USA Today bestselling author Charis Michaels enchants with her Awakened by a Kiss series, taking our favorite fairy tales’ forgotten characters and making them the hero of their own story.

An heiress with a plan…

Lady Helena Lark has spent years trying to escape her wedding to the vain and boring Duke of Lusk. She’s evaded, refused, even run away. When her family’s patience runs out, they pack her off to London to walk down the aisle. But Helena has another idea: find a more suitable bride to take her place, even if she must look for a replacement duchess every day.

A bodyguard with a job to do…

Declan Shaw, better known as “The Huntsman,” is a mercenary who can pick and choose his clientele. After his last job, escorting a young noblewoman to France, landed him in jail under false accusations, he wants nothing to do with aristocrats or women. But the law isn’t done with him, and if he agrees to babysit a duke’s errant fiancé, the payout could make his legal troubles go away.

A most unexpected alliance…

When their worlds collide, Declan realizes that containing his new client is only slightly harder than keeping his hands off her. Helena senses an ally in her handsome new bodyguard and solicits his help. Together they must escape the forces that oppose them and fight for the fairy-tale love they desire.

This book had me hooked from the first sentence!! I love how it starts with us meeting our hero even though the main character is our heroine. Getting to know Declan first and getting to see just what Helena was up against before we ever meet her made me want to champion her even more than I
would have had we met her and her side of the situation first. This author has done a great job pair these two characters and writing a story where they both get to showcase their strengths and weaknesses and how they complement each other.

I really like how even though Declan is a mercenary by trade he hasn’t been made to be overly dark and brooding. This made it easy to fall in love with him just as easily as it was to fall in love with Helena. I really enjoyed getting to know these characters and I see so much potential for this to be the start of an incredible series. I only hope I am right and we get to see more from the characters in this world. Lady Helena Lark is in London staying with her family at the home of; Bradley Girdleston, Duke of Lusk, the man her parents have arranged for her to marry in spite of her best efforts to dissuade them of the match. Determined not to be forced in to marriage with a man who she cannot abide she comes up with a plan to find someone else to catch the Duke’s eye in the hopes that he will overturn the betrothal and set her free. To achieve her plan she makes an alliance with a groom whom she is certain is a spy for the Duke’s Uncle. Will their plan to find her replacement work or will they have to resort to desperate measures to finally gain her freedom and save her livelihood?

Declan Shaw started the day in a dungeon cell in Newgate Prison. In a matter of hours not only would be released from prison but he would be offered a job that will give him enough money to take care of his father and sisters for the rest of their lives. The only catch is this job won’t be easy. In fact it is the kind of job he swore he wouldn’t take again….. working with a headstrong woman. Unable to refuse the offer of the money or his freedom he reluctantly takes the job. Never did he expect the woman he is now responsible for to be the most beautiful, stubborn, and enchanting woman he ever laid eyes on. Will he be able to keep his head and see to his duties or will he become her accomplice in the plot to end her betrothal?

I had so much fun being immersed in this story and going on this adventure. I can’t wait to see how you all like it and to see if it is the great start to a series like I hope it is.