Mr. Impossible, by Loretta Chase

Finally I was able to get my copy of Loretta Chase's latest, Mr. Impossible. The person who'd offered to bring it back from the US had to postpone her trip for a couple of months, unfortunately, so it took the book much longer than expected to arrive.

IMPOSSIBLE...
Rupert Carsington, fourth son of the Earl of Hargate, is his aristocratic family's favorite disaster. He is irresistibly handsome, shockingly masculine, and irretrievably reckless, and wherever he goes, trouble follows. Still, Rupert's never met an entanglement--emotional or other--he couldn't escape. Until now.

OUTRAGEOUS...
Now he's in Egypt, stranded in the depths of Cairo's most infamous prison, and his only way out is accepting a beautiful widow's dangerous proposal. Scholar Daphne Pembroke wants him to rescue her brother, who's been kidnapped by a rival seeking a fabled treasure. Their partnership is strictly business: She'll provide the brains, he, the brawn. Simple enough in theory.

INEVITABLE...
Blame it on the sun or the blazing desert heat, but as tensions flare and inhibitions melt, the most disciplined of women and the most reckless of men are about to clash in the most impossibly irresistible way.

Mr. Impossible definitely lived up to my (very, very, very) high expectations. An A-.

The relationship between Rupert and Daphne was a delight. Rupert...::sigh:: what a wonderful, wonderful man! I think what I loved best about this book was how attracted Rupert was to Daphne's intelligence.

It wasn't just that he was ok with her being so smart, smarter than he was, actually, even though, contrary to the image he had so much fun projecting, he was an intelligent man himself. He wasn't just ok with it, her "gigantic brain" was one of the main reasons he was so attracted to her, and that's just lovely.

These two were actually fun together. Their scenes together both made me laugh out loud and gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling, at the same time.

Actually, the entire book was fun, a perfect road romance, with plenty of adventure but more than enough quiet moments to avoid the dreaded sex-in-inappropriate-moments-while-on-the-run syndrome.

The only thing I didn't completely love about Mr. Impossible was the contrast between the tone of the romance and the casualness of the violence and death that goes on around Rupert and Daphne. It does drive home how differently Egyptian and European lives were valued, but I confess the light, breezy way in which some of the deaths were narrated (the gate keeper's, for instance), made me a little queasy.

Anyone know anything about Chase's next book? From the last scene, it looks like it'll be about the eldest Carsington brother, but there's absolutely nothing in the author's website yet.