When Miss Felicity Wilcox’s uncle gambles away the estate, she decides to disguise herself as a ghost to rid her home of the handsome new owner. Except James Collington doesn’t scare easily, and haunting his nights is turning out to be far more amusing mischief than she ever would have guessed. With everything to lose, these two adversaries can’t allow their hearts to rule—or can they?
James Collington wants to pay off a debt after his brothers death and restore the family name and estate. In order to do that he has been running a bodega in Spain and is finally seeing the proceeds of the sales of the sherry. He also won an estate while gambling that he plans to fix up and sell in order to get the rest of the money owed on the debt. He already has a buyer for the estate and is anxious to have him take over.
When he arrives in town on his way to Tethering (the estate he won) he accidentally runs in to a lady by the side of the road. She entrances him and they share a sweet, flirtatious bit of time together before he had to leave. He’s a bit shocked when he finds out that the woman he found so charming turns out to be Felicity Wilcox who was turned out of Tethering after her uncle gambled it away. He still finds her enchanting, even though she becomes a pain in the arse, and can’t figure out why he doesn’t get more upset at her antics. He does want her to stop as he doesn’t want rumors to start with the servants that will get back to the possible buyer he has lined up.
Felicity is determined to get Tethering back to her family. She’s contacted a lawyer to look into the transfer and she will stop at nothing to get James gone. Though James is friendly and congenial and quite likeable she still wants him gone. She decides that she’ll make up a story about a ghost and then BE the ghost. James isn’t fooled, though she thinks he is and that doesn’t work out. She then decides to make him look bad during a house party by acting like she’s the local trollop who has spent time with James. During this time her father is finally deciding that he’s done wrong by her and that he should marry her off – even though she decided years ago that she would never marry – because she’d already lost her virtue. The man who took her virginity wants to marry her (3 years too late, imho) but she wants nothing to do with him either. When she falls in love with James she realizes she can get the guy and the house. Little does she know…
This was, overall, a very cute story. I really liked James and his sense of humor, sense of family and his determination. Not to mention the unending supply of patience he had when it came to Felicity. I do think that he should have come clean to Felicity way before he did about the plans for Tethering but I could forgive him for that.
Then there was Felicity. Her heart and motivations were in the right place, and I could see why she would want her family home back – especially after finding out about a deathbed promise to her mother. The facts were though that it became completely out of her control and she wouldn’t accept that. The steps she took to get James out of the house should have been fun and funny but I thought they were immature and quite ridiculous. Later in the story she seemed to come into her own and matured greatly through different experiences. I very much liked her character by the end of the book.
The romance between Felicity and James was pretty great. It certainly wasn’t typical with Felicity running around pretending to be some ghost but Ms. Greenwood really did a great job making their encounters sweet yet sensual and intense.
Overall the story was a good one. I enjoyed Greenwood’s writing and look forward to reading more from her in the future.
Rating: 3.75 out of 5
Emily Greenwood
