Sophie Jordan has a permanent place on my Regency Comfort Food List, so I was bummed when A Good Debutante’s Guide to Ruin didn’t work for me as well her other books. Her writing, as always, is excellent, but I kept thinking WTF at different points in the plot. In fact, this book is a little crazy. Almost Old Skool crazy.

The book opens with Rosalie Hughes being foisted off on her step brother, Declan, the Duke of Banbury. Rosalie has spent the last several years at a girl’s school, the last two of them on the headmistress’s charity. Rosalie’s mother—Declan’s stepmother, Melisande—stopped communicating with Rosalie or the school, and stopped sending payment.

Rosalie’s only other living relative is Declan, and so the headmistress expects him to take her in. Despite the fact that Rosalie’s mother was a duchess, she’s penniless. So when Declan comes home from a night of carousing with the boys to find Rosalie asleep in his house, clearly exhausted and wearing threadbare garments, he realizes there’s no way around taking her in. It would be incredibly douchey and it would look bad to turn her out. The fact that he’s doing it because it would be incredibly douchey to turn her out is kind of douchey in itself, but whatever.

Rosalie only expects Declan to help her find her mother, but Declan learns that Melisande—who is basically a horrible person who preys on men and abandons her daughter—is in Italy with her latest conquest. So Declan decides his only course of action—and the responsible thing to do—is to provide Rosalie with a Season and a dowry and marry her off. In order to keep things proper, he invites his aunt and his cousin to live with him and help Rosalie through this process.

I think I really expected this book to be a ward/guardian, penniless urchin/handsome duke Cinderella story based on the first few chapters, but that wasn’t really what it turned out to be. Instead of getting Declan trying to marry Rosalie off and then secretly burning with jealously because deep inside he loves her, we get Declan very seriously trying to marry Rosalie off and Rosalie chafing at her role in society.

During her Season Rosalie realizes she’s probably going to have to marry some old dude or at least some guy she doesn’t love, and along with Declan’s cousin, Aurelia, she bemoans the fact that she won’t know true love or adventure (side note: Aurelia is an awesome, independent character and obviously sequel-bait).

And I was kind of confused because the character we first met, facing basically being cast out onto the street wasn’t yearning for adventure or true love, she really fucking excited about sleeping on soft sheets for once and not, you know, dying in a gutter somewhere.

I guess it’s plausible that once she was more settled, Rosalie would reflect on what she really wanted in life, but it felt like there this was tectonic shift in the book where Rosalie goes from wanting security and wanting to not be a burden to Declan to wanting a whirlwind romance and adventure. She went from shy to outspoken.

Meanwhile, Declan is looking at Rosalie with lusty-eyes and cursing himself. Being a romance hero and rake, he doesn’t consider the fact that his attraction might be an indication of their compatibility, but rather assumes his penis needs more use.

Declan, over all, felt a lot like Regency rakes I’ve read before. One of Jordan’s strengths is her heroes, but Declan fell short. He’s got daddy issues (rightfully so) and he feels like he was a giant disappointment so he lives down to his own standards by partying and smexing and all the other stuff bachelor rakes do. Every time he talks to Rosalie he thinks about how he wants to put his penis in her, but then he chastises himself and reflects that he clearly just needs to get laid. Dude should buy a Fleshlight, quite frankly.

Also the step-sibling thing squicked me out a bit. I’ve always had a hard time with that one, even though it works sometimes (Clueless was an example that was pointed out to me). I think the reason I struggled with it in this book was that Rosalie and Declan did spend time together as kids. He remembers rescuing her from being stuck in trees and calling her Carrots (she’s a redhead). I guess it’s really no different than heroes and heroines who are friends as kids falling in love later, but sections like this made me wrinkle my nose:

Perhaps the next time he found himself alone with his stepsister he wouldn’t fantasize about burying his nose in all that soft-looking hair as he sank into her body.

So anyway, what does Rosalie do to enjoy her freedom while Declan reflects on his penis? She and Aurelia sneak away to a club called Sodom (and you can guess what happens there) that Declan frequents because if they boys get to sow their wild oats, so should they!

Who does Rosalie meet at Sodom (while her face is hidden behind a mask, I might add). You guessed it. She tells the proprietress she wants her first kiss to be a good one, and Declan is the man selected for the job.

This was a WTF moment for me. Rosalie wears a mask and wig, but I had a hard time believing Declan wouldn’t recognize her. I mean, maybe not in passing, but if they’re making out, you gotta think he’s going to be “Hmmm… she sounds/smells/looks like my stepsister.”

Of course Declan can’t stop thinking about the stunning temptress he met at Sodom and that’s the crux of this novel—lots of sexual tension, heroine in disguise, and a villainous Momma waiting in the wings.

Oh yeah, Melisande does come back, and she’s decided to take over marrying Rosalie off—preferably to a man she can control and therefore get her hands on Rosalie’s huge dowry. Melisande is super evil, almost one-dimensionally so. She’s a stock character.

There was more that bothered me and I’ve got to warn HERE THERE BE SPOILERS AND POSSIBLE TRIGGERS:

We find out Declan was cast out by his father at fourteen because Melisande was sexually abusing him. Declan’s dad blamed poor fourteen year old Dec because of course a teenage boy cannot raped by an attractive woman (note that was sarcasm. So. Much. Sarcasm.)

Later Melisande and her lover, Lord Asshat, kidnap Rosalie. They are going to force Rosalie to marry Lord Asshat so he and Melisande can spend her diary. Then Declan has to rescue her, Old Skool style.

So we’ve got step-siblings falling in love, a stepmother who raped her teenage stepson and a mother pimping her daughter out of her lover. It was too much incest taboo for me. It was six degrees of separation from Melisande’s vajayjay.

I will say this for the book, the sexual tension was boiling hot and the sex scenes were great. I especially loved that when Declan was deflowering Rosalie he was all “I’ll go slow, hang on, give your body time to adjust” and she was all “MY BODY IS READY RIGHT NOW GODDAMNIT WHY ARE YOU NOT MOVING?!”

If the step-siblings thing doesn’t weird you out, and you really like sexy Regencies or heroines in disguise, you might want to try this book. Overall it was a little too crazy for me. I am really hoping Aurelia gets her book and gets it soon though, and I’ll definitely keep Jordan on my auto-buy list.

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