Book Review: A Heartless Design (Secrets of the Zodiac, #1)

Author| Elizabeth Cole
Edition| Kindle eBook
Genre| Historical Romance
Publisher| SkySpark Books
Rating| 4 Stars

This is my first foray into historical romance.  All of the sudden I had a craving for this kind of book so I went on the kindle store and took a ton of the free ones.  I was then left to try and decide which I wanted to read most.  Having no experience in this field I chose this book based solely on the cover.  And I don't think I could have chosen better.

A Heartless Design follows Cordelia, who masquerades as Lear, an engineer, and Sebastien, a spy working closely with the crown.  They cross paths as he searches for the designs of a new type of ship, one Cordelia designed.  He's not the only one searching: enemies of England are also on the hunt and it soon becomes a high stakes operation.

I don't have anything to compare this to directly.  I plan to quickly move through other books of this genre, including the rest of this series, but until then, this will be the template of all things in a good historical romance novel.  It was short and sweet, hitting everything I like in a book.  The writing was good, the plot smart and kept me laying in bed flipping pages long into the afternoon.  The romance and the characters were believable and I felt transported to that time with only a few deft strokes of the pen.

Books in this genre often come with the idea that they're full of steamy scenes.  While there was one smack in the middle that stole the show it wasn't so full of them that I would consider it erotica.  I'll be honest, I like a good sex scene, but when something turns into 50 Shades of Gray and they're going at it every couple chapters, I lose interest.  A Heartless Design kept me interested and entertained the entire time, which is all I can ask for.