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Adrian Alistair Rohan lost his faith, and now, a dedicated member of the depraved Heavenly Host, he loses himself in his only pleasure: the seduction and debauchery of beautiful women. Rich, charming and devastatingly skilled in the arts of love, he never fails in his conquests…until Charlotte Spenser.
Charlotte is facing a desolate, passionless future, none of which matters to Adrian, who imagines her a toy until better prey arrives. But beneath her drab exterior, Charlotte is a woman as enchanting as she is brilliant and, lured into Adrian's world, soon she becomes the seducer, and he the seduced….
Title: Reckless
Item Number: 9780778328490
Publication Date: September 2010
Number: 1
Product Description: Reckless
Universal Product Code (UPC): 9780778328490
WonderClub Stock Keeping Unit (WSKU): 9780778328490
Rating: 3/5 based on 2 Reviews
Image Location: https://wonderclub.com/images/covers/84/90/9780778328490.jpg
Weight: 0.200 kg (0.44 lbs)
Width: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Heigh : 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Depth: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Date Added: August 25, 2020, Added By: Ross
Date Last Edited: August 25, 2020, Edited By: Ross
Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
$99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub (9290 total ratings) |
Joe Bosko
reviewed Reckless on February 12, 20102nd reread of the book via audiobook in October 2020
This was a very good audiobook. I loved hearing the narrator give the characters life. Adrian is definitely a rake for sure. I loved that Charlotte met him head on. Lovely sexy time, and the rapturous joy of two people falling in love when it seems like a very bad idea indeed. Still a five star read for me!
*************************************
This veteran historical romance novel-reader asks this question: Do we really need any more rake heroes? No! They make me yawn and roll my eyes. But wait! What about Adrian, Viscount Rohan? Okay, maybe we can have a few rake heroes, as long as they are masterfully brought to life as Ms. Anne Stuart did with Adrian.
Yes, yes, yes! I know you will wave a hand at me and say, "You like all her books, so your opinion isn't really valid." I guess if you feel that way, you should probably stop reading this review. But, if you want to hear me out, then keep reading.
Once again, I was in raptures. Adrian is a man who doesn't deserve a woman like Charlotte. He knows it, she knows it, we know it when we're reading this story. Heck, Ms. Stuart knew it. But, I wanted him to have Charlotte so bad. Usually when the hero is an arrogant dog, I want the heroine to take his heart and stomp on it into a mushy consistency that resembles a tomato dropped from the second story of a building. Yes, I am vindictive like that. With Reckless, I was reading feverishly, anxious to see how this predator would get his prey. Adrian was so bad, in a very good way. I loved the cat and mouse game he played, how he stalked Charlotte into the garden of no return (at least if you wanted to stay celibate). I love bad boys, but I usually love the bad boys who are physically dangerous, not the skirt-chasers. But this is one bad rake that I really loved.
Another reason that I wanted Adrian and Charlotte to get together so much was because Charlotte was so in love with him. I thought she should have this man she pined for so badly (but always in a dignified way). I didn't want her heart broken, or for her to be used and abandoned, but I wanted her to have a little happiness in her life. In the scenes where Charlotte's loneliness and feelings were so poignantly displayed by Ms. Stuart's writing, I felt my heart clench. Charlotte didn't wear her heart on her sleeve, but Adrian knew and so did her cousin Lina. She was the consummate wallflower, awash in her isolation, in a world of perfect budding beauties; her on the wrong side of thirty, six-foot tall, and freckled, and penniless to boot. Normally I want to give the heroines who chase after the rake a good slap on the back of their head to bring them to their senses. But, in this case, I wanted them to end up together. Even so, I liked the fact that in this book, Adrian pretty much did all the pursuing; it was just up to Charlotte to surrender, and boy did Adrian make that an easy thing to do.
Their scenes of intimacy were so sexy, and so beautiful. It's hard to describe. You could think of it as sex scenes, but there was another level there. A connection that was forming between them that I oftentimes find missing with other books with this theme. Those stolen interludes were gratifying to me, even if I knew that their time together was illicit and might end badly.
I loved that this was just the beginning of their courtship. Adrian had to go through a sea change. It's easy to say that the right sex partner will change a rake's heart. I don't believe that, and I never will. But, I could totally believe that Adrian's time with Charlotte had changed him. Something clicked inside of him when it came to Charlotte. I wonder if she was there in his mind the whole time, but she was marked 'off-limits' for whatever reason; and when he saw her at the Heavenly Host Revel, he decided he was going to take what he truly wanted, and damn the consequences. Even though it was so wrong of him to seduce Charlotte, I ain't mad at him.
Being a stubborn knucklehead, Adrian does some stupid things in his relationship with Charlotte, and they both know it. I loved how Charlotte wasn't afraid to stand up to Adrian and tell him he was being stupid. She wasn't like putty in his hands, well at least not all the time. That powerful attraction between them held sway, but not to the point of idiocy; and, as I always demand in a good romance, it was mutual. If Charlotte was a fool for love, so was Adrian.
The secondary romance was so good. I loved Lina and Simon together. I wanted to cry for Lina and for what she'd gone through in her marriage, and how it had sent her into a very disagreeable (at least for me) lifestyle. I can't decide if I would have liked it better if she enjoyed it or not. If I don't like promiscuous heroes (and I don't), I definitely don't like lascivious heroines. With any topic that is not to my taste, it has to be done well, and it was here. I loved and respected Lina, even if I didn't like the choices she made. This character was in Anne Stuart's hands, and I was sighing and hoping that she would get her HEA. I loved Simon too. I liked that he called Lina on her nonsense, and she did the same for him. She opened his heart to love, and he did the same for her. They had a powerful attraction that opened the door for something more. I could totally see this couple having a happy life together, because they had a connection that surpassed the superficiality of their disparate roles in society.
I can't say there is anything I didn't love about this story. I mean, the suspense part wasn't that necessary to the romance (in my mind), although it tied into the story. I don't read romance of this sort for suspense, so I was more fixated on the progression of Charlotte/Adrian and Lina/Simon's romances than that aspect. I loved seeing Francis, now Marquess of Haverstoke, and Elinor, his Marchioness, again, who are Adrian's parents. I like how Francis is now a stern father, and Elinor a loving, indulgent mother. It was kind of interesting seeing Adrian getting called on the hot seat in front of his father. Made me laugh!
Gosh, I adored this book. It was a rapturous romance, and with a theme I usually don't like. I am just not into rakes. But, some authors can deliver a story of a rake and the good woman who turns him around so well, that I am in, hook, line and sinker. Anne Stuart is my favorite author of all time for a reason. I think I'd better shut up now. I may end just babbling incoherently about how happy I feel when I read one of Ms. Stuart's books. She only gets better (which is quite a feat), in my humble opinion. This one definitely goes on my best of 2010 list.
Jean York
reviewed Reckless on March 12, 2011See, I'm not all about the old bodice rippers. I'll read the new crap too.
***
OK, so I read it. Boring as batshit. I've even got a shelf for it now, thanks to this book. Quite a few have qualified in the past, but this one actually motivated me to create it. So thanks, Anne Stuart, for getting me off my procrastinating butt with this tripey tidbit of tommyrot and twaddle.
You might find it hard to believe, but I've actually taken a day-long breather before writing this review to let the vitriol ebb a bit. You should have seen me yesterday.
I'm not going to go into the plot. All the rave reviews here cover it from end to end. I'm just going to say why this romance was a massive fail for me.
The Heroine.
This romance was one of the breed that IMO have types, not actual characters. We have the spinster with self-esteem issues. She constantly laments her hair, her complexion (freckles!), her lack of experience with guys, her gawkiness, her height, etc. OK, fine, I can see why it would be such a big deal for a woman of 30 in 1804, but she deliberately dowds herself down and then has a perpetual pity party for herself with "Woe is me" inner monologues. Maybe I was expected, as a reader, to want to assure Charlotte that she's gorgeous and beautiful, but she instead struck me as pathetic and a whiner. She's the beautiful swan who thinks she's an ugly duckling, with as much depth as a two page fairy tale. Seen it. Read it. Didn't like it the first time. Believe me, I could have sympathized with her "plight," but she overdid it way too much.
Also, her character was all over the place. When the book opens, she's coming back from a meeting of some lame Bluestocking Grrlpower Society where the girls had a swearing lesson from a maidservant, learning how to say bollocks and arse and bastard and fuck and all kinds of other naughty words. Nothing about if this was super secretive or not. Yet when Charlotte finds herself cornered by the hero in a pleasure garden, she doesn't want to scream because she'll be the laughingstock of London. (Ain't that always the way in these Regency-set tales? I swear, Napoleon could have buggered England six ways to Sunday if he'd distracted London with a marriage wager.) Anyway, I thought that for someone touted as smart, she seemed awfully stupid.
The Hero.
Just so Charlotte won't be lonely in her corner (because she'd never shut up about it), I didn't like the hero either. This was my biggest pet peeve. Adrian is a Tell, Don't Show Rake. I hate those. I don't want to be told just how big and bad he is, and then find out that all the unpleasant stuff is now part of his past. If he's got a rep as "The Villainous Viscount," his exploits have been fodder for the newspapers, and is this looming ogre of amoral lust and every vile proclivity known to Man, then I will be more than mildly disappointed when his character is revealed to be when we first see him a reduced opium user (to the point where he rarely does it anymore), a former indulger of orgies, he never drank from the communal vessel at the orgies, and in all other ways is nearly neutered in comparison to his famed persona.
OK, I know I'm a dinosaur when it comes to romances since I prefer ye olde bodice rippers, but I like seeing those old heroes who are said to be rakes and bounders actually being rakes and bounders. Where a chapter opened with them banging their mistress and being a callous bastard, or at least actively unpleasant. But it's much easier for readers to love an asshole when you don't see his assholery in action.
A couple times when Charlotte is staggering around like a ninny in the dark, Adrian accosts her and seems to be pawing some nameless lovely, and I thought, "OK, now he's acting like what we've been told he's like!" but...no. He always knows it's her, just from her movements or something else convenient. Can't have him acting like an asshole where we can see it.
Add to that his "My dad loved my dead brother most but he died, so I'm the heir and a disappointment" sob story, and he was a huge fail on all levels. I don't want lost-little-boy-in-a-man's-body heroes that I want to cuddle. This guy would have had his lunch eaten by some of romance's Golden Age alphas.
I want a story and people who live on the page. The kind of characters that were in this book invited the reader to self-insert in order to make them seem fuller, and that's not the type of reader I am. I want the author to write the story, the whole story.
Verdict: Adrian was as much a big bad rake as this is a Hell's Angel.
The Secondary Romance.
I started off liking the secondary romance between Lina and Simon Pagett better than Charlotte/Adrian but that quickly took a downturn when, yet again, it became a battle of caricatures rather than actual characters. Lina the bright and gay whore disguising a psychosis about sex, and the reprobate-turned-vicar who is a sexual dry drunk. Their encounters were predictable and hit all the points at the expected times. The zingers were more of the "I know you are, but what am I" kind - both in this pairing and our main couple. Nick and Nora Charles can rest easy. Their banter is safe.
So because of its utter written-in-her-sleep dullness, this predictable subplot quickly became an obnoxious distraction. And since the main storyline was no great shakes, I knew I was screwed, glued, and tattooed.
Everybody knew everything about everybody, except...
Lina really hates Pagett, which screams "Wuv!" to everybody...except Lina. Charlotte really hates Adrian, even though she's had a crush on him for two years, and yet everybody knows that she is really in love with him, except...Charlotte. Everybody. The old bed-ridden queen Lord Montague, Lina, Pagett, Meggie the Foul-Mouthed Maid, even the bloody villain comments on it. Maybe it was supposed to be poignant that poor Charlotte thinks she's guarded this secret for oh-so-long and oh-so-carefully, and yet every s.o.b. and their brother knows she's a trembling wreck over some guy she had a disastrous dance with two years ago. I hear a violin, and yet my eyes are still dry.
Oh, and while everybody seems to be getting psychic waves about everybody, we've got a Frenchie who is a beat-the-whore-til-she-bleeds libertine and who practically twiddles his fingers and chuckles evilly in the corner, and yet it's a staggering surprise when he is revealed to be...DUN DUN DUN...the bad guy. Hooda thunk??? This assclown provided the token intrigue and suspense that was given a few chapters at the end. Fell short of the mark? Oh, a tad.
Honorable mention from the Cliché Hall of Fame
When the bad guy and Adrian do confront each other, I swear to God this is a line of dialogue:
"You are too much like me, Adrian."
Well, it's not exactly the super-villain Freebird of "We are very much alike, you and I" but it's damn close and I had to chase my eyeballs across the floor.
And a final note about the dialogue: the dirty talk from Adrian didn't get me moist. As if I needed persuasion not to try another Stuart book, if that's indeed one of her trademarks, this will be the first and last AS book I read.
I've never had a book with such big print and huge margins take so long to read. When something is as boring and dull as this one was, it can slow a girl down.
I don't know about you all, but I'm feeling much much better now.
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