Wit and Sin

My review cross-posted from Joyfully Reviewed: http://www.joyfullyreviewed.com/new-reviews/a-rogues-pleasure-by-hope-tarr

Miss Chelsea Bellamy doesn’t know what to do. In the wake of her parents’ death, she and her brother, Robert, have almost nothing. When Robert is kidnapped and Chelsea receives a ransom note demanding five hundred pounds, she has no option but to turn to highway robbery. Unfortunately, one of the coaches Chelsea chooses to rob is the wrong one.

Lord Anthony Grenville, Viscount Montrose, is surprised when he and his fiancée are set upon by a highwayman. He’s even more surprised to find that the highwayman is no man at all. When he catches Chelsea thieving again, this time from his home, he offers to help her rescue her brother. He claims he’s helping Chelsea because he’s bored, but what he really wants is the beautiful thief as his mistress.

I was attracted to A Rogue’s Pleasure by its premise and beautiful cover. To my delight, Hope Tarr presented a most entertaining first meeting for its protagonists. How often do you see a Regency heroine robbing the man she’ll eventually fall in love with? Sadly, my pleasure in reading Chelsea and Anthony’s story was short-lived. A Rogue’s Pleasure moved at a slow pace and as much as I wanted to like Chelsea, there were far too many moments in the book where her intelligence seemed to have taken flight just so a certain situation could be set up. Anthony was even harder to like. I understand the plot device of having a hero engaged to one woman and then meeting his heroine. What frustrated me was that he didn’t even seem to feel a hint of guilt (or if he did it was so quickly passed over I took no note of it) over trying to make Chelsea his mistress, all the while not telling her he still intended to marry someone else. To make matters worse, he had an awful habit of making assumptions about Chelsea that had no logical basis that I could see. All in all, A Rogue’s Pleasure was just not the book for me.