Romance Quest! 'A Gentleman Til Midnight' by Alison DeLaine

Alison DeLaine has restore my faith in the romance genre. I thought I was too picky, that I was never going to find a book that reached the same heady heights as When a Rake Falls-- but boy, does DeLaine ♫deliver~♫.

It's tropey. It's silly. The protagonists have the general problem solving skills of a romance protagonists (ie bizarre problem solving skills-- one character tries to solve his wife being mad at him by dressing as a pirate.)

It also made me bury my face in the book and squee with delight.

It follows Katherine Kinloch-- Lady of a Scottish estate, and technically not a pirate -- and James Warre -- the British Naval captain who she hates and is indirectly responsible for the whole piracy thing. James' ship is wrecked, and he gets fished out by Katherine's crew, where he tries desperately not to pretend to be Captain Warre. And then one thing leads to another, naturally.

It's stupid and I love it. It features double identities, assumptions going very wrong, and some very satisfying cutlass work during a fancy dinner party. It's a delight.

(Also, James' snarky letters to the admiralty are wonderful and I wish there were more.)

When the book moratorium is over, I'm tempted to get some more of her books-- she has a sequel to this, where she pairs off two side characters that make an incongruous pair, and I want to see how she threads that needle.