Thoughts on Lord of Scoundrels

This friends, is why you review books right away. Because I don’t really remember a darn thing about this audio book I finished it last Monday.

You see, I’ve been packing, and moving, and generally trying to survive work. While not the best time to try to read and review, let’s see if I can’t give this book a fair shake.

Overall impressions: it was good. I cranked up the audio speed though because the narrator was a bit laconic in her delivery, but her vocal differentiation worked well. The heroine, Jessica Trent, is the draw here. She has everyone’s number and will bend events to her will.

General Thoughts about this Romance Offering:

• Our hero, Sebastian Ballister, Marquess of Dain is a tough character to root for. He’s the damaged sort of male who is going to make the world suffer for his lot in life but when Loretta Chase is on, she can make this Alphahole type work. I begrudgingly found myself liking him and rolling my eyes at him the same way that his ladylove did.
  • He also has ISSUES with women, and that can make for a difficult read, be warned.
• Jessica Trent is the type of sterner stuff you want to see a romance lead be made of. Yes, the various plot points surrounding here can feel farfetched for even Regency romance reading, but I love her. She starts the book as a spinster bluestocking of no consequence by choice, she’s intelligent, sharp, quick witted, perceptive, and she has interests and (shockingly) a career plan. She grounds the otherwise audacious plot offerings.
• In the second half of the book Chase does the unfortunately unexpected for the genre and has her characters establish an honest relationship beyond the physical, and its one of the books many strengths.
• The always present but often unwelcome subplot problem: A note to authors from your very own faintingviolet – you do not have to string the McGuffin that was your meet cute item all the way through the story and have some sort of terrible calamity around it. There was enough calamity with the secondary plot of the by-blow son.
• When the big reveal about the son happens we aren’t subjected to pages upon pages of misunderstandings, but instead the characters have grown and developed their relationship and instead we get a chapter about dealing with the problem head on. Like grownups.
• This is book number three in a series, and the only one I’ve read so far. Malin has 5 star thoughts up about book two, Captives of the Night. #blameMalin 

I’m going to end this review by quoting Mrs. Julien, because she sums up the overall feeling of the book better than I’m going to be able to today.

“He takes one look at Jessica and wants to lick her from head to toe. She takes one look at Dain and wants to rip all his clothes off. LET THE GAMES BEGIN! It’s beauty and the beast meets reformed rakes make the best husbands meets tortured hero, with a side of moustache twirling by minor characters trying to ruin everyone’s day.”