The Rogue Not Taken (Scandal & Scoundrel, #1)
Sarah MacLean
1 ratings • 1 reviews
The Rogue Not Taken (Scandal & Scoundrel, #1)
Sarah MacLean
1 ratings • 1 reviews
LADY SOPHIE'S SOCIETY SPLASH The youngest of the infamous Talbot sisters scandalized society at the Liverpool Summer Soiree, striking her sister’s notoriously philandering husband and landing him backside-first in a goldfish pond. And we thought Sophie was the quiet one… When she finds herself the target of very public aristocratic scorn, Sophie Talbot does what she must to escape the city and its judgment—she flees on the back of a carriage, vowing never to return to London…or to society. But the carriage isn’t saving her from ruin. It’s filled with it. ROYAL ROGUE'S REIGN OF RAVISHMENT! The Marquess of Eversley was espied descending a rose trellis—escaping an irate Earl and his once-future countess. No lady is safe from Eversley’s Engagement Ending Escapades! Kingscote, the Marquess of Eversley, has never met a woman he couldn’t charm, a quality that results in a reputation far worse than the truth, a furious summons home, and a long, boring trip to the Scottish border. When King discovers stowaway Sophie, however, the trip 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, and suddenly opposites are altogether too attractive…
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I like Sarah MacLean, but this book for me was a slog.
Sophie was weirdly feisty and boring: she has a couple of moments of being cool: pushing the Duke and standing up for her sister, and defending people on the road when there is a gun-man, and drinking with all the guys in the stable too. But most of the book she is extremely prim and proper and scandalized when King isn't a perfect gentleman. How can she be someone who bribes a footman and wears his clothes but also be so whiny?
Both the characters are VERY in their own heads, having constant over-analyzing conversations about what the other person meant and how they must feel. This just bogged things down for me, I was feeling for much of the book that things needed to pick up and that there also needed to be a bit more sexual tension/sexy scenes. (I mean, like every conversation they had while we were in Sophie's POV she followed up every comment of King's with 3+ sentences of "oh, what did he mean? Did he mean this? If that's what he meant, oh I feel __! And is it okay to feel that way? But what if he meant that? Oh, I don't know how to feel or what to think or what I want!")
It picked up toward the end, though I don't really understand how a carriage accident killed the girl? And King witnessing the carriage tip again at the end was very eye-rolling and just for him to be scared I guess--he'd already decided that he loved her and was going after her, he didn't need to "realize his feelings in the moment" so I don't get the point of it. Unless carriage tipping and accidents were super common in the 1830s?
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