This RITA® Reader Challenge 2016 review was written by Qualisign. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Historical category.

Here is Qualisign's review:

NB: Though Qualisign gives Sweetest Scoundrel a B as a standalone, she gives it an A- if being read as part of the Maiden Lane series.

For the second year in a row, I have misread the date for the first of my two RITA reviews and have had to play catch up after the rest of the participants in this section have sent in their reviews. From the wrong side of the missed deadline, I can only imagine the lives of those gold-star reviewers, who after submitting their timely and irreproachable reviews, are now ensconced, guilt-free, in their favorite chairs reading their next Trashy Book while sipping their favorite beverages and munching their favorite bonbons—possibly while knitting an epoch- (epic-?) appropriate codpiece. And now I have to confess that I wrote this paragraph two weeks and 3000 road miles ago, further putting me into missed deadline purgatory.

Further exacerbating my guilt, the initial reviewer of Sweetest Scoundrel was the first out of this year’s RITA guest-reviewer chute. It was a fine review that clearly outlined how many different shades of “meh” this book presented to that reviewer. Since my take on the book was so different, I thought that I would suck up the shame of my deadline fail in order to give a second opinion. In fact, two weeks prior to the actual (and missed) deadline, I already had read and re-read the Sweetest Scoundrel three times, in no small part because I found the book so compelling. After my first time through, I came up with two separate grades as I felt that the book would be read significantly differently by those caught up in the exquisite Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series and by those reading the book as a standalone. I assume that the first reviewer evaluated the book as a standalone; I’ll focus on why this book—and possibly the entire series—worked so well for me.

The plotline is ostensibly a whodunit (or a who’sdoingit) that enables a cast of dozens, utterly appropriate for one of the final books in the long series. The plotline is admittedly weak as a standalone, although it does allow the hero to act protectively heroic and the heroine to actively address some of her fears. The plotline works in the broader Maiden Lane context and nicely set up the next and final (?) book of the series.

At this point, having passed all hope of writing a coherent review, I’ll just present some randomly ordered reasons for my so decidedly un-meh response to the book:

• Elizabeth Hoyt is an exceptional writer. I love her ability to get caught up in the characters’ thoughts. The meet-cute of Eve Dinwoody and Asa Makepeace, when she shouldered her way into his room at a boarding house, gives just a glimpse of Hoyt’s exquisite descriptive capacity and her detailed showing, not telling, from the perspective of the characters:
  

  She took the opportunity of his distraction to slip triumphantly past him.

  And then she skidded to a halt.

  The room was an absolute shambles, crowded to overflowing with mismatched furniture and dusty things. Stack of papers and books slid off chairs and tables, falling to alluvial mounds on the floor. In one corner a huge heap of colored fabric was piled, surmounted by a gilded crown; in another, a life-size portrait of a bearded man was propped next to a four-foot-tall model of a ship, complete with sails and rigging. A stuffed raven eyed her beadily from the mantelpiece and on the hearth itself a kettle steamed next to a teetering tower of dirty dishes and cups. Indeed, so filled was the room that it took Eve a moment to notice the nude woman in the bed.

• Hoyt’s characters, at least in this book, are fascinating because they are not typical main characters of Regencies. Neither of the main characters, Eve Dinwoody nor Asa Makepeace/Harte is titled, although Eve, the [“bastard”] sister of duke, comes closest to this. Neither is excessively rich nor in abject poverty. Neither is considered beautiful nor handsome. And neither is soul-witheringly jaded nor wearyingly Mary Sued. Eve and Asa are refreshingly complex and atypical Regency characters.

Even more randomly ordered aspects of this book that I loved:

• Both Asa and Eve were perfectly contented with the lives they were living when they met. They weren’t looking for an HEA. They were already living in their own happily right now (HRN). Eve was quite content with her retiring life as a miniaturist and Asa was more than content with his frenetic life as owner and manager of Harte’s pleasure garden and theatre.
• The power relations between Asa and Eve were exceptionally balanced from start to finish.
• Both Eve and Asa lived with unaddressed trauma from their youths.
• While both Asa and Eve had a hand in facilitating the other’s healing, in both cases, Eve and Asa accepted the support of the other to address their own trauma.
• Eve’s fear of men (= violence)/sex and dogs, was not solved by Asa’s waving his magic wand/wang over Eve’s head (or over other body part).
• As soon as Asa realized that Eve viewed him as a potential threat, he made sure that Eve had the power of choice and a safe outlet at every step in their interactions.
• Many of the interactions involved answering questions about sex—often with delicious descriptions or live action illustrations. The sex was not unbridled lust; it was a lovely, step-by-step negotiation of desire and stepping beyond the limits of fear. Each of those steps was always prefaced by an explicit expression of consent, consent that was asked for and given freely. The sex might be considered meh if one were looking for clever newness, but given Eve’s history, I found the sex scenes to be incredibly empowering and written extremely sensitively and often with humor and delight.
• The characters that populated the book were marvelously diverse. The cast of dozens included an African ex-slave rescued from a Caribbean sugar plantation married to a “plump and pretty” red-haired cook from Cornwall, a Duke (Duke Caire, once described as a Lucius Malfoy look-alike on SBTB, and brother-in-law to Asa), an opera star (the gloriously beautiful nude woman in Asa’s bed in the excerpt above) whose thick Italian accent devolved into a working class British accent under stress, an evil but angelic looking duke (Eve’s brother), who, while black-mailing almost everyone in London society, still showed some redeeming value in his odd—and sometimes downright weird—care for his (half)sister, a gay architect, and a cross-dressing street waif, among many others. In addition there were two central ploppets (plot pets): an unnamed dove and a starving mastiff named Henry.
• The discussion of potential/possible castrato sex was hilarious.
• Eve’s “plainness” was counterbalanced by her incredibly proper speech and excellent financial acumen. In turn, Asa’s energy, vision, and virility were counterbalanced by his working class demeanor, exemplified by his eating with his mouth open and talking with his mouth full (sorry, but ew).

In the end, I found this story incredibly compelling. I loved that two people happy with their lives unexpectedly found a deep camaraderie, based on mutual respect and friendship (in conjunction with a fulfilling sexual relationship) that ripened into love. This wasn’t about pretty or rich people finding their match or equal; it was about two people, content with their lives, who moved into a loving partnership built on the genuine recognition of the other person’s internal strengths and weaknesses. Yes, there were a couple of things that didn’t ring true (e.g., the pace of the relationship was breakneck, and Asa’s proposal was just too clichéd for my taste), but the journey to that point was excellent. It was a privilege to read a truly deserving RITA nomination.

I just wish I’d written and sent this (semi-) review a month earlier.