Along the way you meet several potential
paramours, including the smart, sarcastic Sir Benedict Granville, the mad, bad
Lord Garraway Craven, the poor but unbelievably well-built Captain Angus
MacTaggart, and the adventurous Lady Evangeline Youngblood. The drama starts,
as all good Regency books do, at the ball, and from there you can launch yourself
in a multitude of directions. Do you follow hunky war veteran MacTaggart to
help the children, or match wits with Sir Benedict? Don't worry, you can do almost
all the men in the book, looping your steamy adventures into one wild
experience. Of course, you can’t forget Lady Evangeline, either, if you take
the right path through Egypt. The
variety of outcomes is truly impressive, including several Happily Ever Afters where
you’re the main character, and a few where you’re the sidekick with a boring
but sweet life. You can explore gothic or adventure timelines with vampires,
werewolves, ghosts and macho desert ruffians or run away with the bad boys. You
can even end up unattached with a successful career if you like. And then there’s
lovely, awkward Nigel. Hot damn, Nigel!
As you may guess, there are sex scenes here. Some are
simple, others are amazing, and many of them made me laugh because of terms
like moonlight bouncing off your “womanly orbs” or “being able to make love as
tender as it is violent while balancing on one leg and using a bust of John
Donne for support.” There’s also a whole paragraph-long sex scene with postal
puns, but you should find that one for yourself. The sex scenes are done with over-the-top
descriptive but not vulgar language, and if you’ve read a lot of romances
(especially older ones) then these in-jokes are for you.
This is a joyful blast of a book you can read over and over
again, never ending up at the same place twice unless you choose to do so. It’s
the perfect remedy for any of those maddening books you throw against the wall.
My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel will be available from Quirk Books on April 3.
A free ARC was provided to this reviewer.
