TEST
A Retro Review
originally published June 20, 1999
To Tempt a Rogue concludes the trilogy telling the story of the Delaney brothers. Your tolerance for this book will depend on whether you can put up with roguish and distrustful heroes, silly dialogue tags, big misunderstandings, and plots that rely on coincidences. If you used an old-fashioned scale to weigh what works in this book against what doesn’t work, don’t get too close or you’ll get hit in the eye – the “what works” side isn’t very weighty.
Ryan Delaney is asked to find Bert Lowry’s long-lost daughter, Kitty O’Shay. By accident, Ryan ends up becoming a member of an outlaw gang. One of the members of the gang is a gangly lad. Being a typical rogue, Ryan quickly figures out that this “lad” is really a woman, but it takes him a little longer to realize that she is the woman he is looking for.
After a mishap or two and a misunderstanding or three, Ryan brings Kitty to Bert’s ranch. The outspoken Kitty feels out of place – especially when she crosses swords with Teresa, Bert’s nasty stepdaughter. Kitty falls in love with Ryan, but he’s not the marrying type. What will it take to make him change his mind?
If you’ve read other Western romances about heroines who disguise themselves as boys and ride with outlaws, you know something about what Kitty is like. She is more intelligent than most heroines of this type, and she isn’t afraid to defend herself, especially vocally. Still, Kitty does make some stupid decisions, and she has her moments of jealousy.
Ryan has more than a few moments of jealousy – this from a rogue who sleeps with a prostitute in the first chapter. Distrustful of women, he leaps to the usual misconceptions about Kitty, some of them downright silly. Their first love scene includes the incredibly romantic line, “You’re a damn virgin.” On top of all that, it takes him far too long to admit he’s in love.
The secondary characters are forgettable, if not outright stereotypes. Bert’s stepdaughter spends most of the book trying to get Ryan for herself, badmouthing Kitty, and trying to get Bert’s money for herself. She calls Kitty a “whore” and then accuses Kitty of being foul-mouthed. (Huh?) Yet Bert remains oblivious to her true character for most of the book, and Kitty is too forgiving.
The plot relies on coincidences – tremendous ones. For example, Ryan just happens to bump into Kitty’s gang not once but twice. Just as the plot seems contrived, the dialogue often sounds artificial – real people don’t talk to each other this way. The dialogue tags are so overdone they distract the reader. On one page, dialogue was snarled, sniffed, and even smirked. How do you smirk a line of dialogue? And let’s not forget the classic line, “Damn you,” she hissed. How do you hiss a sentence without sibilants?
Also, one love scene mentions the pebble of flesh at her entrance. While the pebble reference is certainly an interesting change from the usual nubbin, the author appears to have forgotten basic anatomy. If Ryan is expecting to find the aforementioned pebble at her “entrance,” he’s looking in vain.
Though this book takes place in the West, the setting never becomes a part of the story. The American West was a vibrant and important part of our history, and it deserves better. If you have a hankering for a really good Western romance, this is not the place to start.
Grade: D-
Book Type: Frontier/Western Hist Romance
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 18/04/21
Publication Date: 1999
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.
I buy too many books, too many weird heavy metal albums, and too many pulp novel reprints.
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Just for the heck of it, I started reading the excerpt on Amazon, and it’s exactly what you’d expect from a thoroughly melodramatic, old-skool romance. The hero plans a dalliance with one woman in the prologue and has sex with a prostitute at the start of the first chapter, we are reminded multiple times that his eyes are green, and best of all, when he meets the heroine in disguise and thinks she’s a boy :
Yes, long lashes and full lips always fill me with compassion and/or pity.
And about that pebble….
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/cv-distance-rule-vagina-clitoris-orgasm
Thank you for this review, Anne! My big takeaway is that there’s a western romance with the word “rogue” in the title. But maybe it’s just the font that is confusing me, I don’t know. I typically would expect a title like “To Tempt a Cowpoke / Ranch Hand / Tenderfoot / Outlaw / Desperado / Wrangler / Ranchman / Rancher”. Pick one.
But “Rogue”? Dunno, I’m picturing a highwayman when I see that word here. (And am I being too petty if I say the title looks like To Tempf a Rogue?)
That is an unfortunate font choice (and placement)…
It was the third book of a trilogy, using the “To [Verb] a [Noun]” format for each book. Maybe she was running out of title choices by then. :)
I believe Mason’s To Tame a Renegade is the only book in the history of AAR to get an F-.
Yup! Just had a read of the review. O.M.G. how did this stuff get published back in the day? Surely standards weren’t that bad??
Had to go look at that review. Loved this gem: “Then, there are the words and actions which create images that are not only inconsistent, but very off-putting. “You look much better,” Carrie said approvingly. “I’ll just empty this chamberpot for you and see about breakfast.”
Aha, I guess that’s where the “-” came in (for the F- grade).
That one got the minus because the horse that was a stallion on page 3 or thereabouts became a gelding a few pages later:
“P.S. The minus in F- is for that poor horse. Someone really should have caught that one.”
Oh, you’re right, my error. But lordy, lordy, that book just sounds like…
That cover just does not say romance. The hero and heroine look like two people who just bet the farm when gambling and then lost it.
The cover also looks incredibly modern to me: the hero’s shirt, the heroine’s hair & scarf, both of their hats. All it needs is a pickup truck in the background and it could be on the cover of a contemporary cowboy romance by someone like Maisey Yates.
This looks as though the author got her rights back and started publishing through a small press.It’s better than some of the reprint covers I’ve seen — but it does look too modern. Back in the day, it had two different mass market paperback covers. One showed a cowboy hat hanging from bed post, and the other was a silhouette of two people on horseback with a dark purple background. (I wonder if the little silhouetto of the man will do the fandango?)
I was coming in to say that that is one awkward cover!