Ye Olde Naughty Sex Club reigns supreme in A Touch Wicked, a perfectly okay historical romance with a few plot issues that keep it from recommendation levels. But if you can turn your brain off during several segments of the plot, it might work better for you than it did for me. (Note, this is a reissue of a book originally published in 2018 – Ed.)

Emma Dumont’s sister, Isabel, has been mysteriously kidnapped from her Parisian dwelling, leaving behind a wrecked room. Emma has only one clue – the word “masquerade” – and that her sister may be in London. Thus, she installs herself in the household of James Grey, The Earl of Kent, as his bluestocking libertine sister Alexandra’s companion, to figure out what’s happened to Isabel. Emma assumes the name Miss Clark, claiming she worked for the Duke of Southampton (in reality, she and Isabel are his by-blows, the result of his liaison with his late French mistress). Complications immediately ensue, as Emma is instantly attracted to her handsome employer.

James is also instanty attracted to and protective of “Miss Clark” – to the point of checking out her weak backstory for flaws (out of concern) – but he’s also expected to settle down and marry soon, so he decides to sow some wild oats at – you guessed it – a sex club for aristocrats looking to live out their anonymous sex fantasies. Hey, he’s going to be miserable, so why not? Emma, overhearing James talk about The Masquerade, realizes that Isabel must be at this very club. Donning a French accent, the name Tempest, and a black lace half-mask, she desperately searches for her sister and finds James instead.

Naturally, Emma and James become mightily distracted from their goals by, ahem, each other. But when their lies come unraveled, can love survive – and what happened to Isabel, anyway?

A Touch Wicked is, well, wicked heavy on the instalust. To whit – on page thirty-eight, James threatens to beat his brother if he harms Emma and he’s only met her once. By page forty-one, they’re already bantering about those ever-helpful volumes of erotica that always manage to exist in the libraries of noblemen. By page seventy-one, they’re boning, but it takes a very long time for James to figure out who Emma is, even after he has literally been inside her. Where’s the love? Lust IS love in this one; they don’t have any conversations that aren’t about either sex or whatever peril Emma has landed herself in. At least the sex is kind of hot, though conventional for romance standards, but really, what do they have in common, aside from sexual exploration? Emma has a better relationship with James’ sister.

This is a tropey romance, with tropes that may feel anaemically worn out to readers by now. The sexy sexy private club where people cheat on each other recklessly; the boxing Earl who is a Hero of the Common People and Hates Being Penned in by the Requirements of his Title. Emma almost escapes this morass by being an authentically scarred woman who knows what the wages of lust are and what kind of game she can’t stop herself from playing. And many of the supporting characters are actively fascinating though underplayed.

The biggest problem here, of course, is that James is officially the biggest Romancelandia victim of Lois Lane syndrome ever, as he’s completely unable to recognize “Miss Clark” – whom he is also attracted to – even though she’s only wearing a lace mask and using a French accent when she’s playing Tempest.

Alexandra is, without a doubt, the best character in the entire book – she’s spiky and filled with humor and life and I was way more invested in the relationship between Alexandra and Emma than in the romance between Emma and James. Isabel, too, is out there actively being interesting and daring. But Emma is a bit of a bore, which makes A Touch Wicked a touch more conventional than it thinks it is.