Amity Doncaster is believes herself to be a worldly-woman.  The time she spent learning at her doctor's father's side and the years of solo international travel have uniquely prepared her to rescue a gravely wounded Benedict Stanbridge when she finds him bleeding out in dark alley in small Caribbean island just feet away from their ship.  They spend many hours together in conversation during their journey, and part after sharing one kiss.  Amity returns to London and Benedict continues on to California hoping to track down the man who attacked him. Rumors about their ship-board relationship spread upon her arrival to London, she takes the rumors in stride, only concerned that the rumors might delay the publication of her travel guide for young ladies.  She is only ruffled after serial killer called the Bridegroom, attempts to kidnap her and kill her.  Her deft use of her deceptively lethal fan saves her, and allows her to escape.

Benedict arrives back to London just in time to discover Amity at the center of public fascination once again, with lurid tales about her brush with death on the front page of all the papers.  He persuades a very disgruntled Amity to a fake engagement, in order to restore her reputation and give them greater freedom to investigate together who the Bridegroom might be and why he chose to target Amity.

Otherwise Engaged was occasionally funny, occasionally suspenseful but the espionage and serial killer plot were too neatly tied up in somewhat ludicrous way. The connection between the plots came out of nowhere, and I honestly felt I must have missed a chapter because, the conclusions and deductions the pair agreed on seemed so far-fetched. It soured me on what had been quite the enjoyable romance up to that point. I liked Amity's cool composure and Benedict's firm desire that Amity really know him to be a staid engineer he is.

I was particularly engaged on the secondary romance of Amity's widowed sister, Felicity and Detective Logan and I wished we had seen more of their story. 

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