Loretta Lynda Chase

While stranded in a Cairo prison, Rupert Carsington gets a chance for freedom when a lovely widow, who, needing him to rescue her brother who has been kidnapped, makes him an offer he cannot refuse and a passion he cannot deny. Original.

Mr. Impossible

Loretta Chase

Becky A

Mr. Impossible by Loretta ChaseI was really looking forward to this one — I’d already read two of the Carsington Brothers series (Lord Perfect and Miss Wonderful) and found them charming, but both of the people who’d recommended them told me I’d like Mr. Impossible best, because a) it’s basically The Mummy in prose form (without an actual mummy) and b) Rupert is a charming scoundrel.

Basically, the book is about a scholar named Daphne, who has to pretend it’s her brother who’s the genius because no one will accept a woman who’s smarter than they are. But her brother gets kidnapped as they’re studying ancient Egypt, and the only one around who can help is Rupert. She and Rupert set off together and through a series of adventures, they fall in love. He thinks her smarts are hot, she thinks his hotness is hot (and it is!), and they have lots of good sex. Hooray!

My one complaint is that it’s set up very clearly at the beginning of the book that Daphne is the brains, where Rupert is the muscle; Daphne is logical where Rupert is rash. But Daphne spends a lot of the book bursting into tears and missing the obvious, while Rupert picks up on clues and does the actual mystery-solving. While Daphne’s smarts showed through in her scholar-ing (that’s a word now), when it came to the plot itself, it was very much an applied attribute. That said, I loved her character growth as she came to terms with being smart and not being ashamed of it, and began to embrace who she is. And I loved the romance (which is, obviously, kinda key to enjoying the book). She and Rupert are delightful, and I would read a million more books about their adventures.

Natalie

This is the best romance novel I have ever read. 

So this is a review I wrote elsewhere and I think it's amusing so I'm cutting & pasting it here.

Okay, my favoritest favorite favorite romance novel right now is Loretta Chase’s Mr. Impossible. It is GEEEEEENIUS. Daphne is a brilliant hieroglyphics scholar and she married an old dude b/c he totes promised her that she could continue to be a brilliant person. EXCEPT HE LIED AND WAS A JACKASS AND TRIED TO SQUISH HER SPIRIT. BOOOOOOOOOOOO. Then he died (YAY) but she is totally skittish and sorta traumatized (AS YOU DO) and then her brother disappears--because everyone thinks he’s the brilliant scholar because it is 1820 and everyone knows that girls can’t be Egyptologists and there is hidden treasure (OF COURSE) and he has to help find it or else. And then there’s Rupert, who is kind of a big doofus (and an English aristrocrat, natch) and honorable and kind and the first time he sees Daphne she’s in full mourning complete with veil so he totally cannot see what she looks like apart from "female" and HE THINKS SHE IS TOTALLY HOT. The entire book is about HOW HOT HE THINKS HER BRAINS ARE. And they go off looking for her brother, they have hot sexytimes in a pyramid in the middle of a sandstorm (WHAT YOU HAVE NEVER DONE THIS?), an Evil White Imperialist Pig gets what’s coming to him, brother gets saved, Daphne gets recognized for being BRILLIANT, they live HAPPILY EVER AFTER AMEN.

"Solving the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics has been Daphne Pembroke's lifelong passion, one she has kept secret from everyone except her brother, Miles, who fronts as the hieroglyphics expert of the family. (Daphne's disapproving late husband believed that 'intellectual endeavors put too great a strain on the inferior female brain.') When robbers steal a papyrus from her Cairo home that may lead to a vast fortune and kidnap Miles as well, Daphne knows the crooks have taken her brother so he can decipher the hieroglyphics. To find Miles before his captors realize he's clueless, she needs muscle in the form of hunky Rupert Carsington, whom she springs from a local jail. Tracking the kidnappers takes Daphne, Rupert and their entourage down the Nile, where they face sandstorms, snakes and other perils."--Publisher's Weekly.

Lucy

Lorena

Ananya

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. Only 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. 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

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