Learned about my own reading preferences.
Thoughts on Luck Is No Lady
(May contain minor spoilers)
Luck Is No Lady is the book that made me realize how much I love books in deep POV… because that is not this book. I want to be inside the characters’ heads. I want to feel what they feel and understand why without having to be told.
I finished Luck Is No Lady feeling no more attached to the characters than when I started. Without truly being in Emma or Roderick’s world, occasionally their actions didn’t jive with their character. Like when Emma decides sleeping with Roderick was wrong and “breaks up” with him. In some cases, what happened felt like the author forcing it to happen rather than a natural choice for the characters to make. After her father putting the family into the debt situation in the first place by gambling, it doesn’t seem AT ALL in character for levelheaded and sensible Emma to gamble her way to get out of debt. Not without serious angst about her decision. (Which there was little.)
Outside of that, Luck Is No Lady is a decent historical romance for those who like getting outside the glittering ballrooms of London. With her father’s debts hanging over her head, Emma decides the only way she can get the money to pay the moneylender hounding her is by working… at a gaming hell.
Roderick is a bastard (by birth, not character) who’s pulled himself up and created a world for himself to exist in. While the ton may turn their noses up at him for his birth, they certainly come flooding to his club (and, occasionally, call upon him to give them investment advice).
Emma and Roderick keep running into each other in different places, and neither can really fight their attraction, even though they both try. (For the most part.) I always enjoy the “I want you even though I shouldn’t but I want you so bad” plot lines, especially for all the forbidden moments. Curious to see who the couple is in the next book in this series…
On a Book Bender 
I haven’t read this one yet, but I do plan to. I actually bought the book a few months again . . . and then didn’t read it. Why do i do this?
Anyway, I understand what you mean about being able to completely understand why the characters made their decisions. I definitely agree that it can be frustrating when a character makes a decision, and it feels more like a way to move the plot along than actually a decision that character would make.
It kinda bums me out a little, since this book would have been amazing had the decisions been fully believable.
I really liked this book, but I do get what you are saying about Emma and Roderick’s actions not always jiving with their characters. I have a major weakness for any historical that takes place primarily in a gambling club (The Devil in Winter/Dreaming of You Effect) so I was predestined to enjoy it. I do hope the next book is more your style.
Gambling clubs ARE quite awesome.