A review by freemajo
The Rake is Taken by Tracy Sumner
3.0
"The Rake is Taken" is a paranormal historical romance, which I found to be an intriguing novelty.
TRIT's heroine, Lady Victoria Hamilton can cause retrograde amnesia with her touch and also blocks supernatural powers in others. Finn Alexander is a super hot bad boy pseudo-lord who all the ladies want to bang but not marry because he's illegitimate. Oh, also he reads minds, but the ladies don't know that. Anyway, he keeps dreaming about Lady Victoria and wonders what it means, so he tracks her down, discovers her powers, and takes her to his brother's own X-Mansion.
These people have all been retrieved or rescued from their own situations and brought to the safety and comfort of the X-Mansion, but almost all of them stay on as servants with supernatural powers like telekinesis and whatnot. But for some reason, Finn is not a servant? Even though he was literally plucked from a gutter?
It seems wrong that Julian and his wife, Piper would be like, "Oh hey, you have supernatural powers, please come chop firewood and clean my spoons for the rest of your life" rather than treating these people as equals or improving their station in life.
Moving on, there's this weird emphasis on this document called "The Chronology" which seems to just be a long list of when different superpowers pop up and where, and some bad guy is supposedly going to come get it, but then there actually aren't any bad guys in the book? Now that I am trying to articulate the plot, I realize how little conflict there actually was.
The writing is occasionally unintentionally humorous. We get treated to a lot of descriptions of people's eyes:
"Victoria's eyes were the color of a leaf frozen in ice when they met his."
"her eyes glowing as fiercely as the emeralds in Victoria's favorite broach."
"She pivoted to face him, her eyes highlighted in the sunlight, a mix falling somewhere between the color of spring soil and autumn leaves."
"She laughed softly, her eyes glowing the color of the grass beneath their feet."
"Marianne regarded him through eyes the color of fresh cow dung."
Overall, it's obvious that the author is incredibly invested in the characters and thinks of them as real people, but the situations and overall plot of the story are less embellished and a little confusing.
I received a free copy through BookSirens in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
TRIT's heroine, Lady Victoria Hamilton can cause retrograde amnesia with her touch and also blocks supernatural powers in others. Finn Alexander is a super hot bad boy pseudo-lord who all the ladies want to bang but not marry because he's illegitimate. Oh, also he reads minds, but the ladies don't know that. Anyway, he keeps dreaming about Lady Victoria and wonders what it means, so he tracks her down, discovers her powers, and takes her to his brother's own X-Mansion.
These people have all been retrieved or rescued from their own situations and brought to the safety and comfort of the X-Mansion, but almost all of them stay on as servants with supernatural powers like telekinesis and whatnot. But for some reason, Finn is not a servant? Even though he was literally plucked from a gutter?
It seems wrong that Julian and his wife, Piper would be like, "Oh hey, you have supernatural powers, please come chop firewood and clean my spoons for the rest of your life" rather than treating these people as equals or improving their station in life.
Moving on, there's this weird emphasis on this document called "The Chronology" which seems to just be a long list of when different superpowers pop up and where, and some bad guy is supposedly going to come get it, but then there actually aren't any bad guys in the book? Now that I am trying to articulate the plot, I realize how little conflict there actually was.
The writing is occasionally unintentionally humorous. We get treated to a lot of descriptions of people's eyes:
"Victoria's eyes were the color of a leaf frozen in ice when they met his."
"her eyes glowing as fiercely as the emeralds in Victoria's favorite broach."
"She pivoted to face him, her eyes highlighted in the sunlight, a mix falling somewhere between the color of spring soil and autumn leaves."
"She laughed softly, her eyes glowing the color of the grass beneath their feet."
"Marianne regarded him through eyes the color of fresh cow dung."
Overall, it's obvious that the author is incredibly invested in the characters and thinks of them as real people, but the situations and overall plot of the story are less embellished and a little confusing.
I received a free copy through BookSirens in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.