Brigitte Knightley
Little Brown
7 July 2026
336
Paperback
Romantasy
Bought Copy
Osric is a member of the Fyren Order, a guild of assassins who gleefully murder for money. Aurienne is a Haelan, a scholar-healer whose Order’s motto is Harm to none. Clear-cut absolutes separate them: good and bad, right and wrong, light and dark . . .
Until they don’t.
When Osric first bribed Aurienne to heal him, he never imagined those lines would begin to blur. But every healing session draws them closer together. He finds himself developing unwanted feelings for Aurienne as her capable hands heal his body—and his heart.
Aurienne’s perfect life has been flung into chaos in the form of a devastatingly handsome assassin. She should be in her research lab, not illicitly healing a Fyren every full moon—nor wrestling an attraction to him that threatens to slip into something else.
Things go superbly sideways when Osric and Aurienne discover more about the deadly Pox deliberately unleashed through the Tīendoms. The plague may be the work of another Order—an Order far nastier than either of them can handle.
As the lines between Osric and Aurienne continue to blur, the balance between peace and war, and love and hate, trembles, shifts, and hinges on a heartbeat.
It's no secret that I LOVED The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy and so I had been looking forward to its sequel for months. The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy was not a disappointment. I had worried it might not live up to its predecessor, but it definitely did. Once again I was laughing aloud at the snarky humour while also still rooting for Osric and Aurienne on the romance front. The slow-burn of book one gave way to consummation of their relationship in this second volume (in some very imaginative scenarios -- I will never now be able to attend the opera without thinking of a certain scene) and yet there was still more drama to come and more danger to face before the story concluded in what, to me, was a pleasing and believable way. This is a duology that will absolutely maintain a permanent home on my shelf and which I can see myself wanting to reread when occasion allows. I would not hesitate to pick up any future works by this author as well. As with book one, this one gets 5 stars from me.
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