Review: The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1) by Christi Caldwell

Print Length: 338 pages

Publisher: Montlake Romance (October 25, 2016)

From Goodreads.com:  Lord Robert Dennington, the Marquess of Westfield, has long reveled in the freedom afforded him as the ducal heir. He knows he must someday do right by the Somerset line, but he’s in no hurry to give up his carefree existence.

Helena Banbury is a bookkeeper in a gentleman’s gambling club, adept at analyzing numbers and accounts but helpless for lack of influence. She’s never belonged among the nobility on the gaming hell floors, but neither does she feel completely herself among the men who run the Hell and Sin Club, despite the fact that they are family. The once-illiterate girl from the streets wants more than the gilded walls her protective cage can offer.

When Robert mistakenly enters her chambers one night, Helena is forced out of her predictable life and thrust into the glittering world of Society. Will the charms of the marquess prove more perilous than any danger she ever knew on the streets?

                                                         *******************

My Rating: 3 stars out of 5

You know it’s pretty bad when you start reading a book and you start thinking to yourself that you’ve read this before. Then you go back, look over your reviews, and see that no, you haven’t.  Curious now, you go take a look at the author’s goodreads page and realize that you DNF’ed a book that had nearly the same premise awhile back.

Thankfully, this one wasn’t so bad that I felt the need to DNF it, but it wasn’t without its issues. To begin with, I wasn’t feeling either of the main characters, nor their supposed chemistry. Which was a shame because as broken characters, these two had the potential to be more interesting than they were. Helena was abused as a child, and carries the scars on her person to show it. After being rescued by her brother, she has spent the last several years of her life as a book-keeper for her brother’s notorious gaming hell, not being allowed outside the walls to protect her from the man who once hurt her. Robert is heir to a Dukedom, and has spent the last twelve years of his life doing whatever he pleases after his grandfather’s rather vile interference between him and the maid he had intended to elope with.

Separately, interesting. Together? Sure, Helena forces Robert to open his eyes and be more aware of the world around him (especially when it comes to those less fortunate than himself), and Robert shows her that members of the ton aren’t all the horrid cretins she has assumed them to be for her entire life, but there was far too much repetition between these two. Even when they started opening up to each other it was overshadowed by their respective “inner musings”.

Finally, I had a real problem with the fact that Helena is launched into society by her father, and while everyone knows she’s his illegitimate daughter, they accept her as one of their own (well all but her father’s wife which is understandable considering the circumstances). I’m sorry, but that’s just not the way life worked back then. Regardless of the fact that her father is a Duke, polite society, in general, would not have been welcoming to her.

Nor would Robert’s father (another Duke) be overjoyed at the thought of his son marrying a woman so far below his station in life.

There are I believe three more books left in this series, and I may eventually give one of them another shot. I have read other stories by this author that were more enjoyable than I found this one, so I wouldn’t be averse to reading more from this author. 

                                                         *******************

                                
                                 The Rogue's Wager is available from Amazon.com