TO LOVE A THIEF

Author: Julie Anne Long ISBN: 0446614262 4/2005 HISTORICAL Publisher: WARNER FOREVER
Time Period: Regency

ENSNARED! Lily Masters has a gift for picking pockets and telling stories-skills that come in handy for surviving London's slums. She's proud of providing for herself and her lively young sister, Alice, and she's never been caught. Well, there's always a first time. ENTICED! Gideon Cole is a brilliant barrister with an unfortunate weakness for clients who can't pay. His latest charitable misstep: buying the freedom of a daring, beautiful thief. To repay the debt, Lily agrees to his proposition: pose as the object of his desire and help him snare a wealthy bride. All he has to do is transform the impudent Lily into a diamond of the first water. ENTHRALLED! But the education of Lily could cost Gideon his carefully planned future. While she plays cards with his invalid uncle and Alice charms the servants, the honorable Gideon is harboring less than honorable thoughts. For sweet, stubborn, and sensual Lily has a way of slipping past a gentleman's defenses-especially when she's stealing his heart!

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

I knew when I read Julie Anne Long's first offering, THE RUNAWAY DUKE, that she was an author destined to become a favorite of mine. I wasn't wrong. What a delightful love story she writes in TO LOVE A THIEF, a romance that sparkles with touches of My Fair Lady woven inside a Cinderella fairy tale (minus the wicked stepmother and stepsisters). If ever there was a charmer of a romance, TO LOVE A THIEF takes the cake. It's fun, witty, filled with a colorful cast of characters, and simply pure romantic escapism at its best.

It's a joy to watch the transformation of Lily from pickpocket orphan to beautiful "Lady", all dressed up in silks and satin. But it's even more fun to watch her befuddle Gideon and his trusted sidekick, Kilmartin, as the two attempt to turn this diamond in the rough into a diamond of the first water. As they school her in deportment, dancing, and the dos and don'ts of the ton, the banter between the three becomes quick, witty, and sharp, with Lily's smart retorts and quick parries making me chuckle out loud more times than I can count.

Gideon, a straight laced Barrister with a "Master Plan" for his future, ends up doing a bit of metamorphosis on his own. While Lily has lived in a day-to-day world, filching watch fobs and gold buttons to support her 10 year-old sister, Gideon's life has been a study of tight rules, society's strictures and his own self-imposed rigidity. However, he's about to discover through Lily that even his most carefully laid plans and the goals he aspires to might not be what he really wants in the end.

Ms. Long's fluid writing style and the memorable personalities she creates, make TO LOVE A THIEF a faced-paced, one sit read. Her knack for placing secondary characters and creating interesting situations in just the right spots, prevents the storyline from ever being boring; there's no skipped pages or paragraphs, by the reader, to be found.

TO LOVE A THIEF is one of the most fun Top Pick awards I've given out this year. It's an entertaining and feel-good romance that I highly recommend.

Nancy Davis