maybemegan's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
i_hype_romance's review
5.0
Rules are made for challenge – not obedience.
Celeste has been listening to their silent commands her entire life. She has let them confine her to a view of the world from a single window. But it’s no longer enough to docilely assume the role and the path that have been chosen for her. Before she sacrifices herself to her family’s ambition, she wants something just for herself. A chance to gaze out other windows. A chance to sip champagne in the moonlight and dance under the stars. A chance for a stolen kiss.
I loved this fiercely feminine historical romance about a woman coming into her own. Celeste’s epiphany about what she wants and who she can be was liberating and inspiring. I loved this story about two people who don’t comfortably fit into the roles that have been assigned to them. Two people who feel the most at ease with themselves when they are with each other.
Celeste has been listening to their silent commands her entire life. She has let them confine her to a view of the world from a single window. But it’s no longer enough to docilely assume the role and the path that have been chosen for her. Before she sacrifices herself to her family’s ambition, she wants something just for herself. A chance to gaze out other windows. A chance to sip champagne in the moonlight and dance under the stars. A chance for a stolen kiss.
I loved this fiercely feminine historical romance about a woman coming into her own. Celeste’s epiphany about what she wants and who she can be was liberating and inspiring. I loved this story about two people who don’t comfortably fit into the roles that have been assigned to them. Two people who feel the most at ease with themselves when they are with each other.
i_hype_romance's review against another edition
5.0
This was an ARC provided by the publisher. I will post a summary here and a full review on my blog on release day, 2/22/22.
awortiz's review
4.0
“The world has expectations for us, and all of them are confining. We need to take every opportunity to do something exclusively for us. We owe it to ourselves.”
There's just something compulsively readable about this one! It’s got just the right combination of lighthearted humor and actual character development all tied together by a series of reputable/disreputable events that kept me turning the pages.
Things I loved: 1) A hero who rocks the guy liner and isn't afraid of being in touch with his emotions! Oh God, did I unexpectedly love Kieran as a hero. He’s got that self deprecating, uses humor as a deflection, but has a hidden sensitive side thing that just works! 2) A heroine who’s a lady in the streets and freak in the sheets! I was here for Celeste's fight to be more than she is given and I loved seeing her cut loose. Plus, she has smutty novels memorized and that's when I knew she was one of us. 3) The witty bants and dirty talk were on point - the hero is a poet and it shows. 4) The ride-or-die relationship paired with laugh-out-loud funny ribbing between Kieran, Finn, and Dom had me in stitches.
My one tiny critique - this novel is a little heavy handed, both in the angst and in the escalation of the climax of the plot. This novel definitely reads little more fluffy, so the extra angst and dramatics was jarring and felt out of place.
While the overarching plot of this novel feels a little overdone - rakish hero who needs to marry quick for whatever reason + a reputable debutante looking for her first and last taste of freedom before her betrothal - A Good Girl’s Guide To Rakes is well executed, with multifaceted leads, an interesting plot, and a strong cast of characters, making it a great start to a series.
There's just something compulsively readable about this one! It’s got just the right combination of lighthearted humor and actual character development all tied together by a series of reputable/disreputable events that kept me turning the pages.
Things I loved: 1) A hero who rocks the guy liner and isn't afraid of being in touch with his emotions! Oh God, did I unexpectedly love Kieran as a hero. He’s got that self deprecating, uses humor as a deflection, but has a hidden sensitive side thing that just works! 2) A heroine who’s a lady in the streets and freak in the sheets! I was here for Celeste's fight to be more than she is given and I loved seeing her cut loose. Plus, she has smutty novels memorized and that's when I knew she was one of us. 3) The witty bants and dirty talk were on point - the hero is a poet and it shows. 4) The ride-or-die relationship paired with laugh-out-loud funny ribbing between Kieran, Finn, and Dom had me in stitches.
My one tiny critique - this novel is a little heavy handed, both in the angst and in the escalation of the climax of the plot. This novel definitely reads little more fluffy, so the extra angst and dramatics was jarring and felt out of place.
While the overarching plot of this novel feels a little overdone - rakish hero who needs to marry quick for whatever reason + a reputable debutante looking for her first and last taste of freedom before her betrothal - A Good Girl’s Guide To Rakes is well executed, with multifaceted leads, an interesting plot, and a strong cast of characters, making it a great start to a series.
fringebookreviews's review against another edition
5.0
✨dirty talk dirty talk dirty talk✨
Reader, this book fucks. There are few things I love in this world more than a nice solid “fuck” spoken in historical romances. It truly spices up any scene, sexual or not. We love the flavor. I also really appreciate that the dirty talk was mutual and mutually enjoyed. Celeste loved that such a pretty man could be so dirty, and Kieran loved that such a proper woman could be so wanton.
Kieran Ransome is much like my favorite word (see above): decadent, filthy, satisfying. Tall, dark, triple chocolate dessert. He was just so yummy! It also helped that I knew his character inspiration was Aidan Turner. Yes, the very man I watched 8 hours of The Hobbit films to see. A true tasty slice of man. I also really loved his relationship with his brother and that we was deeply in touch with his emotions. He wrote poetry and supported Celeste’s entire self.
And Celeste! What a character! Kieran went to her because she was respectable and he needed to become respectable and marry an equally respectable woman. But obviously Celeste wasn’t the respectable woman for him. Couldn’t be! Wouldn’t be! (Reader, it did not go as planned.) In exchange, Celeste wanted to live at night like she wasn’t respectable and didn’t have her family’s reputation on her shoulders. I really enjoyed her journey of self discovery.
Celeste and Kieran made a perfectly wicked pair and I loved their midnight cavorting. There were poetry battles and dirty books and did I mention dirty talk? I loved the big deceit at the end. I was CACKLING! I love me a man who doesn’t run from the problem but makes the problem run from him.
I can’t wait for the next books in the series!! Dom is such a broody muffin and I really appreciated the relationship between Finn and Kieran. I can’t wait to see Finn shine!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
Reader, this book fucks. There are few things I love in this world more than a nice solid “fuck” spoken in historical romances. It truly spices up any scene, sexual or not. We love the flavor. I also really appreciate that the dirty talk was mutual and mutually enjoyed. Celeste loved that such a pretty man could be so dirty, and Kieran loved that such a proper woman could be so wanton.
Kieran Ransome is much like my favorite word (see above): decadent, filthy, satisfying. Tall, dark, triple chocolate dessert. He was just so yummy! It also helped that I knew his character inspiration was Aidan Turner. Yes, the very man I watched 8 hours of The Hobbit films to see. A true tasty slice of man. I also really loved his relationship with his brother and that we was deeply in touch with his emotions. He wrote poetry and supported Celeste’s entire self.
And Celeste! What a character! Kieran went to her because she was respectable and he needed to become respectable and marry an equally respectable woman. But obviously Celeste wasn’t the respectable woman for him. Couldn’t be! Wouldn’t be! (Reader, it did not go as planned.) In exchange, Celeste wanted to live at night like she wasn’t respectable and didn’t have her family’s reputation on her shoulders. I really enjoyed her journey of self discovery.
Celeste and Kieran made a perfectly wicked pair and I loved their midnight cavorting. There were poetry battles and dirty books and did I mention dirty talk? I loved the big deceit at the end. I was CACKLING! I love me a man who doesn’t run from the problem but makes the problem run from him.
I can’t wait for the next books in the series!! Dom is such a broody muffin and I really appreciated the relationship between Finn and Kieran. I can’t wait to see Finn shine!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
tenderbrushes's review
2.0
Anachronistic historical is not my thing, but I was promised dirty talk so I continued to slog through this book. The first 50% is mind-numbingly dull and without steam, it's 100% pure setup. Then suddenly it's lots of dirty talk but it all felt really cerebral and surprisingly unsexy to me. I'm not sure how she managed to make dirty talk feel so bland but yeah, it didn't do anything for me. We aren't really given a lot of physical descriptions of the two MCs, the sexuality was in the dialogue rather than actions or physiological reactions to said actions. The patches between sex scenes were also pretty dull so I ended up skimming most of this book. These two go from 'hmm I vaguely know this person' to 'omg she is the stars in my heaven' real quick.
Then there's the problem of being continually pulled out of the story by the ridiculousness of what's happening. For starters, the heroine says "fuck" a lot, out loud and to herself. Now I ask you, what regency gal of the middle to upper class is gonna say "fuck" in her internal monologues? Completely bonkers. Then there's the cute little modern day sayings just casually tossed in, she tells the hero he's "doing the bare minimum" as a man, and they are "friends with beneficial relations" or something like that. Very distracting to wonder if I'm reading a historical romance or if I'm scrolling twitter.
There is also a level of 'consenting' that would never happen in this era. He's a rake and a scoundrel. He asks if he can gaze upon her naked body, he asks her for every kiss, every caress, every step sexually. I was half expecting him to pull out a banana and a french letter and explain safe sex to her after asking if it was ok if he could show her a phallic-shaped fruit. Jeeesus this all took me right out of the story. I understand that authors now are damned if they do and damned if they don't with regard to issues like this but gads, this was ham fisted.
Then we come to the highly unlikely situation of an earl wanting to marry one of the nouveau riche. The only reason this would realistically happen was if he were in dire straits financially? And we aren't given any indication that is the case, so it makes no sense. He then goes wild and wants to blackmail into marrying him. Whaaa? Which leads me to all the secondary characters being one-dimensional and flat. The parents are just meanies, the earl is just a baddie, this felt really immature or like it was written with teens in mind (other than the dirty talk, of course).
The excursions he takes her on to be "Salome" are pretty weird too, all in all I just wasn't feeling the book. I didn't get any chemistry physically between these two, and the writing just isn't my favorite. The "solution" to the earl knowing about Salome is handled by a third party saving the day, which doesn't feel like a transformational win for either of the MCs? This plot point resolution felt really fake and out of left field. The writing wasn't interesting enough to make any of these issues worth it, for me. This is my first book by this author and I'm not so sure I'll be back.
Then there's the problem of being continually pulled out of the story by the ridiculousness of what's happening. For starters, the heroine says "fuck" a lot, out loud and to herself. Now I ask you, what regency gal of the middle to upper class is gonna say "fuck" in her internal monologues? Completely bonkers. Then there's the cute little modern day sayings just casually tossed in, she tells the hero he's "doing the bare minimum" as a man, and they are "friends with beneficial relations" or something like that. Very distracting to wonder if I'm reading a historical romance or if I'm scrolling twitter.
There is also a level of 'consenting' that would never happen in this era. He's a rake and a scoundrel. He asks if he can gaze upon her naked body, he asks her for every kiss, every caress, every step sexually. I was half expecting him to pull out a banana and a french letter and explain safe sex to her after asking if it was ok if he could show her a phallic-shaped fruit. Jeeesus this all took me right out of the story. I understand that authors now are damned if they do and damned if they don't with regard to issues like this but gads, this was ham fisted.
Then we come to the highly unlikely situation of an earl wanting to marry one of the nouveau riche. The only reason this would realistically happen was if he were in dire straits financially? And we aren't given any indication that is the case, so it makes no sense. He then goes wild and wants to blackmail into marrying him. Whaaa? Which leads me to all the secondary characters being one-dimensional and flat. The parents are just meanies, the earl is just a baddie, this felt really immature or like it was written with teens in mind (other than the dirty talk, of course).
The excursions he takes her on to be "Salome" are pretty weird too, all in all I just wasn't feeling the book. I didn't get any chemistry physically between these two, and the writing just isn't my favorite. The "solution" to the earl knowing about Salome is handled by a third party saving the day, which doesn't feel like a transformational win for either of the MCs? This plot point resolution felt really fake and out of left field. The writing wasn't interesting enough to make any of these issues worth it, for me. This is my first book by this author and I'm not so sure I'll be back.
kstep1805's review
3.0
Mostly a fun read, a bit slow at times, and the trope wasn’t my favorite. But overall, another enjoyable romance from Eva Leigh.
kimalah's review against another edition
This review is being held until HarperCollins Union gets a contract.
girlwithhearteyes's review
lighthearted
medium-paced
3.0
3 stars. I had high hopes but this just wasn't the book for me. Although it's a historical romance, a lot of the dialogue and situations made it feel like a contemporary romance that just happened to have balls and gowns. Because that was so jarring, I found it difficult to connect with the story or main characters. However, the writing was good and the main characters were fine, so I will try another book by this writer.