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This is book two in the series Bow Street Bachelors.

Emmy is living a double life – in the one she is Emmy Danvers, a respectable English lady of French descent, living with her grandmother and her brother, and in the other one she is the Nightjar, a highly successful and elusive jewel thief. Emmy has taken up her father’s mantle and is in the process of repossessing the French crown jewels with the original intention of returning them to the French. But Emmy isn’t very keen on her profession and she is only executing these heists under duress from a blackmailer.

On the side of the law we have Alex Harland, the recently minted Earl of Melton, who has been tasked with apprehending the Nightjar and recovering the jewels. But Alex is also harbouring a secret desire for Emmy, whom he met a number of years earlier at a ball. Will Alex’s sense of justice and morality prevail, or will he succumb to his feelings for the intriguing thief?

The story starts off very Cinderella-esque, and Emmy and Alex were introduced to the reader very effectively within the first few paragraphs. Alex is really torn apart when he realises that the woman he suspects of being the Nightjar is also the captivating masked lady who passionately returned his kisses in a dark garden years before.

I found Emmy interesting. She is smart, meticulous, and secretly enjoys the excitement of being a successful thief. She also had great fun poking at Alex and his sense of right and wrong. She is mischievous in that sense and very entertaining to read. Alex is more serious, and he takes himself very seriously as well. He threw a lot of notions and convictions out the window when he became more involved with Emmy.

The plot surrounding the blackmailer wasn’t the best, but he did prove to be a very convenient scapegoat in the end. I was wondering at the start how on earth Emmy was going to get out of this situation.

I enjoyed the writing style and the story. It flowed well and everything was tied off neatly at the end. The secondary characters were also interesting.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for giving me an ARC to review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Was I hooked by this book? Yes, I’m going to read the first book, and wait (im)patiently for the third one to come out.

Genre: Historical Romance