User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
I am dying over how wonderful this book was. It was everything I wanted and more from a Lisa Kleypas romance. I loved Merritt and Keir so much. The passion and love between them stole my heart. Devil in Disguise is now one of my new favorite Lisa Kleypas historicals!
DiD is book 7 in the Ravenels series but I'm not sure why that is. You might be able to read it fine as a standalone but I would recommend reading the Wallflowers series first, because this book is the second generation of that series. Not a lot of Ravenels actually show up. Merritt, our widowed heroine, is Lillian and Marcus' oldest daughter and is in charge of her late husband's shipping company. Her newest business partner is Keir, our very first Scottish Lisa Kleypas hero. The connection between them is instantaneous and fantastic to read!
Keir and Merritt killed me in the best of ways. I was swooning over their romance, which does happen quickly, but then a wrench is thrown in that slows things down and evens out the pacing. I adored how gone both of them were over each other. Keir is a total grumpy sweetheart and it was too easy to love him. There's a bit of suspense in this with someone going after Keir, so in between the romance, mystery, and family drama, there's never a dull moment in this read.
If you loved Sebastian from Devil in Winter, I am happy to say you'll get to see a lot of him here! We even get a few chapters in his POV. I won't spoil anything, but I had no problem with the connection between Sebastian and Keir. Honestly, it was just a delight seeing the Wallflowers cast (well, half of them) again and I can only hope we get more second generation books in the future!
Merritt and Keir are perfection together. There's a reason why Lisa Kleypas is so beloved and why she's my favorite historical romance author. I fall so hard for every one of her stories – and heroes – and cannot wait to read more!
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GOODBYE WORLD. I'M READING AN ARC OF THE NEW LK.
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UPDATE: the heroine is Merritt Sterling, Marcus & Lillian’s oldest!!! And I’m just gonna guess that the Scottish hero is somehow related to Sebastian 👀
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GAAASSSSPPPPPPPPPP. A NEW LK!!!!
Could it be about Marcus & Lillian's kids?? Something entirely new? Honestly it could be about anything and I will still be dying for it.
Rating: really liked it
Fourteen years ago, I drove like a madwoman an hour away to my nearest B&N with a cranky teething baby to get my hands on Devil in Winter on release day. I read the book in one sitting and then turned back to page one and re-read it again. Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent became my book husband that day and has been ever since. Needless to say, I was thrilled to see him reappear in Ravenel’s series and to see his children get their own HEA’s.
Then this book happened.
First, I’ll address the huge Scot elephant in the room. Yes, the title is a huge tip-off but I was holding out hope that Lisa wouldn’t do me like this 😒The revelation came around the middle of the book but by then I already knew that no twist was coming. Sebastian had fathered a child before he met Evie. I can’t properly convey how much I hated this. I hate that he had a child with some random woman and that the child grows into a man who looks more like him than his children with Evie. I reject this with every cell in my body and plan to scrub this revisionist history from my memory forevermore 😆
It’s hard for me to summarize this book because it is such a mess. Merritt, Lillian and Westcliff's eldest daughter, meets Keir when he is doing business with her shipping company and it’s pretty much insta lust/love. I have no problem with this as long as I get some relationship development but there was very little relationship or character development. Instead, there was a lot of telling about how their relationship developed over one dinner. The reader is never shown any of it until they sleep together. After, he leaves her because he gets a serious case of I’m Not Good Enough For You. He changes his mind almost right away and goes back to confess his feelings. Yes, this is after one night together from which the reader only gets to see the sexy times. He gets seriously injured though by the invisible assassin and then the book turns into the Bringing You Back from Death’s Door trope that Lisa Kleypas is so good at. Sebastian brings him to the safety of Heron’s Point to recover.
This is now about halfway through the book when Keir recovers consciousness but turns out he has amnesia. Reader, I wish I was kidding. And it wasn’t even the fun full-on amnesia but selective amnesia where he only doesn’t remember Merritt or their night together.
I’m a pretty forgiving reader but this was so eye rollingly unnecessary to throw on top of the murder plot and the secret baby nonsense. Then everything suddenly gets resolved about 50% into the story the reader is told not shown who was behind the murder attempts and why, and who Keir’s real father is. We never see the murderer or the man behind the plot. The latter half of the book then turns into a Wallflower reunion between the Westcliff’s and the Kingston’s. I loved seeing Westcliff and Lillian again and seeing the two couples interact but this meant that Keir and Merritt are relegated to secondary characters in their own book. With all the external conflict gone in one swoop, there is only some flimsy internal conflict keeping the main story dragging along. Keir’s kind-of-sort-off amnesia gets resolved and then it’s Merritt’s turn to half-heartedly push him away for his own good. The good old We Can’t Marry Because We Are Too Different becomes the conflict. Shortly after, the assassin plot comes back and the last few pages are devoted to this.
All that being said, I still swooned pretty hard with Keir and even though neither him nor Merritt ever popped off the page for me, they had some pretty romantic moments. Sebastian, of course, stole the show every time he walked onto the page and there was a really romantic scene with him and Evie.
Maybe my expectations were too high and my annoyance at the secret son trope colored every aspect of the book for me. I get that LK wanted to join the two favorite Wallflower couples through their children but I don’t feel it was necessary.
The book would have worked just as well if not better had Keir been just a distiller from Scotland.
I won’t mention the miracle baby :: eye roll::, or the fact that Merritt abandons the company she was running, or the weird character revision on Sebastian where at one point he tells Keir if he had known about him he would have done anything to keep him. Excuse me, Lisa Kleypas? Do you need a re-read of It Happened One Autumn? The Sebastian before Evie would not have taken responsibility for a by blow. He might have placed him with family but raise him himself? Never.
All in all, I thought the book a disjointed badly paced mess with some pretty swoony moments here and there but it wasn’t enough to save it for me. It was almost a tepid copy of Hello Stranger with the Wallflowers thrown in. My most anticipated book of the year is the most disappointing. I'm pretty bummed about it. That being said I hope she brings her A game to the next book.
⭐⭐💫/5
🔥🔥🔥/5
Thanks to @netgalley and @avonbooks for the complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.
Rating: really liked it
Reread! My feelings intensified even more. This was a dream to read.
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This was glorious. I’m already thinking about rereading it this month. Probably within a few days or a week. And I already know it’s going to be better when I reread it the second time round
Lisa Kleypas has a knack for writing in a concise manner. She writes in a way that gets everything she needs to get across in few sentences/paragraphs without it being drawn out. Even though I would not mind it being drawn out. But there’s no need for it since it reads so complete.
The woman is just too fookin' skilled.
I really hope this isn’t the last book we are getting. It would be criminal for Lisa Kleypas to stop creating stories for the characters in this world.
My heart feels so heavy right now.
Rating: really liked it
[I've said this before and I'll say it again: the Ravenels series has been hijacked by Sebastian. Ms. Kleypas s
Rating: really liked it
The beginning was really boring, the middle hooked me, and the end was nice.
Not a bad book at all.
It didn't (for me) have the strongest start. Our hero is the owner of a whiskey distillery and our heroine has inherited her shipping company from her (now dead) husband.
Instantly, the two are attracted to each other and the sparks fly off the page.
And I just didn't care at all about any of it.
I haven't been 100%
wowed by the Ravenels, so I wasn't actually surprised by my lack of excitement.
And
then something is revealed. Something that perhaps I should have guessed because of the title of the book. <-- but I didn't, and it took me by surprise!
(view spoiler)
[Our blindingly handsome Scott turns out to be Sebastian (of Devil in Winter fame) St. Vincent's bastard! <--from before he met Evie, of course.
And he (with Evie's knowledge) has been scouring the globe for his son ever since he found out about his existence. AHHHHHH!
And Merrit is Lillian and Marcus' daughter from It Happened One Autumn. So we're getting a Wallflower Kids Romance! And I'm using way too many exclamation points!
(hide spoiler)]To say it made the entire book for me would be an understatement.
Now, I'm seeing a lot of people who are really upset in other reviews about the stuff I spoiler-tagged. I didn't even
think about that being a drawback to the story.
Here are my personal thoughts on it.
If my husband and I found out that he had a grown child (that he hadn't known about) who was wandering around out there from his single days? Well, I can't imagine it making a difference in our relationship. One more kid at Christmas, you know? How could that be a bad thing? It certainly wouldn't cheapen what we have and I certainly would want to make sure that this new (to me) child felt welcome in our home.
So this new addition didn't make any difference to how I see the characters of the book.
Everyone is entitled to feel the way they feel, though.
Anyway.
There is even a bit of OTT amnesia thrown into the plot just to thicken it up a bit. Overall, I liked everything once it started chugging along at the halfway mark because this one was less about the romance and more about the mystery and the cameos for me.
The couple was cute and I honestly have no complaints about them, but the main draw was the parents.
HOWEVER.
I do feel like Kleypas might be milking the Wallflowers a bit hard.While I do appreciate seeing all the old characters, I don't know how many more books I'll be willing to find charming just because it has an aging Sebastian & Evie in it.
I liked it, but if you are an old-timey Wallflower fan, you may want to check out spoilers before you pick this one up. Your mileage may vary.
Rating: really liked it
Sadly, I think this might be my least favorite book by my favorite historical romance author. This was just too much insta-lust, to the point that I actually wanted to skip some of the bedroom scenes. As for the actual romance, there’s basically none - there’s no relationship building at all. The only part of this book that I really enjoyed was seeing the characters from the Wallflowers series re-appear in this book. Otherwise this was pretty forgettable. The ending was perhaps the most anticlimactic of any book I have read in a while and I think the author and/or editor knew it. Why else would this book have an epilogue that doesn’t even directly have the main couple in it, only characters from the Wallflowers? They tried to throw a bone to her loyal readers, but it didn’t make up for how disappointing and disjointed this book is.
Rating: really liked it
i really like lisa kleypas's writing but i find myself cringing when a certain name for anatomy is used during sex scenes. makes me shudder every time. i appreciate the scientific accuracy but it takes me out of the scene lol.
overall this was a really sweet, pretty tame romance. i didn't enjoy it quite as much as chasing cassandra but i do think generally speaking that the romances in this series tend to improve in quality as it goes on. this is certainly a good romance for these uncertain times, it probably won't stress you out.
Rating: really liked it
[illegitimate son drama (hide spoiler)]
Rating: really liked it
UPDATE: I just read spoilers and i’m soooo heartbroken i wanna cry! why would she do this to my favorite couple? LISA KLEYPAS WHYYY. nobody asked for this. my body and soul refuses to believe this. i’m going to pretend this book doesn’t exist.
UPDATE 2 upon reading book: This book feels like a betrayal to loyal fans. Nobody wanted a story about Sebastian to suddenly find out about a kid NOT with Evie. It was so unnecessary to write this. It completely ruined the present perfect family dynamic.
Doubt Gabriel and Phoebe as adults suddenly want a half sibling. LK needs to stop introducing half siblings and then doing no bonding scenes between them (i.e Ransom and other Hathaways) Seems like a cheap mechanism to continue series and make money if she doesn’t connect the characters well to who they are related to.
How does this story in any way add value to former characters?? Sebastian knows nothing about Keir and suddenly we get a rewriting of what Sebastian would have been like before Evie. In no world would Sebastian have accepted Keir prior to Evie. Also Merrit was already married and happy—why ruin her happy life to write another story with her. LK could have picked other Evie/Seb and Lilian/Westcliff kids if she wanted their kids to marry so badly. I’m so annoyed! this book even ruins Devil in Winter for me. 😫
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HERE IS AN EXCERPT FROM DEVIL IN WINTER....where sebastian literally addresses not having illegitimate children so why the heck would LK do this to me????
“And she was not so naive as to believe that he hadn’t sired a few illegitimate children. He was a man of renowned physical appetites, and moreover he had never been one to worry over the consequences of his actions. Wondering if the same could be said of her husband, she asked cautiously, “Sebastian, have you ever…”
“Not that I’m aware of,” he said, understanding immediately. “I’ve always been inclined to use French letters—not only to prevent conception, but also to avoid the more exotic ailments that afflict the unwary.”
Excerpt From Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas
I AM FREAKING PISSED
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Original Review
THEORIES ———
the H better not be some illegitimate son of Sebastian’s. I swear LK better not fuck this up now, pardon my language.
my other theory is that the H is Sebastian’s son Rafael in an amnesia plot or he is deliberately trying to be undercover? That would also make sense of the title “Devil in Disguise”...but this would mean that Raf is MUCH younger than Merrit.
Also wondering why this is considered a Ravenel book if the main characters have ties to Sebastian and Marcus 🤔
I am also annoyed that Merrit and Phoebe are both widow stories. Idk why, they just don’t do it for me. What’s next? Isabelle and Daisy’s daughter also being a widow? makes me sad.
Lastly, how awesome would a Fox and Seraphina story be?? 😍 Hope that’s in the works!
Rating: really liked it
4 stars! There’s just nothing quite like a Lisa Kleypas novel. I’m glad the women has written so many books because I’ll be a little bit devasted once I’ve read them all.
Devil in Disguise is the story of unconventional widow Merritt, who ran her husbands business after he passed away. In some dealings with the shipping business she meets a Scotsman named Keir who runs a whiskey business, and the sparks fly almost immediately. Both are attracted to each other but recognize nothing but scandal can come from their feelings. Yet when Keir’s life is threatened by assassins, Merritt finds herself mixed up in it too.
I really enjoyed reading this book, there’s something so comforting about a historical romance by this author. I will say I stupidly did not realize it was in connection with the book Devil in Winter (I should have known from the titles) so I was confused on who some characters were at the beginning of the book. To my credit it’s been a minute since I read the Wallflowers series. I loved the story of the Scotsman and the widow, two people who shouldn’t be together and yet fall in love anyways. The first half of the book was really strong, and then the second half there were ome plot points that fell a bit flat for me. But this renewed my love of historicals so I think I’m going to binge a bunch right after this one.
Rating: really liked it
4 STARS 
Your name is carved so deep in my heart, a million years could no’ erase it.”
Oh Lisa, I see what you did with the title there, you genius you, and I love it!
With just a few words, she had taken ownership of him from head to toe.
Lisa Kleypas was THE author that began my obsession with historical romance, and it all started with Devil in Winter. So the particular plot twist in this book seriously hit the spot for me and just brought things a full circle. Also helps that we've had quite a few books in between, because I'm not sure I would have felt the same had I read this sooner. *sheepish grin* But I digress.
Now look, I'm not typically a reader that enjoys insta anything; insta love/connection mostly. And this book had it. In spades. But much such is the genius that is Lisa Kleypas writing, because just when you think you're neck deep in a super syrupy sweet romantic story, she turns it on its head. And this girl? I was so here for it.
It's impossible not to love Merritt from page one. She's a widow who now runs her late husband's shipping business and does so well. She's strong willed, smart, and has a heart of gold. It's hard not to love that about her. Keir MacRae is a rough around the edges whisky distiller who feels he's not good enough to be the dirt beneath lady Merritt's feet.
What I loved about this story was Merritt. This is a woman who knows what she wants and even though she has a skittish Scott who's determined to fight the attraction between them, she doesn't shy away from going after it. I loved this. But just when you think this is all there is to a book, an attempted murder and some amnesia get thrown into the mix and suddenly you have the plot twists to beat all plot twists. Someone wants Keir dead, my beloved Sebastian makes a lengthy cameo, and I can't put the book down.
The first 30% of this book was a bit slow, but then it took a twist and I couldn't turn the pages quick enough. There's a mystery, a stunning love story, and an epic revelation that I simply inhaled. I don't think I'll ever get tired of this world or the spin offs. If you loved Lisa's Wallflowers series than you'll definitely appreciate the cameos here. And if you loved Devil In Winter, you definitely don't want to miss this one.
It was a dreamy romance with steam and heart and I can't recommend it enough.
ARC courtesy of publisher in exchange for an honest reviewFind me on:
Rating: really liked it
No one is more sad that I didn't love this book than me. And that ending? Made me want to drop it down ANOTHER star. The romance in here was okay, but it was so insta-love and I really didn't care. I thought the amnesia trope would shake things up, but it really didn't. They were head over heels for each other after knowing each other for like three days. Where is the tension and longing and angst? There was nothing in here that made me really care for the romance and want to keep reading. I did enjoy how Merritt was a widow and was a businesswoman, but the plot was slow and read more like Wallflower fan fiction than anything. The only reason I was enjoying reading was for the glimpses of the wallflowers and their children. Lillian was so adorable and I loved her interactions with Merritt (her daughter). What I did love was what Merritt confessed to Keir and how amazing and understanding he was. But then the epilogue had to go and just take it all back?? What was the point if that was going to be in the epilogue? Yeah, not cool. So overall this romance was pretty boring and had nothing I really loved.
Rating: really liked it
*3.75stars*
Yes, I did read the book but it wasn't the 5 star read I was expecting? Anyways-Still enjoyed it, LK will forever be my queen.
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I can read a hundred stories about wallflower kids but is anyone else sitting here like- what are Simon and Annabelle up to?
Rating: really liked it
Prior to starting this book, I've always wished for LK to write a book about Sara & Derek's grandchildren. Like if the Westcliffs and St. Vincent's's got one, they have to have one too.
But now I changed my mind. Stay away from this couple. Don't ruined it for me.
Anyway, I don't know what to feel about this book. I kinda want to say I'm disappointed but then again, I figured I will be disappointed from the early reviews.
Merrit Sterling, Lord Westcliff's daughter, is a widow in charged of her late husband's shipyard company when one day a burly Scot walked off the ship and right into her arms.
It was an okay story though; and not that memorable either. The highlights of the book were the wallflowers and their spouses, which is not how it supposed to be. When the main couple's romance didn't even grab my attention, then it truly got some issue. Their romance is so lackluster. They barely even spend time together, and then (view spoiler)
[he suddenly has a selective amnesia and didn't remember their night together. (hide spoiler)] wtf
And let's talk about that anticlimactic ending. It was resolved so easily and out of frame. Suddenly the bad guys killed each other and there you go. There's your ending.
I would just like to say,
bullshit.
Rating: really liked it
Edit: Meerut is Lillian and Marcus’ oldest child and it is thought that the hero is related to Sebastian because of “devil”!
Edit: Oh, no! I hate stories with widows :(
Oh my goodness!!! I am so excited! And equally curious! Will this continue onto the Ravanel storyline or be a completely book and a start to a new series? Who knows?
Does anyone have any ideas or know anything that I don’t? I am highly anticipating this book, although a year is going to be a hard time for me! It’s Lisa Kleypas, though, so you know it’s going to be amazing! Yayayayay! 🥰
