a evil queer trope is absolutely not okay. Not ever. And especially not when it’s like three lines in a too-long romance novel and could easily be edited out. It’s in there just so we, the readers, know that the author is showing their true colors.

Skipping isn’t good enough for this book. Don’t just skip it. Warn everyone you know. Blacklist this author in your recommendations. Figuratively burn this book to the ground.

[Belinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a very unusual historical romance. First off, there is a lot of sexual presentations throughout the story. The characters were written very well, but I didn't like so much the racy acts going on.
You have a man who has lived his life on the edge. He is a handsome dare devil with loads of personality that can change with the wind. Julian, Duke of Sinclair, has spent his days doing whatever he wants. He likes to drink, play cards and is a rake among the ton. He calls off his wedding to his betrothed because of his activity of lust that consumes his life. Sin thinks he will not make a good husband to his Portia.
So ten years later, his beloved Portia is kidnapped and taken away to a unknown location. Sin has been sent a missive where she can be found. He is eager to find her, and is blindfolded and is taken to Serenity Island. Once he enters the dark place, he finds he's been invited to an orgy. His Portia is tied to a bed awaiting him and she is not to happy about it.
There is lots of sexual acts going on, and Portia gets her first hand view of things. She is an innocent with no idea this goes on between men and women. Then the people start getting killed by someone and it turns into a nightmare.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a bad book, but I prefer a rounded story without all the fillers being in it. I like MS Page's previous romances, but his one wasn't one of them.
I appreciate Net Galley for this ARC title in which I gave an honest review.

[Angel Hatfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

Portia is a spinster.when Portia was younger Portia and The Duke Of Sinclair/Sin were in love and planning to marry. Buts in’s past got in the way and the wedding was called off. Ten years have gone by and Portia has dedicated her life to saving abused kids and brings the kids to a foundling home her family run. Sin has thrown himself into sex of all kinds including orgies as he has a sex addiction. Sin even throws orgies that are known to be the best orgies in London. But neither Portia nor Sin has forgotten or got over each other. Portia receives a message a girl needs help and is kidnapped. Sin gets a message Portia has been taken to Serenity Island and Sin must attend the orgy there if he wants to save Portia. Sin is told a boat is waiting to take him to the island. On the island Sin finds a lot of people he has been involved with over the years. Then he finds Portia in the bedroom assigned to him. All the guest and a few of the servants have received notes to say they will pay for their sins. One by one the guests are being murdered. No one knows who the killer is.
I didn’t like this story . It just wasn’t for me. It was a very dark story with twists and turns. I believe there was just too much sex and kink for me. I think it went past erotica as far as I am concerned. But I am sure there a lot of people who will love this story.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would actually give this 3 1/2 stars. Like one other reviewer wrote, it's a pornographic version of Agatha Christie's "And then there were none." There were a couple weak spots in this book. 1. The dialogue for the final murder discovery period was rather lame. The conversation seemed overly melodramatic. 2. This book seemed to have an identity crisis. There was a lot of eroticism after Portia had been kidnapped and then occasionally later in the book. It was as if the story couldn't decide whether it was going to be an erotic romance or a murder mystery, which was why the whole thing was really, really long. Ms. Page kept adding extra details that just seemed to make the story more cumbersome .

[Drucilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think I've ever read a historical erotica novel before so yay for new experiences. And the description doesn't mention anything about the "locked house" murder mystery plot so that was a nice surprise. The beginning of this book is a little rough and I think Sin's almost immediate declaration to Portia about how wrong he was to break of the engagement dissolves a lot of the tension, but it was pretty solid. I was also a little frustrated that the Earl survives and he isn't punished in any way for his part in what happened. Everyone else dies and he gets to live. It's not really fair.

[Gillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a well written or edited book, but it is one of the most unhinged roller coaster storylines I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I like to send my husband screenshots of the crazy things I read, and I told him I couldn’t with this book because I would be taking pictures of almost every page - and just when you think you’re done, happily ever after - boom - out comes the strap on! The sheer amount of enjoyment I got from reading this book is what makes me need to give it 5 stars! Classic literature it ain’t, but I will be recommending it to all of my friends.

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is basically AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie retold as an erotic romance with dukes (England, 1821). I expected the erotic romance part of course, and there's lots of intense sexuality and hot, inventive scenes, but I found it off-putting when juxtaposed with multiple murders. Too dark for me. I do still want to read the previous two books in the series--hopefully there's just as much sex but a lot less death!

[Destiny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This again wasn't something that I would normally read but it promised so much. Murder, tension, romance, and a hot and heavy atmosphere. It certainly delivered on all these factors. The mystery was intriguing, not too surprising. I would have liked the antagonist to surprise/shock me more as it was fairly easy to figure out who it was. All up I loved Portia's character it was a perfect mix of curious, innocent and determined.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

This time it's a murder mystery with new details presented in the last chapter so that no one will be able to figure out who done it and plenty of stupid people making stupid decisions guaranteed not to solve the mystery.

This is poorly written and may very well be the last book by this author I ever read.

[Becky Wyrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was super hot. I loved the murder mystery premise. This is a great book for October. A killer is among us and we are trapped on a stormy island. I love that they have a history and reconnect after 10 years. Some things are meant to be.

[Shiraz · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, yes, a lot of odd moments to choose to get naked in this homage to Christie's And Then There Were None but it was entertainingly ridiculous.

[KAR · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful! Portia is so annoying, Sin is just as bad. Portia needs to not be a doormat. She will have Sin as a a spouse under any terms. The last chapters she actually thinks he is throwing a large orgy, like Hello!$%#@ she is that dimwitted.

[Zena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved This Book!
This is such an engrossing and very readable story!
It is filled with falling in love and improving on that, good and bad characters, vengeance and murders, some heat and a jolly good story.

[Drisana Levitzke-Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Came across this as an option to read now from the loan section, a lot more erotic than I realised it to be. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the murder mystery aspect of this and was hooked on finding out the truth of it all. True love is always a lovely addition to any novel!