As comfort reads go, this one is near the top of my list. Every time I read it I groan, and sigh in exasperation, and roll my eyes at the dramatic hijinks of Maddy and Logan. And every year, without fail, I borrow it from the library and read it again with pleasure. Go figure.

Madeline Matthews was raised from birth to be an aristocrat’s wife, and has been more or less engaged from the cradle to an elderly aristocrat. If he were at least kind, she would obey her parents’ wishes, but her prospective husband is sleazy and repulsive. She returns to boarding school, her mind scrambling for ideas, when she sees a newsprint containing Logan Scott’s portrait, and comes up with an absolutely brilliant, foolproof plan: She’ll offer herself to the womanizing actor, get ruined, and thus scotch any marriage plans.

Logan Scott has no idea what to make of this beautiful, innocent girl who brazenly tells him she wants to be his next lover. He rebuffs her; she takes it with equanimity. He’s mean to her; she just keeps chugging along at the Capitol Theatre. Normally, this kind of plot drives me bananas, but there are three things that keep drawing me back.

First is the theater world. You don’t see it often in romance novels, and while Ms. Kleypas’ priority isn’t a historical depiction of Victorian theater, the setting is lively and solid. It unobtrusively provides a nice background to the plot, and is definitely a refreshing change from your typical ton balls.

Second is Logan Scott. Lisa Kleypas has written some of the most intriguing, drop-dead sexy, downright appealing heroes in the entire romance canon, and while Logan doesn’t quite come up to them, he’s definitely a big part of the reason that I keep returning to this book. All that repressed emotion and anguish, all that determination to withhold himself from the one he loves, and all for good reasons. You won’t hear me complaining that he should get over his issues.

And third is Maddy. I think the innocent eighteen-year-old is more difficult to write than one might suppose –age, inexperience, and innocence have to weigh against the promise of maturity and adulthood, and so many authors don’t find the right balance. I think Ms. Kleypas found a pretty good one in Maddy, who straddles the divide convincingly. Her later self-martyrdom gets a bit tiresome, but overall she’s a reasonable and sympathetic heroine.

I always get exasperated at Maddy and at the melodrama. And the book doesn’t have the emotional punch or narrative fluidity of Ms. Kleypas’ best books. But like many comfort reads, I enjoy the book nonetheless, warts and all.