The Dangerous Viscount (Miranda Neville)

Thank you, thank you, Ms. Neville, for answering my plea for a nerd hero! AND he's a virgin, who learns how to please a lady by reading 19th-century sex guides! The Dangerous Viscount is, in fact, the second book in a series centered on a bunch of literary collectors (the author once worked for Sotheby's rare book department). And in the first one, The Wild Marquis, the heroine is a bookseller!!!!! AIEEE!!!! I don't even care that the eponymous hero is another incorrigible rake.

OK, deep breaths. Let's see if I can eke out a plot summary through my excitement: we have Lady Diana Fanshawe, widow, member of an inconveniently unconventional family--inventor father, hunting-dog-breeding mother, little sister determined to become a diplomat. She's decided to marry again, and settled on handsome and titled Lord Blakeney, eventual duke (even though he's the Regency version of a dumb jock). Then she meets his bespectacled, socially awkward cousin, Sebastian Iverley. Seriously, dude is almost Asperger-y, prone to grunting in lieu of conversation, except when he's holding forth on bindings and folios and the like. She bets Blakeney she can get Iverley to kiss her . . . and we're off!

There's a throw-our-lovers-together twist I'm not crazy about, but I found this one almost entirely delightful. Neville is the funniest romance novelist I've read, and Sebastian is a dork girl's dreamboat. Thumbs up!