I went back and forth as to whether I liked Victoria Alexander's His Mistress by Christmas.  The Publishers Weekly review calls it "inconsistent," and I think that's probably the best way to describe it -- and to explain my vascillating opinion of the book.

On one hand, the story seems promising.  Having been raised by independent-minded women, Veronica is an extremely liberated Victorian widow who values her independence.  But she is lonely, so she decides that the best option is to take a lover, without the loss of rights and independence that she would suffer if she married.

Great idea, right?  But the characters constantly act contrary to their, well, characters.  Sebastian, the reputed ladies man she chooses as her lover, apparently suffers love at first sight and decides he must marry Veronica, despite his long history of love affairs.  Veronica tries to seduce him, he rebuffs her and proposes, she turns him down.

Seems promising, right?  Wrong.  It became apparent that there was an ulterior motive here: No sex before marriage.  (That might have something to do with the fact that the book was put out by a Christian publisher, but still, it's not much fun in a romance novel.)  So about the same time as Sebastian decides to seduce Veronica and then convince her to marry him, she decides to hold out.

They finally get down to business in the last 20 or 30 pages of the novel, once they've both agreed to marry, of course -- and it's a pretty steamy scene, possibly in an attempt to make up for the lack of action earlier on.  Sometimes I really liked the endless plotting and teasing that went into their little game, and other times it really annoyed me because it seemed like such a transparent message (sex before message = really, really bad).  But ultimately, the biggest problem was that the characters and their decisions just weren't believable.  I don't think a woman truly as concerned about losing her rights as Veronica initially was would decide love was worthy of sacrificing her independence, and I found Sebastian's abrupt reform hard to believe, too!