Review: Forever Her Rake (Dukes Most Wanted #3) by Scarlett Scott

        

Print Length:  224 pages

Publisher: Happily Ever After Books, LLC (February 27, 2024)

From Goodreads.com: After spending all her life pinned beneath her overbearing mother’s thumb, Lady Edith Smythe is desperately weary of being a respectable, dutiful daughter. What better time to finally cast aside her wallflower ways than at a country house party where women’s suffrage is the leading topic of the day? And there’s no better man to exercise her freedom with than a diabolically handsome rake who’s as sinful as he is irresistible.

Valentine Blakemoor, self-made property magnate and one of the wealthiest men in England, has been lured to the wilds of Yorkshire by the promise of vengeance. Seducing the bookish, bespectacled Lady Edith proves an embarrassingly easy feat. But once he has her in his bed, Val is bemused to discover Lady Edith is far more than the quiet, freckled spinster he believed. To his shock, he can’t seem to get enough of her, which decidedly wasn’t part of his plan.

For the first time in his storied career as a jaded rake, Val wants more than mere pleasure. In fact, he wants everything Lady Edith has to offer. But she’s firm on her insistence that one night and her innocence are all she’s willing to give. And when she discovers his true motives for pursuing her, nothing between them will ever be the same…

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My Rating: 1 star out of 5

Man, this was easily the worst book in the series thus far (which isn't saying much since it's only book three and I wasn't exactly enthralled with the first one either). 

To begin with, we see bits and pieces of Lady Edith in the first two of course, and we learn just how far under her mother's thumb she is. So while it's understandable that she wants a bit of freedom, I wish we would have gotten to see more of her defiance, as well as more pushback from the mother. Sure, she defies her by talking to Val, and the other ladies, but her mother doesn't know that she is being defied. Even when she joined the Woman's Suffrage Society her mother didn't learn about it until later and when she did she didn't push back in the way I would have expected. We are told that she is a blue-stocking, a wallflower and a spinster often on the outskirts of social events (even those that aren't balls), and yet she doesn't question a confirmed rake's sudden interest in her? Not only does she not question it, but she almost immediately allows him to take liberties with her (I believe he gets under her skirts the same day they first speak? If not that night, then the one after. And the day after that to get her to invite him to deflower her). Seriously? Where is the gently-bred spinster we had seen before this? 

Then we have Val. Who only seeks out Edith so he can enact revenge upon her brother. And sure, it's fun watching him realize that there is a lot more to Edith than he originally expected and that he actually enjoys her company (although I think more of that is him lusting after her, but that is another staple of this particular author's stories). HOWEVER. You're seriously telling me that knowing what he knows about his sister and Edith's brother, he did not confront the Marquess ONE time to demand the truth? He didn't even consider doing so until after he had forced Edith to marry him? 

Of course, once the truth on that matter is revealed it makes everything else that happened between them pointless. Him forcing her to marry him by giving the illusion he had ruined her in front of others, her being mad at him and putting up walls between them, heck even him pursuing her in the first place. Personally, if I was determined to keep that part of the story in, I would have given a reason why the brother couldn't have been confronted (perhaps he was off with his wife and child on the continent? Or at some far-flung country estate). I also would have had Val just woo Edith into marrying him that didn't involve pretending to ruin her the one time he actually hadn't done so (something he should have had no trouble doing had he done a better job at proposing to her in the first place) and then had the truth come out after they had been happily married for a couple of months. Perhaps in the form of gossip? Because let's be real here, no matter how hard someone in the ton tried to conceal an affair, having a mistress, or having a child out of wedlock, someone always ferreted out the truth and spread it around. 

One final thing I really wish we had gotten the chance to see is Edith's mother taking luncheon at their house. Considering how deeply she hated Val and the invitation had come from him, I was curious not only if she would have shown up, but how the luncheon would have gone. But alas, the visit to the brother seemed to take its place as that happened on the same day (at roughly the same time) and the mother-in-law was never mentioned again. 

I'm still hoping this series will finally blow me away, although that hope is starting to dwindle a bit.