Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70366 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Customer Reviews

Could not get past chapter 8 .... dire, trite and silly
No doubt I shall receive a load of unhelpfuls but I try hard not to rubbish a book simply because I didn't like it - rather I try to give some truthful observations and samples of text where the book is so bad I can't finish it. Once A Rake started out OK - it seemed like it would have a good plot line and I do like a wounded hero. However, the author writes with a total lack of ear for dialogue and the conversations of the various characters have them coming out with (in 1817):

"Why don't we stop for luncheon at our favorite café in Piccadilly" and shortly they are "gobbling cucumber sandwiches". How very ladylike indeed! The heroine then proposes to "hail a hack" and sticks her head out the window to shout out the destination. Really - would nicely bred, aristocratic women have behaved that way in 1817, 1917 or even today? I don't think so.

The female characters behave with exaggerated sighs, laughs, snorts, smirks, they chuff, huff and puff to the point of total inanity. They come across at times as ribald as a load of hormonal teenaged boys.

There are real syntactical head-bangers as well. My favourites ones are:

"She lobbed a chaffing look at the flushed face cringing behind Isabel ....." How do you lob any look and what is a chaffing look?

".... Moving in tune with the music ....." Shouldn't that be time ??

Then there is reference to the heroine taking a glass "from a passing tray" - is the tray floating by her?

And, of the hero: "This damnable abstinence was turning his brains into semen aspic". Don't recall ever seeing anything like that before!!! The mind boggles.

Enough? Well, how about a younger son of the heir to a dukedom being called "Lord John Hanson VI". Enough to make you gag, but, wait, the author goes further saying that the Duke is planning to make Lord John his successor, passing over his son, Lord John's father. Well, definitely enough - wherever did the author come up with such strange interpretations of English inheritance rules? I gave up after chapter 8. The sex scenes were over-played and the hero even refers to someone as that "frigging" ... That's pretty much an euphemistic expression for something quite rude!

Too, too bad. The book actually started off with promise but the purple prose, total lack of credible dialogue and the sloppy writing meant that although I love a Beauty & The Beast story, I frankly did not care what lay under the hero's mask.

BEAUTIFUL AND POWERFUL ROMANCE - A GEM!
A young lady sets out to seduce a scarred war hero, the long-ago rake of her dreams, and claim him as her own... what can be sexier or more romantic than that?

From the moment I started reading ONCE A RAKE I could not put it down...

Mustering the courage to call on the most whispered about earl in Society and solicit his support of her charity for war windows, Lady Isabel Aubrey is in for the shock of her life. Instead of the dashing soldier she remembers from a time long ago, when he and her brother Will rode out together to fight Napoleon and her brother never returned, she finds a grey old man.

Could this old man be the Earl of Ashby? She has heard the rumors: the once irresistible rake, commanding colonel of the 18th Hussars, is now a scarred recluse. Is something fishy afoot in Ashby's luxurious town house? Is she dealing with an imposter?

... and then the real Ashby comes on the scene - masked, angry, dark and sexy. I was hooked!

Ashby remembers Isabel, the sweet little sister of his best friend Will... in short skirts and with bouncing curls! The grown-up beauty standing in his library like sunshine mocking his dark solitude stirs desires best left untapped. He knows that if she sees the scars beneath his mask and learns the truth of his bloody past she will be disgusted. She was dangerous for his peace of mind when she was 15 and in love with him and he a 28 year old scoundrel. Now she is 22, he 35 - and sparks are flying. How can he face her with his scars, regrets, and tortured past? The rake has become a wreck; the little girl with hero-worship in her large blue eyes has turned into a temptress - and she is determined to heal all his torments, inside and outside his bedroom... This is more torture than Ashby needs. He has plenty of it to go around as it is.

Author Rona Sharon blew me away with her second historical romance. Beauty & the beast? I say beauty & the dragon, because Ashby is one dark hero, maybe too much at times for the inexperienced 22 year-old miss. But who wants a tamed dragon when she can have this scarred rake in her bed? Prepare yourselves for glittering wit, sizzling sexual tension, and a heart-wrenching, erotic love story that will sweep you into a long night of non-stop reading.

I literally could not put this book down. The writing is just that good.

A good story too long in the telling
Rona Sharon tells a very good tale. Her story features an Earl scarred emotionally and physically in the war against Napoleon. He returns to England and becomes a masked recluse. A proper lady, the sister of the only friend he ever had, seeks him out and insistently enters his life. They have a history of attraction and the heat between them quickly rekindles. The nobleman hesitates to reveal himself to the lady afraid that his face and his past actions will will horrify her. Other suitors, both noble and vile pursue the lady and the Earl, throwing road blocks in their path. What could have been a good story if limited to 300 pages becomes bloated, implausible and trying at almost 450 pages. That said, Ms. Sharon shows great promise and I will give her another try.