Julia Justiss

Books: Romance | Historical

The Rake to Ruin Her (2013)

This is a straight up historical romance (with boinking) which hasn't been anything I've particularly liked in the past, but after enjoying Darlene Marshall's Sea Change, I thought I'd give it a try, since it was relatively inexpensive.

So.

It wasn't bad, but it also wasn't my thing.

I think one of the things I liked about Steampunk is that since it's a fantasy, I don't particularly expect anything about it to be accurate, so odd or inappropriate (for the time) language and mannerisms are easy to ignore.

I found that much harder to do in a book that is supposed to be historical. It mostly felt like two relatively modern characters had been set down in the past. That's not a bad thing per se, but it was distracting. Essentially, it felt neither historical, nor British.

Additionally, since this was a romance, I knew there was going to be a HEA, so once they got married, I pretty much lost interest in the story, since the rest of it was just really just tying up the loose ends of the HEA (they finally boink, she finally gets pregnant, she of course survives the pregnancy) so I basically skimmed most of the second half of the book.

I did like watching them work out their problems and coming to terms with each other, and the puzzle of how they were going to end up married, but after that, I mostly lost interest.

HOWEVER, I realize that this last part is almost certainly just my issue with the book in that type of story isn't to my taste, rather than a shortcoming of the story.

So, not bad, but not particularly my thing, either.

Published by Harlequin Historical

Rating: 5/10