Tuesday Review: No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

By Sarah MacLean

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: 

November 26, 2013

William Harrow, Marquess of Chapin and heir to the dukedom of Lamont, awoke one morning with no memory of how he had come to be in a room not his own nor any explanation of how he came to be covered in blood, the blood of the young woman who was about to become his father’s fourth bride, the youngest and the richest of them all. There is no trace of that young woman, Mara Lowe. There is no a formal trial, and there is no legal conviction. Nevertheless, the eighteen-year-old marquess is tried by a jury of his peers in the court of public opinion and found guilty of murder. His sentence is the loss of the world he has known and everything that defined him. He finds salvation of sorts when he joins forces with three other young aristocrats in similar circumstances and becomes a partner in the Fallen Angel, the gaming hell the four establish and other nefarious exploits. The genial, cheerful Marquess of Chapin becomes Temple, a man famed as the bare-fisted fighter who accepts all challengers and defeats them every one. The men who lose fortunes in the Fallen Angel can regain them if they can best temple. No one can.

For twelve years, Temple had fought, first in dark alleys, filled with darker characters for survival, and then in lower clubs, for money and power and influence.

            All the things he had been promised.

            All the things he’d been born to.

            All the things he had lost in one unremembered night.

Then one night a woman appears out of the darkness. Her name is Mara Lowe, and she has come to offer Temple absolution.

For twelve years Mara Lowe has been Margaret MacIntyre. As Margaret, she found a life with meaning and purpose and service. Thanks to her brother’s perfidy, the price of protecting others in that world is her own ruin. She has approached the man now known as Temple to offer him truth and a restored reputation in exchange for the money her brother has lost at the Fallen Angel—her money, money that she needs to support her two dozen plus dependents and a pig named Lavender. If the price she must pay is ruination, it is a price she is strong enough to pay.

But Mara had reckoned without knowing just how powerful Temple is, more powerful than he knows, most powerful when she senses his vulnerabilities. His hunger for vengeance is potent, but it pales in comparison to his hunger for truth, unvarnished and unreserved. And truth that complete may be the price Mara cannot pay.

From the time I finished One Good Earl Deserves a Lover, one of my top reads of the first half of this year, I was eager to read No Good Duke Goes Unpunished, the third book in MacLean’s Rules of Scoundrels series.  I wanted to see Temple’s innocence established, and so I expected to love the book in which this was accomplished. But nothing could have prepared me for how completely engaged I was by the story of Temple and Mara. From the beginning to the end, I couldn’t turn pages fast enough, and I may have bitten the heads off a few people (metaphorically, of course) who had the temerity to interrupt me while I was reading. I read several hundred romance novels a year and enjoy most of them. In fact, my critics would say I have a heart too soon made glad when it comes to romance fiction. But it is rare that I read a book that captures my head and my heart, my reader self and my writer self in equal measures. This one did.

I love Temple! I think losing reveals much more about a character than winning does, and some of my favorite stories center on heroes or heroines who lose everything and end up being very different people who are larger and braver and wiser than the person they used to be.  Temple, tortured as he is by the possibility that he really is the Killer Duke, nevertheless is already all of these things, and then he is faced with the a part of himself that wants not just to accept what happened, not just to forgive the woman who destroyed his life, but to love her and make her his. To describe the situation as fascinating is an understatement. As big as Temple is physically, his heart and soul are even bigger. It’s easy to love such a hero.

Mara is more difficult. Sometimes I don’t even like her. What she did to Temple seems unconscionable. And then I remember that she was barely sixteen and desperate in a world where women had little power at best, and Mara had less power and more pain than most. What she did required a wild, radical courage extraordinary in one so young. And her devotion to her boys and her pig is admirable—and amusing at times in a story so dark and intense that the reader is caught off guard by the humor. I may be among a minority, but I learned to like Mara.

If someone told me that I’d love a story in which the hero was a suspected murderer and the heroine the woman who framed him, I’d laugh in her/his face. Yet such is the wonder of MacLean’s craft in this book that I not only loved the story but rank No Good Duke Goes Unpunished among the very best romance fiction, not just of this year but of all-time. My recommendation is that if you enjoy historical romance with characters who captivate with every word they utter and every move they make, a story rich in countless shades of emotions, and prose that makes you want to linger over its glorious texture if only you were not compelled to keep turning pages, get this book in your hands by the quickest route possible.

And that embargoed epilogue! A brilliant if immensely frustrating (for the reviewer/reader) move. I pre-ordered a copy of NGDGU, and I have made plans to stay up and read the epilogue as soon after midnight as it downloads to my kindle. And oh, I long to read Chase’s book. No pub date has been announced yet other than 2014. I wonder how long we have to wait. In the meantime, I plan to reread the first three books and the previous series. For one think, I’m itching to trace the Miltonic allusions in the Rule of Scoundrels books.

 "Brilliant" is not a word I use lightly, but I would use it to describe this book. What's the last book you could honestly call brilliant?

Note: My apologies for being MIA last week. Life just overwhelmed me for a bit--family illness, bad news for friends, and deadline hell. I was not waving but drowning and just couldn't get to the blog. I'll do another marathon post week soon to make up for missing a week.

Tuesday Review: One Good Earl Deserves A Lover

One Good Earl Deserves a Lover:
The Second Rule of Scoundrels

By Sarah MacLean

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: January 29, 2013

Lady Philippa Marbury, fourth daughter of the Marquess of Needham and Dolby, is not the typical aristocratic miss. A scientist more interested in books and plants than in balls and clothes and on dits, she is brilliant but socially awkward. She is about to be married to Earl of Castleton, a man she accepted because he was good and kind and he liked dogs. He also admired Pippa’s intelligence and was happy to for her to use her knowledge in the running of estate. Also, he had asked her. 

Pippa has no illusions about how most people view her odd ways. Curious by nature and always more comfortable when she can act from full knowledge, she is concerned about her ignorance of the physical aspects of marriage. Like any good scientist, she believes that research will give her the answers she needs, but for this particular research, she requires an assistant, one who possesses the knowledge she lacks. Cross, the mysterious part-owner of the infamous Fallen Angel, London’s most notorious gaming hell, who is known as an expert in coitus, is perfect for the position.

Cross knows that despite her deceptively ordinary appearance, Lady Philippa must be mad. Nothing short of insanity could explain why the daughter of one of the most powerful peers in the land would be in his office in the Fallen Angel using words like “ruination” and “coitus” and demanding that he be her “research assistant.” Jaded as he is, Cross is shocked, and only his experience as gambler allows him to hide his reaction. He wants Pippa, a name he thinks fits her uniqueness, far away from his hell—for her sake and for his own. His awareness of her physical presence and the memories she evokes of the world from which he is an exile disturb him more than he’s willing to admit even to himself.

Cross succeeds in sending Pippa home with her ignorance of coitus unchanged, but an unexpected and secretive meeting at Pippa’s betrothal ball intensifies their interest in one another. Cross can’t afford the complication of Pippa. He has a sister to protect and a dangerous blackmailer to thwart. Pippa must stop thinking of Cross. In a matter of days she will be the Countess of Castleton. And yet . . .

The pairing of  a bookish heroine and a wounded hero with a rakish history ensured that I would find this book appealing, but it is Pippa who sent the novel soaring to the top of my rating scale. A misfit in spectacles who is not really understood even by those who love her, she is a total delight—remarkably intelligent, unconsciously funny, honest, and authentic. Cross has the perception to appreciate her, to see her beauty, internal and external. I sometimes find it difficult to imagine a hero and heroine really being happy together a decade or more past the final page. I wonder what connection they will find during periods when passion becomes more flicker than flame. I have no such concerns about Pippa and Cross. I believe their intimacy encompasses their minds and spirits as well as their bodies.

One Good Earl Deserves a Lover is a difficult book to categorize. The title suggests a light-hearted romance, and I appreciated the ambiguity of the “one good earl.” In many ways, the story is a romantic comedy. There are some deliciously funny scenes that left me laughing out loud—the initial meet scene in Cross’s office, Pippa and Castleton’s dance at their betrothal ball, Pippa’s interview of Sally Tasser. But there are also scenes of great poignancy and even darkness. The allusions to Milton’s Paradise Lost are sometimes amusing, a few times melodramatic, but in a real sense the owners of the Fallen Angel know hell is more than slang for a gaming house. The mix makes this story more complex and more richly textured than most romantic comedies.

This second book in the series can be read as a standalone since the story of Pippa and Cross is complete within its pages, but readers who enjoyed the first book, A Rogue by Any Other Name, will be pleased to see more of Penelope and Bourne. And Temple and Chase, the other two partners in the Fallen Angel, play large enough roles to leave readers eager for their stories. I’m happy to say that MacLean accomplishes the latter without making these characters seem to be nothing more than sequel bait.

I’ve read and enjoyed all of Sarah MacLean’s books, but this one is my favorite, at least for the moment. I admit that I am eagerly anticipating Temple’s story, No Good Duke Goes Unpunished, scheduled for release on August 27, 2013, and I’m even more eager for Chase’s story to see if my suspicions are confirmed. I suppose I have to wait until 2014 for that one.

Bookish heroines (and bookish heroes) are among my favorite characters. Do you share my fondness for such characters? Who are your favorite bookworms in romance?

Tuesday Review: A Rogue By Any Other Name

A Rogue by Any Other Name
By Sarah MacLean
Publisher: Avon
Release Date: February 28, 2012

Michael Lawler, Marquess of Bourne, was hardly more than a boy when he lost everything to Viscount Langford, the man who had been his guardian. All the young marquess had left was his title, a deep hunger for revenge, and a determination to one day reclaim Falconwell, the estate that had been home to generations of his family. Nearly a decade later, Bourne is far wealthier than he was before the card game that altered his life, thanks to a partnership in the Fallen Angel, one of the most exclusive gaming hells in London, and his desire for revenge has only intensified with the passage of time.  When he learns that Langford lost Falconwell to the Marquess of Needham and Dolby, who has made it part of the dowry of his daughter Penelope, Bourne sees his chance to act.

At 28, Lady Penelope Marbury is only a step away from spinsterhood, but her parents, especially her father, are  determined that her next step will be into matrimony. Marriage to a peer will disperse the scandal of a broken engagement that has not been forgotten even though it is eight years in the past. For the sake of her two younger sisters as well as for her own good, Penelope must be married. She has opportunities, but ever since she caught a glimpse of the love between her former fiancé and the woman he married (Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart), Penelope has wanted more than the proper match for which she has been prepared. She prefers spinsterhood to boredom.

When Penelope sees Bourne unexpectedly one night, she is delighted at first. The two had been childhood friends, and she has fond memories of Michael. But she quickly learns that Bourne, who insists she no longer address him as Michael, is very different from the light-hearted youth she once knew well. Bourne will marry Penelope even if he must ruin her to accomplish his goal, but he sees her only as a means of achieving his goals. He will not allow himself to be affected by memories or by the warmth and wit of the woman in his arms. Marriage to Bourne offers Penelope adventure and a life different from the one her parents plan for her, but Bourne’s heart is so consumed be his need for revenge that there is little hope that their “love match” will ever be more than a pretense.

A Rogue by Any Other Name is the first in a new series about four scandalous aristocrats who have created a new life for themselves as part of London’s underworld. It has the multi-dimensional characters and excellent writing that marked her debut series. It was darker than I expected, but the darkness is relieved by flashes of humor. Readers who enjoyed MacLean’s earlier series will doubtless enjoy this one as well.

I love Penelope. I found her an appealing character in Eleven Scandals, and even though I feared her night walk in the snow identified her as a TSTL heroine, I was soon captured by her honesty with herself, her vulnerability, and her willingness to risk a lot for what she wants. For much of the book, I thought Bourne was a jerk. The only thing that kept me from writing him off was the person revealed in the letters his younger self had written to Penelope. The letters—his and hers—were a delight, and I kept hoping that at least traces of the humor and heart of the Michael of the letters survived within the embittered Bourne. Redemption comes, but it was a long wait.

But Penelope’s instincts were good. I never found Bourne boring. I recommend A Rogue by Any Other Name to readers who love a tortured hero or a different take on the marriage of convenience story.  I look forward to the second book in the series, One Good Earl Deserves a Lover (November 2012) and to the other books that follow.

We seem to be seeing a number of series recently that move us away from ballrooms, house parties, and other conventional tonnish pursuits. Are you pleased to see the changes, or are you a traditionalist?