If I hadn’t needed to write a review for it, I probably wouldn’t have finished Tempt the Devil, Anna Campbell’s latest. Though it improves markedly from the first few chapters as it went on, it still has a number of flaws.

Olivia Raines is London’s most famous courtesan. For that reason alone, Julian, Earl of Erith, decides to make her his mistress while he’s in London. Erith has returned from a diplomatic post in Vienna for his daughter’s wedding, and always has a mistress wherever he is, and she always has to be the best. Olivia, though, is not what he expected. On the night of their first encounter, he discovers that she gets no sexual pleasure from her partners whatsoever, and that everything she’s known for is faked. He thus decides that he will be the one to bring her pleasure.

This leads to something of an obsession; Erith follows Olivia when he sees her leaving her house (he assumes she must be visiting a lover (because there’s absolutely no other reason for her to be getting into a carriage), and discovers she has secrets of her own, including a secret teenage son and a horrific past that led her to selling her body. Meanwhile, Olivia becomes fascinated with Erith as well; he stirs feelings in her she’s never felt. As they fall for each other, though, they face the biggest obstacle to their relationship: society.

In the beginning, Olivia and Erith were two of the most antagonistic characters I’ve read in a long time. They bait each other, provoke each other, challenge each other, and insult each other. It wasn’t in a good way, either; this hostility wasn’t a sign of underlying sexual tension. To me, it read more hostile and domineering, and some of it made me uncomfortable. Similarly, Erith seemed absolutely ridiculous in his jealousies, bordering on abusive. I read, in disbelief, as he follows Olivia miles into the country, stalking her as she visits her family, and as he then makes drastic assumptions about the identity of her son – all based on seeing her leave her townhouse. This type of thing happens more than once, and Olivia has her token opposition before submitting to him again. The power struggle between the two evens out as the story goes on, but in the beginning, the relationship looks much closer to abuse rather than romance.

Campbell’s writing style also irritated me. She constantly misuses the word “although,” and has a habit of making one-line italicized paragraphs meant to emphasize some point she is trying to make.

Paragraphs like this.

This could work if used sparingly, but I got sick of its implied melodrama by the 15th or 20th time she did it.

To Campbell’s credit, the book improved as it went along. I didn’t hate Erith as much, although his emotional problem gets resolved so quickly that it was comical. I felt more genuine emotion between Erith and Olivia, and the ending is surprisingly good.

However, none of that could save the book for me. Though not quite as doomed as I first thought it would be, the romance between Erith and Olivia in Tempt the Devil still leaves a lot to be desired.