Here we go — my first serious foray into the romance genre! I picked up Lisa Kleypas’s A Wallflower Christmas this past December, wanting to read a holiday-themed novel to get me in the spirit. After some light research, I realized my sister andI had inadvertantly stumbled into a full-blown series — and just read the final book! That’s what I get for not looking it up on LibraryThing first. Regardless, I picked up Kleypas’s Secrets of a Summer Night, the first book in the Wallflowers series — and loved it!

Annabelle Peyton has a serious problem — after the death of her father and the collapse of the family’s finances, she, her mother and brother Jeremy are in a desperate situation. In her mid 20s, still unmarried and part of an illustrious group of “wallflowers” who seem to be shunned by the upper echelons of English society, beautiful Annabelle has some hard decisions to make: will she continue to attempt to snag the affections of a mawkish, geeky lord, or is she doomed to become the well-paid mistress — and unwed maid — of another?

Enter Simon Hunt — the wealthy, handsome and charistmatic businessman who remains on the outside of well-to-do British society himself. While Annabelle and fellow Wallflowers Lillian, Daisy and Evie hatch a desperate plan to win the attentions of a wealthy, if timid, lord at the estate of Lord Westcliff, Simon has plans of his own — namely, to finally win over Annabelle, a woman he’s admired for years. Annabelle is used to deflecting Simon Hunt’s attention, however — until she’s forced to admit there’s something tender to him she hadn’t perceived before.

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