Tempting Juliana

Author: Lauren Royal
Published: November 7, 2006 (Signet)
Category: Historical Romance
Series: Sweet Temptations Trilogy #2
Rating: 5/10

After reading Lost in Temptation, I went on a Lauren Royal binge, buying up copies of her first two trilogies. It appears that in each of her trilogies, there must be a dud (Emerald and Rose), and I think Tempting Juliana was the dud for the Sweet Temptations Trilogy in the same vein of Rose from the Flower Trilogy.

It's a good thing Juliana chase takes such pleasure in playing matchmaker, because there's nothing she wants more than to see her loved ones happy. Her latest pairing involves Dr. James Trevor, Earl of Stafford, and her friend Amanda. So why does the handsome physician insist on ignoring Juliana's good intentions and shaking up her sensible plans?

Since James lost his wife, he has buried himself in his work— until Juliana starts meddling with his heart. Instantly smitten with the determined beauty, he must now find a way to outwit Juliana at her own game— and convince her that the right match for her is under her very nose.

This was another one of those books that made me want to shake the stupid out of the heroine. Juliana is so cocky that she thinks she can arrange everyone around her (I guess she's very Emma), and she's blind to the fact that she's matching up a man who has only eyes for Juliana to her friend Amanda. And like Rose, she hyperfocuses on a duke who's courting her just because her brother Griffin made a prized racehorse part of her dowry, and says that James isn't good enough for her. For someone who's supposedly so good at matchmaking, Juliana is rather dismal at making a good match for herself. The duke is a bad match for her, but she keeps rationalizing that he's just reserved, not a stuffy prig, as James called him. She's also rather poorly informed; she had no idea that James is a widower, and doesn't the ton run on gossip? As a matchmaker working on her friend's future, wouldn't she check out his background, and be a bit disturbed by the affect that James has on her heartrate?

Juliana treats the wonder James like an idiot, going on outings with him for the purpose of giving him practice for taking out Amanda. She wants him to learn what drinks to fetch during intermission at the theater, what kind of flowers he should send her, and the gifts he should purchase. James figures that the more time he spends with Juliana, the less time she spends with the duke, so he goes along with her ridiculous plan, and even takes advantage of her grand scheme, stealing kisses all for the sake of practice.

And it feels like the "twist" at the end of the book was tacked on just to supplement the page count. Finally Juliana and James are a couple, and Amanda and the duke are on the road to matrimony, but there's some hooha about Amanda and the duke being half-siblings, and now James is bound to marry Amanda because he stumbled into a "compromise setup" that was meant for the duke (so Amanda could get out of her engagement to a man she didn't care for).

This was hard to read and felt rather sloppily put together. In the acknowledgments, Royal mentions that there was a delay in writing this book, so that probably contributed to the quality. I'm sure the last book will redeem the trilogy if Royal holds to her record.