In Once Upon a Moonlit Night by Elizabeth Hoyt, kidnapped heiress Hippolyta Royle and skeptical traveler Matthew Mortimer navigate suspicion, attraction, and thrilling escapades on their way to love. Their sizzling chemistry makes this novella a delightful, adventurous romp!

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In this delicious offering from Elizabeth Hoyt, readers are thrown back into the Maiden Lane world and are once again reunited with Hippolyta Royle. Now if you’ve read the previous full-length book in this series, DUKE OF SIN, then you may be familiar with Hippolyta. She was the woman who Val kidnapped and wanted to make his wife before the heroine released her. So when I say that she’s been through a lot, I really mean it. The poor girl has been so strong though and I obviously had an immediate connection with her character from the very first page.

As we see her trying to return back to her home safely, she encounters another traveler named Matthew Mortimer. He’s handsome, intelligent, but also extremely wary of her. He doesn’t believe her when she says she is Hippolyta Royle instead he thinks of her as a beggar and an actress, trying to seduce men along the road and taking them for all he’s worth when he least suspects it.

And yet, he returns for her when he leaves her without clothes or money to feed herself, unable to bear the fact that she is alone. A romance blooms between the two, but for a short story, it’s quite believable. I will say that it took me a while to get into Matthew’s character simply because he was so mean to Hippolyta in the beginning. She’d been through some terrible things already that she doesn’t deserve judgment from a complete stranger as well. I felt a certain protectiveness towards Hippolyta’s character and that was why Matthew had so much against him in the beginning. And yet, by the end of the story, I was just in love with him as Hippolyta was.

So I would say that if you are thinking of trying this series, start at the beginning. You can happily jump into this story, however, you should read DUKE OF SIN first I think since that’s where Hippolyta’s journey really starts. I’m glad Elizabeth Hoyt took the time to write this story for her. I never thought I’d see her again, but now she has a HEA and I think out of all the characters in this series, Hippolyta was the one that deserved it the most.

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