TEST
Scoundrel of My Heart is the story of a headstrong young woman determined to marry to secure her inheritance, and the completely unsuitable man she falls in love with, despite both of their best intentions.
Lady Kathryn Lambert is twenty-four and still unwed. The only child of an earl, Kathryn must marry well, both to secure her future, and her inheritance. Kathryn’s grandmother left her a cottage by the ocean, under the condition that she marry a titled gentleman by her twenty-fifth birthday. This proviso was inspired by her grandmother’s general disdain for second sons and spares, whom she believed to be dissolute and useless.
Lord Griffith Stanwick is just such a second son, and spends his nights at the gambling tables trying to make his fortune. Any profit he manages to make he squirrels away for investment, for his dream business: a club where second sons and wallflowers can mingle. Despite being entirely overlooked by his father, Griff wants to make something of himself.
Kathryn and Griff have traded barbs for years. Kathryn has decided that her best hope to marry before her birthday is the Duke of Kingsland. He has offered the unmarried ladies of the ton a challenge: they must write him a letter enumerating their virtues, and he will choose the best of the letters and make the writer his wife. Kathryn asks Griff for help writing her letter, and both begin to unearth the deeper feelings they have been keeping buried.
But (alas!) there can be nothing between them; Kathryn must marry someone titled, and Griff knows he doesn’t fit the bill. When the Duke begins to court Kathryn, it seems like a done deal. And then, Griff’s father, a duke himself, is accused of (and later executed for) treason. Griff and his brother are thrown in the Tower of London and stripped of their property, and even when they’re finally set free, they are estranged from all they have previously known. Griff and Kathryn do not see each other again until he is finally able to open his establishment. Kathryn is furious with Griff, as he made a small fortune off a wager regarding the duke’s selection of her as his intended. Not yet formally engaged to Kingsland, Kathryn goes to give Griffith a piece of her mind, trying to deny that he is in possession of her heart.
The relationship between Griff and Kathryn develops beautifully, and the obstacle between them is understandable. Aside from the potential loss of a meaningful inheritance, Kathryn has social status to lose in a future with Griff. Griff is also very understanding of that, and I really loved how respectful and thoughtful he was of Kathryn. They’re both clever and they have great rapport, but the mutual respect that they develop really sells them as a couple. I found the romance to be very compelling, they have great chemistry.
My biggest issue with this book is the plot. A good, old-fashioned conditional inheritance is a great plot device, but this book has a lot of plot devices. One: Kathryn’s inheritance. Two: the letter campaign duchess hunt. Three: a fall from grace due to treasonous activity by Griff’s father. There’s also some business about Griff’s older brother getting himself into danger which feels completely unnecessary, and in short, the book is overstuffed with plot.
Another issue with the story is the pacing, which starts out fairly even and then gets rickety pretty fast. The first few chapters are very well-paced, with events flowing quite naturally. Then it’s completely all over the place, with the passage of time an afterthought to the contrived plot point at hand. Another issue lies in character development: after the abrupt change of Griff’s circumstances, he naturally evolves a lot, we don’t really see any change in perspective from Kathryn. Her circumstances are also greatly changed, but her development remains stagnant until she and Griff cross paths again. The character of the Duke of Kingsland is a plot device and not a person for a great deal of the book; perhaps seeing more of him could have really sold the tension. There is a great ending, which is followed by an entirely unnecessary epilogue.
Scoundrel of My Heart has a fun couple at its center, but the rest of it’s a mess. The love story is pretty good, and I did root for the couple, but the plot was convoluted and bloated. To put it plainly, it was just too much.
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Grade: C-
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 17/04/21
Publication Date: 03/2021
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
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Good grief! This plot outline is exactly why I don’t read mass market historical romance any more. The idea of the heroine falling for the penniless second son has enough romantic potential on its own, if only someone could write it in a thoughtful, non-anachronistic way. When it comes to English history, Lorraine Heath is not that person.
I’ve been up and down on Heath’s work over the past few years, but I’m still willing to give this a try, mostly because I actually did like most of the Trewlove series.
I have to echo Elaine – what on earth has happened to Lorraine Heath?! I’ve LOVED many of her books and have rated them highly – her Hellions of Havisham Hall was wonderful, but it’s also probably the last of her series in which all the books have really worked for me. I suspect she’s fallen victim to the latest craze for plot over characters (and plausibility!) and to having to put out two books a year. Her last series (about the Trewloves) was fairly lacklustre and I’d hoped for a return to form with this. Alas, that is clearly not the case :(
Yep.
It’s a short list, these days, of HR writers whose earlier work I loved who are writing new books that wow me. Loretta Chase is on that list–I so enjoyed Ten Things I Hate About the Duke, and both Jo Goodman and Madeline Hunter are hanging in there. But when I look over my HR reading of the last year, that’s about it.
Same here. I confess that I haven’t read Jo Goodman in years – and Madeline Hunter has been up and down. Since Sherry Thomas and Meredith Duran stopped writing HR (and Courtney Milan stopped writing good HR), there’s no-one (of the “old guard”) to touch Loretta Chase.
I really like Goodman’s American historicals. She’s such a great detail writer.
Stella Riley comes to mind, and KJ Charles.
Oh, yes, there are a handful of really good HR writers around now – I’d add Sally Malcolm Joanna Chambers and Mia Vincy – but I think Dabney was really meaning authors who have been around a bit longer than that – Balogh, Quinn and others of that ilk.
Yes–I was thinking about writers who’ve been writing for at least a decade or more.
Lorraine Heath, years ago, was almost an auto-buy for me but in recent years, her output has been, for me, way below her best and I no longer bother with her. It’s interesting, though, that she has a duke executed for treason in this book. A small point here is that the last peer executed for treason (and most definitely not a duke) was Simon, Lord Lovat, Fraser clan chief and this was in 1747 after Culloden. There was also the attainder issue in that any traitor suffered the loss of all lands and estates which were forever forfeit to the Crown. And the direct descendants of the executed peer were considered “corrupted” and could not inherit the title of the father. This was the law until the 1870s. So I just wondered how these issues were dealt with in this book as it seems to be a real mess in terms of plot. It’s a fascinating bit of British history and law. I read a book recently about Lord Lovat and got interested in the rules about treason and started looking into it. Oh well, maybe this should be on the historical accuracy discussion at agora. Apologies………
I’m sure Rachel can tell you more; we I discussed that briefly when I was getting the review ready for posting, and from what I understand, the duke’s sons don’t inherit anything, so LH seems to have got that part right.
If so, good on her!!!
In the afterword, Heath notes that a law regarding traitors in the nobility was passed in Parliament in the time period in which the novel was set, and the law ended the practice of confiscating the estate and title before Heath posits the trial and execution. Heath said she did not find out about this in time to alter the novel.
Caz’s comment about the writer not having enough time sounds plausible.
I liked the characters in the book, but the traitorous plot did not convince me. It’s a testament to Heath’s ability to create appealing characters that I even finished this without skipping to the end to figure out which rabbit she pulled out of the hat to resolve the plot.