Penny Shoemaker is a woman in a man's trade. She grew up making shoes, like her father and grandfather before her, but cobbling is a job for men. Two months after footpads killed her parents, she's finally building a trade of her own, in women's shoes, when the unthinkable happens. A rival shoemaker appears, claiming to have bought her home, the workshop, and everything inside.

Samuel Morrison is the bored second son of a minor baron. He's always thinking, and noticing, but it's only a party trick, not worth anything until he meets Penny Shoemaker. When he sees a rival tradesman evicting Penny from her lifelong home, Samuel quickly realizes something is wrong and vows to set things right.

Penny doesn't entirely trust Samuel when he offers to help her, but she has nothing left to lose. Samuel is just looking for something to occupy his mind, and if he can charm the pretty young woman into his bed as well, so much the better. As they begin to unravel the truth about her father's will and the sale of the shop, Samuel and Penny begin to see that there's more to each other than meets the eye.

I raced through the first half of WEDDED IN SIN. Jade Lee's descriptive writing really lets you follow Samuel's lightning fast thoughts as he notices, deduces, and reacts to everything happening around him. Working class Penny doesn't always know what he's talking about, but she can keep up, and that both impresses and arouses Samuel. All the characters are interesting, and the mystery of the forged will is well crafted and compelling.

The second half of the book seemed to drag a bit, in part because the mystery takes a back seat to Samuel and Penny's personality problems. She has anger management issues, and they both struggle with a certain amount of self-doubt, but the scenes where they confront those problems seem forced. When they finally give in to temptation, the setting and the scene feel contrived. That said, the resolution to the mystery and to the challenges keeping the two apart are very satisfying. It's like biting into a peanut butter cup and finding an area that's filled with marshmallow fluff instead. It's not bad, but it's not the full-flavored treat I expected.