Veena’s review of The Rogue Not Taken (Scandal and Scoundrel, Book 1) by Sarah MacLean
Historical Romance published by Avon 29 Dec 15
While her mother and sisters enjoy their notoriety, Sophie feels like a fish out of water in the ton. She hates being the center of negative attention, unlike her sisters. Her cause is hardly improved when she becomes the most notorious of the sisters by pushing her philandering brother-in-law into a gold fish pool in the middle of a high-society event. All she wants to do is escape and put the horrible event behind her, but, unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. I had a really hard time getting off the ground with this book and did a lot of stops and starts before I managed to read it all the way through.
She finds a footman with whom she changes clothes and stows aboard the Marquess of Eversly’s carriage. It turns out the marquess is on his way to the Scottish father to see his father after a very long period of silence and will it or not it looks like Sophie is on her way with him. King is not my most favorite of heroes. I vacillated between wanting to shoot him or bop him on his head. He’s rude, cruel, and sarcastic. I understand that he had a tragedy when he was a young man, but he definitely did not endear himself to me throughout this story.
Sophie, on the other hand, is a feisty young lady and a very typical Ms. MacLean heroine. She hates her scandal-ridden life in London and misses the simple life in the village where she grew up. All she wants to do is to turn back the clock and pretend that her father never found coal and became a peer. She has dreams of loving her childhood friend, the local baker’s son, and spending the rest of her life with him, running the bakery and possibly opening a library or book store.
She manages to head out of London with King and then ingeniously sells his custom carriage wheels to earn herself the price of a stagecoach ticket. When she and her newly made friends are held up, it seems that King comes to their rescue and takes her to a top-notch doctor in a local village close to the scene of the accident. Her trip to her childhood village and bakery on the way to King’s father’s castle is quite interesting and enlightening.
I had a mostly hate relationship with King throughout the book, and he falls pretty far when he packs her off in a carriage to London. All the love and kisses and apologies just don’t do it for me. I am a fan of the author, but if I had started with this book as my first example of the her work, I might not be a fan today.
Grade: C
Summary:
Lady Sophie’s Society Splash
When Sophie, the least interesting of the Talbot sisters, lands her philandering brother-in-law backside-first in a goldfish pond in front of all society, she becomes the target of very public aristocratic scorn. Her only choice is to flee London, vowing to start a new life far from the aristocracy. Unfortunately, the carriage in which she stows away isn’t saving her from ruin . . . it’s filled with it.
Rogue’s Reign of Ravishment!
Kingscote, “King,” the Marquess of Eversley, has never met a woman he couldn’t charm, resulting in a reputation far worse than the truth, a general sense that he’s more pretty face than proper gentleman, and an irate summons home to the Scottish border. When King discovers stowaway Sophie, however, the journey becomes anything but boring.
War? Or More?
He thinks she’s trying to trick him into marriage. She wouldn’t have him if he were the last man on earth. But carriages bring close quarters, dark secrets, and unbearable temptation, making opposites altogether too attractive . . .
No excerpt available.
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