The Rogue Not Taken by Sarah MacLeanMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
A fun, exciting, arousing, humorous book set in 1833 about the daughter of an Earl falling for the heir to a dukedom. That seems to sound right, dukedom? Eh, whatever.
Complications, though:
1) The daughter of the Earl, Sophie Talbot, despises aristocrats, the ton, nobs, the top-tier – for many reasons;
2) That Duke heir, currently going by Marquess of Eversley, or more specifically ‘King’, has vowed to never marry;
3) The Talbot daughters, Sophie being one, are the ones society mocks, makes fun of, and finds great fun being snide to. Again, for reasons;
4) King has a very bad rake reputation – the kind that involves ‘ruining’ (a very popular word in the book, well more ‘ruination’) those about to marry.
The book is hilarious from beginning to end. The romance is great – it’s an odd kind of enemies to lovers. Odd because, as noted, Sophie wants nothing to do with those with titles; and King wants nothing to do with respectable relationships and love. Which isn’t why the start off as enemies, but lays the foundation – King is like the model and reason why Sophie hates the aristocrats, vain, pushy, thinking only men count and women have just one path, and they are expected to be happy about it (looking for, securing a husband, pushing out babies) – actually scratch that last part, since King never plans to marry; in turn, King has this delusion that Sophie is trying to trap him into marriage – just like her older sister did – trapping a different Duke.
I’m being weirdly vague. Let’s get more detail.
The Talbot’s have spent a lot of time and energy over the ages being miners (at least the Talbot’s father and grandfather). And have become fabulously rich from it – to the point that papa Talbot ended up being created a brand new Earl. Thrusting the family into the titled class. So they enter the marriage market (when they reach the right age) beautiful, rich, titled (well from a titled family), and . . . not blue-bloods, not ‘one of us’ (hence my comments earlier about the Talbot daughters and how they are seen in society – scandals -> luckily for everyone involved, the daughters just love their new place – and popping up in the scandal sheets, the gossip columns. At least all of them but for Sophie. Who hates it. Everything about it. She was ten when she was thrust from being the daughter of a rich man, but without the responsibilities of titles, into the responsibility of having to live up to society).
The book opens with Sophie at a party. It’s a theme party – the hostess has some Japanese fish that she just loves, so is hosting a . . . Chinese dress up party (‘no one knows what the Japanese are like, but China is so close, they are the same!’). Sophie hates it. The hostess, Lady something or other (it’s not important) spots Sophie and invites her to wander out and look at the fish. Sophie leaps at the chance to wander away from the party. Whereupon she finds well the book description says what happens (that description, by the way, isn’t the best I’ve seen). Sophie, the ‘quiet’ Talbot daughter makes a scene with all eyes on her, mocks the upper crust, which turn their backs on her.
So Sophie decides to leave – and doesn’t want to have to deal with her relatives, so wanders outside, thinking about how to leave. And is almost hit in the head by shoes. Then a man climbs down the outside of the mansion and lands next to her. That would be King. Escaping a woman’s room. And an Earl who is yelling at him. And so Sophie and King meet. And this is kind of where the enemies thing starts – Sophie has one of King’s shoes and holds it hostage, wanting King’s help in leaving. King refuses and walks away without his shoe.
Sophie, through various means, ends up pretending to be a footman (yes, dressed up in livery and pretending to be a boy), hanging off the back of a carriage. Heading to Mayfair (where her family lives). Only the trip seems longer than expected. And . . oops, the carriage wasn’t actually going that direction.
Somewhere along the way Sophie and King bump into each other again. Sophie keeps attempting to either leave on her own, or get King’s help. King keeps thinking Sophie is trying to trap him into marriage. And keeps helping her even though he initially had decided not to – though that actually causes Sophie problems in certain situations, but let’s move on, eh?
As noted – hilarious book. And there was a quite interesting and even riveting sex scene. I have a tendency to skim those parts – especially like here when we are talking about a heterosexual book, but I found myself reading every word. Weird, eh?
I’ve never read a book by this author before. I plan to immediately acquire the next book in this series (maybe all of the books in his series . . nah, just the next book).
Rating: 5.5
May 11 2018
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