The Perfect Rake by Anne Gracie

Cheryl Sneed's review is mostly on target with what I thought about the book. I picked this up yesterday at Barnes and Noble - it was Jay's fault I was there. bad jay bad bad. Anyway as I picked it up to put aside with the other hundreds of newly purchased books to be read I turned to the back to read the author profile, which lead to reading the last page (yes gasp in horror) which lead to me randomly opening the book to read a few pages (yes gasp again). It was a short scene with the heroine and some random exmistress. The scene was amusing and the hero just caught me. I am not much on humor in my romances. The madcap regency romps aren't much my thing but this does have something of that flavor with really good writing thrown in. And as much as I like steam I love good banter. Give me creative, witty banter between two well drawn likeable characters without treating me or the characters like we are stupid and I am sold. The rake here is a rake's rake not a fake rake but he is a REFORMED rake from the moment he meets the heroine, uh unless you count trying to seduce the heroine. Hee so I guess that makes him the perfect rake ;). I don't really like to read about 'beating' in books - child, wife, kittens whatever. And not because it is ugly, which it is and not because it is a true fact of life, which it is. But because it is rarely done well. It is a hard plot point to have in a book, how do you write it without making it over the top? How do you write it without making it offensive? How do you write it and keep the romance in a novel? Because it is offensive, it is over the top and most of all it isn't romantic but it is a fact of life and it does happen. And for the most part it is readable in The Perfect Rake, even when your opening scene is a young girl getting the shit beat out of her by a man who do deserves to die, slowly and painfully. Cheryl talks about a 'schizophrenic aspect' to the book, which I agree is there. But I think it worked. The opening is a different world than when the girls escape to London. And the end, well I think it speaks to the type of life Prue has had at home. I would grade it more a A- than B- because my only real beef with the book is the sex. I generally don't like for it to be shoved in at the end as almost an after though or a way to make the reader happy. The fade to black thing will piss me off, so it was better than nothing ;). If the author were to sit down with me and ask me my opinion, I would move the 'finding Phillip' and everything after it up about 20 pages and expand on the end. Uh but no one is asking me. If you read it, do let me know how you liked it! Tara if you can stand one more regency ;), I think you might like this one. Now I need to hunt down her back list.