Lizzie has been widowed for two years but has yet to come back into society since her husband's death was a scandal.  At her sister's house party she met Oliver, who has come to apologize for a childhood indiscretion.  He agrees to get Lizzie back on a horse and get her to smile.  He loses his heart to her.

I enjoyed this story.  It's a quick light read.  Lizzie needed pushing out of her shell.  Oliver was a doll!  I'd welcome him with open arms.  The two together are outrageous.  I enjoyed the other characters but they were a very small part of the story.  I look forward to reading more of this series.

I read out of order again, but that is okay because The Copper and the Madam can definitely be read as a standalone. I plan on going back to read the first two in the trilogy due to wanting to find out about the previous characters.

The Copper and the Madam is a historical romance that has suspense and erotic elements to it.  Rea is the Madam of the story, who owns a brothel called The Blind Cupid.  She is a very difficult character because she has gone through so much in the past.  She is too hard on herself and is constantly mentioning her weight. She also has a past that is constantly getting in her way of what she wants.   She’s strong though at times, but she definitely hides everything she does not want people to know about.

Rory Kerrigan is the Copper that adorns her establishment every once in a while to have dinner and fun.  Rea has been fascinated with Rory for some reason, but she always makes it difficult to get close to him.  Rory though is definitely a very intriguing character.  He has his own past he has dealt with, but he is determined to find out Rea’s secrets.  I loved how he constantly got on her about mentioning about her weight.  He never saw anything wrong with her physically, and even he wanted to break the emotional barrier she was constantly putting up.  He just wanted her to tell the truth on how she felt.

Rory is having to investigate a murder that hits pretty close to Rea’s work and now he will do anything to find out who killed one of her employees.  He also will do anything to make Rea open up with him.

This was definitely different kind of historical romance that I am used to reading, but I loved every bit of it.  The only thing I had a gripe with was throwing in other characters in the mix that I wanted to know more about, and Rea being not as open as she should have been.  She drove me crazy at first, until she started talking about her past.  The poor woman had definitely had it hard and it took another character like Rory who was broken as well to fix her.

I give this book 4 full moons and recommend it readers out there looking for a historical romance that has all the great elements put together.  You get the suspense of the story that you need to figure out and definitely lots of erotic moments.  Very steamy erotic moments.  =)

I received a complimentary copy of the book from the author in exchange for an honest review.