jacey | Booklog 34/2021: Darcy Burke: A Rogue to Ruin

Anne Pemberton, society miss whose reputation has been ruined by her fiancé being arrested on the day of their wedding, meets Rafe Blackwell, ex thief and illegal money-lender now in the process of leaving his past behind and turning himself into a gentleman.

Last year I read Ms Burke's A Duke Will Never Do, which is the story of Anne's sister, Jane and her romance/marriage to Viscount Colton. There is overlap of characters and Blackwell (in his moneylender guise as 'The Vicar' appears in that story as well. Some of the criticisms I had of that book overlap into this. Anne is a nice girl, a virgin, but she tempts and taunts Rafe into sex (explicit) with the kind of abandon and expertise a nice society miss would probably not know about. Rafe (and his sister) - brought up in the stews of London and introduced to a life of crime at a very early age - actually turn out to be the kidnapped children of an Earl, and much of the book is Rafe trying to regain his birthright and exposing the man who killed his parents.

I found Ms Burke tended to over-explain backstory from several other books set in the same regency world, which overcomplicated the beginning. There were times when I almost stopped reading.