Everybody calm down. Calm down. I know you’re all losing your shit because Lisa Kleypas released her first historical in five years. My shit, too, has been lost. I am here to answer all your questions, which I suspect are:

1. Is it good? Yes, it is very, very good. I stayed up all night reading it even though I was so tired that I’d been craving sleep all day the way an addict craves heroin. When I came home and that book was in the mail, I knew any plans I had to do anything else except read were fucked.
2. Okay, but is it as good as the Wallflowers series? No, it’s not. It’s still really, really good, but doesn’t quite meet the perfection that was The Devil in Winter ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) or It Happened One Autumn ( A | BN | K | AB ).

Here’s the thing: Kleypas is an amazing writer. In my opinion, she might be the most technically skilled historical romance author out there. So when I say “This book by Kleypas is really good but not as good as other Kleypases,” that’s kind of like saying, “that was a really great orgasm but not the best orgasm I’ve ever had.” It’s so good you have to create a frame of reference to measure it against itself.

Cold-Hearted Rake has the elements that make me love Kleypas so much as a writer: female friendships, a hero who is a rake but somehow also emotionally aware, a setting that’s fully developed and not a backdrop, and scalding sexual tension.

When Devon Ravenel becomes an earl after the untimely death of his cousin, he also inherits a large estate in Wales, Eversby Priory. The problem is the estate is a crumbling 400-year-old money pit. Devon knows that estate farming is no longer profitable, and the renovations needed just to make the house livable are astronomical. So he plans to sell the house and all of the land associated with it.

Problem is, the place comes with 200-some tenant farmers. It also comes with his cousin’s widow, Kathleen, Countess Trenear, and his three younger, female cousins. Kathleen, Helen, Pandora and Cassandra have not been provided an inheritance, so Devon needs to settle them somehow.

If Devon is a cold-hearted rake (he’s really more of a pragmatic rake, honestly), then Kathleen is a hot-blooded bitch (note: we fully embrace the word bitch here at the Bitchery OBVS so this is not meant to be disparaging). Kathleen says what she thinks and she’s smart and determined. She thinks Devon’s decision to sell the estate is unconscionable. She’s also stressed about how the hell she’s going to provide for her sisters-in-law.

Kathleen was married to the previous earl for all of three days before they got into a huge fight and he drunkenly decided to ride an untrained horse that belonged to her and then got thrown and broke his neck. She feels kinda guilty for the Victorian version of drunk-driving-after-a-fight that went down. Kathleen is also fairly emotionally closed up and reeling from a wedding night that I need to qualify with a trigger warning for attempted rape.

Of course Devon is unbearably attracted to Kathleen. Of course she feels the same way. Of course they spend a lot of time hissing and circling each other. Then Devon decides to restore Eversby Priory because it will keep him closer to Kathleen NOT because it’s the right thing to do. Stupider decisions have been made with dicks. The math checks out.

SO MUCH happens in this book. SO MUCH STUFF. Here’s a rundown:

1. Home improvement. Discussions of plumbing and plaster and curtains.
2. Devon’s brother, West, becoming a decent man who thinks about people other than himself.
3. A train accident.
4. A significant set-up for the next book, a romance between Devon’s young cousin, Helen, and his friend, department store magnate Mr. Winterborne.

This novel worked despite ALL THOSE THINGS. In fact, it worked because of them. Kleypas has the remarkable ability to take tiny details and minor characters and breathe so much life into them that they make the whole book richer. There’s a very brief section with a servant named Quincy and even though it’s a tiny section, it’s a little fully developed story on it’s own.

I also liked that Devon is a typical Kleypas hero. He’s an unrepentant rogue, but he’s got emotional intelligence. He knows what’s going on with the people around him and he’s self-aware enough to know he can be a stubborn ass. He shows very real tenderness to Kathleen when she’s vulnerable, and that’s a Kleypas staple too. Her heroes step up around vulnerable women, not because it’s the manly thing to do, but because it’s the human thing to do.  In Secrets of a Summer Night, Simon cares for Annabelle tenderly after she’s been bitten by a snake, even though her illness is more unpleasant than Delicate Victorian Fainting Syndrome. In this book Devon holds Kathleen while she has a cry and I can’t tell you why it’s powerful without spoiling the impact but it is so powerful.

Then there’s the whole bit with Helen and Winterborne and… ugh. I can’t.

Even when Devon starts to have feelings for Kathleen, he knows what’s going on. He’s not like other romance heroes who mistake love for gas because they don’t know why their “tummy feels funny.”

The only complaint I have about this book is that some of the conflict is resolved Deus ex machina style, but I didn’t really care that much.

I do want to briefly address a comment made in the Publisher’s Weekly review of this book that the hero “pushed the boundaries of consent.” I did not feel that way about the book at all and I’m not sure where that particular reviewer took that from. I’m not in the habit of remarking on other reviews because, well, they’re reviews and that means they are someone’s opinion and I’m totally good with having a different opinion on a book than another reader. The idea that it pushes the boundaries of consent might be troubling for a lot of readers though, so I wanted to specify why I didn’t feel that way.

There is a scene where Kathleen recalls how her late husband tried to rape her on their wedding night. That definitely happens, but the hero isn’t the perpetrator.

The only other scene I could think of that might even call consent into question was when Kathleen and Devon have sexy times in the stable. They’ve just been going to town hardcore third base style:

Devon was more aroused and entertained than he’d ever been in his life. After tugging the [carriage] door open, he pulled down the folding step. “Here’s your choice: Out here, in full view of anyone who passes by… or in the carriage, where no one will see.”

She blinked and started at him, seeming aghast. But there was no concealing the deep flush of excitement on her face.

“Out here then,” he said ruthlessly, and reached for the waist of her trousers.

Galvanized into action, Kathleen turned with a whimper and climbed into the carriage.

A few paragraphs later:

“I’ll stop if you tell me to,” he whispered. “Until then we’ll play by my rules.” He moved to strip off his coat with a grimace of effort. He pressed a smile against her head as he felt her hands go to the knot of his necktie.

I took the first comment about out in the open or in the carriage to be teasing, not an actual a-or-b choice. I also took Kathleen’s whimper to be more of “Oh, shit, I am going to tear this guy’s clothes off in a barn,” and not any actual distress.

Also Devon explicitly states that he will stop if she tells him to. The sex scene that follows involves two active, enthusiastic participants.

The whole rake/rogue trope involves (typically) a sexually proficient hero who “corrupts” the heroine according to the standards of the day. The heroine is an enthusiastic participant, and her distress isn’t from being coerced into sexual activity but from her anxiety of how society would perceive her own sexual agency.

In this book Kathleen worries that her feelings for Devon are inappropriate because she’s a widow in mourning. She also worries that Devon will never want the type of long term relationship she does, but I never felt there was any question of consent.

So if I haven’t convinced you to buy Cold-Hearted Rake yet, I probably never will. And if I have, you’re probably not even reading this right now because you skipped down to the buy links below. I’m going to attempt to actually get some sleep now and recover from my book hangover. Happy reading!