The Rogue and the Rival
A Negligent Chaperone Novel, Book 2

Maya Rodale

Publisher:
Berkley Sensation

Release Date:
November 4, 2008

Genres:
Historical Romance
Regency

ISBN:
Print
9780425224526
Kindle
No ISBN

Bookmark Rating:

Reviewed by
Natalie S.

Review Posted:
November 2008

Phillip Kensington, Marquis of Huntley, is a womanizer and a wastrel.  He drinks too much, he gambles too often, and he breaks women’s hearts.  The ultimate rogue, he has never had to own up to his behavior until now.  Having gambled to the point that he has no money whatsoever to pay his debts, he is on the run from his creditors.  Injured by a gunshot wound from the people chasing him, he wakes up in a barren, severe room at Stanbrook Abbey.  Not sure where he is or why, Phillip is brazen to the point of rudeness when his nurse finally shows up.  Once he gets a good look at her, however, Phillip begins to imagine all sorts of risqué things.  Angela, his nurse, is having none of it.  The more Philip pushes the more she pulls away or at least tries to.  Phillip is anything if not persistent and the couple fall in love and plan to be married. 

Angela Sullivan has spent six years at Stanbrook Abbey and even planned on taking her vows there.  For six years she has prayed and repented and wished for forgiveness for ruining her family with her indiscretion with a lord of the ton.  When Lord Huntley is injured and Angela is assigned the task of caring for him, she refuses to allow her heart to really see the man inside his impudent outer shell.  Falling in love with him happens almost instantaneously and Phillip asks her to marry him.  She accepts but no sooner does that happen then Phillip disappears without a trace and Angela is once again heartbroken.  Refusing to take her vows, she travels to London to become employed.  There she sees the first man that broke her heart.  When Phillip returns, will Angela still love him or will the man who ruined her, now a widower, resume their relationship where it ended? 

Phillip was the ultimate degenerate bad boy.  Borderline alcoholic, he gambles and cats around with women just because he can.  Never having to own up to anything in his life, Phillip is used to being the rake and his older twin the good guy.  Or rather, he is becoming used to it ever since the truth about his birth order was finally told.  My heart went out to him because underneath his bluster and blunder and bad manners was a man yearning for love.   

Angela was no different.  She was an unwilling victim of society and its rules and its cruelties.  She gave her heart to a man, not her husband, and when he found out that her dowry was not as big as he thought, he remembered he was betrothed to someone else.  Because of this, Angela spent six years paying for her mistakes and embarrassment to her family.  Wanting nothing more than forgiveness, she doesn’t know who to forgive herself.  She knows her desire to be a wife and mother is more than she can hope for but she does.  

THE ROGUE AND THE RIVAL is the second installment of Maya Rodale’s Negligent Chaperone series.  It is a regency historical romance set in the English countryside.  Perfectly written and freshly engaging, I am happy to report that THE ROGUE AND THE RIVAL took me away to a time where someone’s reputation was everything. I anxiously watched and waited for Phillip to decide that Angela was not worth falling in love with and am happy to admit that he did not waver in his feelings for her.  He loved her and he was willing to fight for her.   

A fresh and charming novel, THE ROGUE AND THE RIVAL is a worthy sequel to the first series installment, The Heir and the Spare.  Readers will be delighted and thoroughly enchanted by the ‘bad boy gone good’ and the woman he falls in love with. I know I was.

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