After several seasons as a shy and quiet wallflower, Miss Amy Hardwick has this one last chance to break out of her shell, wow the ton, and hopefully make a love match in the process. There’s a perfectly nice gentleman back home who wants to marry her, but Amy wants more; she doesn’t want to have to settle. If only she could avoid Will “The Devil” Darcett, the brother-in-law of her close friend and an unrepentant rake. When Will and Amy are accidentally locked in a wine cellar overnight, the only solution to save Amy’s reputation is to marry. Amy hopes to make the best of her hasty marriage, but Will isn’t being completely honest with her – and what he knows could mar the couple’s newfound relationship.
Vicky Dreiling’s How to Ravish a Rake is the third story in a group of novels connected by shared characters, though I don’t know that it’s a formal series. Amy Hardwick, who first appeared in Dreiling’s How to Marry a Duke as one of the young women vying for Tristan’s hand, finally gets to step out of the shadows of others and have her moment to shine. Like Dreiling’s other novels, How to Ravish a Rake is partly sweet, partly dramatic and, of course, mostly sensual. And while I did enjoy Amy and Will’s story, I just didn’t like it as much as the others.
There is plenty in How to Ravish a Rake that’s good. Having encountered Amy in Dreiling’s previous two novels, I really loved seeing her finally build up her confidence and have her chance to be the center of attention. I especially liked the fact that Amy’s hidden talent for fashion is part of what helps her stand out. While she is as accomplished as any of her other friends, she hasn’t always felt special. In this book, however, she finally realizes that her sketching ability is something to take pride in. Though Amy does end up rushed into marriage, I appreciated that Dreiling has Amy and Will’s relationship move a bit more slowly. She gives them the chance to develop a real understanding and friendship, which helps build a stronger foundation for the love that eventually comes (and who DOESN’T love a rake reformed by love?).
But there were other parts of the book that I didn’t like. There wasn’t enough development of Will’s character. I never quite understood or bought into his issues with his family. I often found myself frustrated with his immaturity and the decisions he made, which in turn made it harder to find reasons to like him. This translated to a feeling that Amy and Will were horribly mismatched, as if Dreiling herself hadn’t noticed that perhaps they weren’t supposed to be together. I didn’t really believe Amy and Will as a couple, which took away from my enjoyment of the novel.
Additionally, while I was glad that Dreiling included familiar characters from the previous books, the inclusion of Georgette’s story was mostly distracting. As much as I wanted her to have a happy ending as well, the parts of the novel that cut away to her story felt rather abrupt and those sections were too short to really make me care about her romance. I would have preferred that Dreiling either make the book longer and more in-depth to include a secondary story or give Georgina a novel of her own.
Though I did not like How to Ravish a Rake as much as I had liked Vicky Dreiling’s previous two books, I was still happy to see Amy get her happy ending. There’s something quite satisfying about former wallflowers who finally blossom into the heroines we all knew them to be. While not perfect, How to Ravish a Rake is still enjoyable and perhaps you’ll like it more than I did. Read it for yourself and come to your own conclusion.
[Photo Credit: Goodreads]
