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The Rake's Wicked Proposal

by Carole Mortimer

reviewed by Valarie Pelissero

November 2009, 288 pages, Publisher: Harlequin, ISBN: 0373295692

Despite the overwritten premise of this book, I was excited to read The Rake's Wicked Proposal because I love discovering new authors, and often those gambles payoff…unfortunately, this isn't one of those times. Ms. Mortimer followed the checklist that goes with the “caught in a compromising position leading to a forced marriage plot” down to the last item, which left the story feeling flat.

We opens with our intrepid hero stopping at an inn for the night where he runs into the Duke of Carlyne and his party. A quick explanation of the relationship is important here because it is a big part of Lucian's background and the story. Simon, the Duke's only son and Lucian grew up together and were best friends, but only Lucian returned from the war and he harbors major guilt for being the one that survived. Traveling with the Duke is his wife, his youngest brother Francis, and his niece by marriage Grace Hetherington.

Ever since the war, Lucian has withdrawn from his family and from society because he feels guilty for surviving when so many of his friends did not, including Simon, and he has had a hard time facing their families. When he meets the Duke of Carlyne, Lucian is guilted into joining the Duke's party for dinner where he meets Grace. When the party breaks up Lucian is forced into Francis's company and consumes a bottle of brandy which naturally leaves him so muddled that he stumbles into the wrong bedchamber (conveniently the doors have no locks) and ends up in Grace's room instead of his own where the two are caught in a compromising position by the Duchess and are forced to marry.

This is where the book takes a wrong turn in my opinion. I think the author was trying to portray Grace as feisty, refusing to settle for less than a marriage based on love; unfortunately, Grace comes off as a petulant brat. Instead of accepting her fate and trying to turn a bad situation to good by making Lucian fall in love with her, she tries to find ways to end the unwanted betrothal. Whenever Grace is around Lucian she throws full-on shouting temper tantrums on what seemed like every other page in the book because she and Lucian are always together and just by existing he sets off her temper since she takes everything he says the wrong way. At the first temper tantrum I did think Grace was just being feisty and I was okay with it. It was when she hits Lucian across the face with her reins while they are out riding that my liking for Grace took a nose-dive and I really started noticing how often she had those tantrums. It was very unattractive in a heroine.

Grace hates Lucian with a passion, (and she says this a couple of times), yet she falls into his arms whenever he touches her, then afterwards she hates herself and him even more, then magically she is suddenly and inexplicably in love with him. Sorry. DID NOT BUY IT! I never saw Grace fall for Lucian, I was told she had, and up until the second to last chapter she was still insisting on ending their betrothal and having temper tantrums. I could not believe in their HEA because I didn't believe that Lucian could fall for her. Grace acted more like a petulant twenty-first century teen rather than a Regency Miss, which made sense after I read Carole Mortimer's bio. Ms. Mortimer has written over 150 contemporary books and that contemporary voice came through on every page of The Rake's Wicked Proposal. I never heard a historical voice in the book.

The plot was something I have read a dozen or more times before and it even included a secondary subplot that has also been done to death and there was nothing new here. The ending was unsatisfying and the pairing of Grace and Lucian was implausible. Give The Rake's Wicked Proposal a pass.