Book Review

Wild, Wild Rake by Janna MacGregor

This has a tantalizing premise, a vicar who’s also a rake, but reading it was a dreary slog. The amount of plot in Wild Wild Rake almost reached 1990s crazysauce level, yet it wasn’t a compelling read.

I found most of the characters in Wild Wild Rake confusing, or unlikable. The hero was both. At the beginning of the book, Devan is a dissolute gentleman who’s cultivated a reputation as a womanizer, and publicly loathes the heroine. After a time jump of ten years, Devan’s reputation hasn’t changed, but he is now deeply religious. Why and how this happens isn’t clear. What hasn’t changed is his arrogance. Devan is protective, but frequently tells the heroine that her feelings are wrong. While the couple begin the book arguing, by the end the heroine happily agrees with him. This story felt like a description of Stockholm syndrome, not a loving relationship.

With a large stable of secondary characters who serve as plot devices, the many B storylines were hard to track. There’s so much going on, the story should have felt fast-paced, but because I didn’t like the characters, I had trouble caring about the subplots.

Avalon, the Marchioness of Warwyk, is a lonely woman whose cruel husband ignores her while flaunting his mistress, a courtesan named Mary. Avalon is miserable, and punishes the marquess by spending his money on herself. This strategy did not make me sympathize with her. She naively tries to befriend an embarrassed Mary when they run into one another while shopping, despite obvious cues screaming, “This woman is pregnant with your husband’s child.”

Avalon is bitter that her parents forced her to jilt the man she actually liked in order to make this wealthier match. Her former intended has moved on, and married happily (in a previous book). However, his friend, the rakish vicar Devan, still nurses a grudge on his behalf. Manchild Devan decides to punish Avalon for years, even though his friend has forgiven her. He teases Avalon in public, gossips about her to her husband and others, and gives her the not-remotely-witty nickname Lady Warlock.

A decade later, Avalon is now a widow and the patroness of a small town. With assistance from Mary, who she befriended, Avalon helps “fallen women” (mostly pregnant sex workers) escape London and settle in her community. She is engaged in a war via correspondence with her son’s long-distance guardian the Earl of Larkton, who is both her late husband’s best friend, and Devan’s brother.

Stay with me here.

Larkton is worried that Avalon is frittering away her son’s inheritance, and is also frustrated by his brother’s inability to land a heiress, so he plucks Devan from his parish and reassigns him to spy on Avalon under the guise of tutoring her son, Thane. Avalon is not amused, and is aware of Devan’s reputation for frolicking with women. Plus, he was an ass to her years earlier, and she’s rolling her eyes now that all the girls in town are falling over themselves to catch him. Avalon believes that “she and only she ruled the parish with a fair and impartial hand,” which felt a bit patronizing. She promptly tries to bribe Devan to leave town; he refuses. Yet, she can’t stop herself from inexplicably being attracted to him. He’s just SO beautiful, you see. Even if he’s still calling her Lady Warlock and ignoring her boundaries.

At this point, we’re about 10% into this long book. There are so many characters—I’ve glossed over most—and many annoyed me. I wish Mary, the enigmatic mistress who only appears in a handful of scenes, was a bigger part of Wild Wild Rake. By a third in, my relationship with this book had deteriorated to a point akin to where you start hating the way your boyfriend breathes.

1. Rakish vicar fun was the one thing I needed this book to deliver, and it failed. What I like best about rakes is their pleasure-seeking orientation, and defiance of social strictures. Devan, in contrast, embraces a fairly traditional role. For reasons that I never understood, he lets people think that he’s an heiress-seeking rogue, whose sexploits are printed repeatedly in the newspaper, when actually he is

Show Spoiler

…a do-gooding virgin who likes children, and is just looking for the right woman to settle down with. He starts to love Avalon almost immediately after they reconnect because of an attraction to her charitable pursuits. I have no problem with virgin heroes, or quiet nice men, but that’s not what I expected from this book.

I may have enjoyed a story where Devan was a religious man struggling with his deliciously unwholesome thoughts about Avalon. Instead, this is the finale episode of The Bachelor, where a kind, not very bright, vaguely Christian man falls for a pretty single mom.

2. The Mansplaining. Chapters from Devan’s POV tend to be preachy. Even his compassion is strident. At the beginning of the story, Devan judges Avalon for dumping his friend. Later, Devan lectures her for not realizing how much she needs him. He repeatedly foists his problem-solving skills on her, desperate to “do whatever he could to help” Avalon in her village work. But his actions made it appear that he didn’t think Avalon was capable of accurately assessing whether she needed his help.

Devan thinks he’s often relocated because he’s the only vicar who “had enough brains to solve whatever problems various parishes had seemed to create amongst their neighbors.” Sure. Devan has a high opinion of his own intelligence, and while he appreciates Avalon’s “strength,” he can’t help but explain his much better ideas. Most of their interactions include him instructing her. When she explains her work, he tells her she hasn’t considered the impact on the parish. When the local midwife asks Avalon for help, he intercepts the message and steps in instead, perplexed when Avalon angrily confronts him. While he agrees with Avalon that the Earl of Larkton’s plan to send Thane to school at Eton is wrong, he disagrees with Avalon’s rationale, based on his knowledge of Thane’s needs after spending only a few minutes with her son. I skipped to the end of the book, only to be confronted with more of Avalon sharing her feelings about her son, and Devan explaining to her, gently, that she’s just wrong. To be fair, Devan is usually right, and Avalon turns out to be wrong. I found this dynamic maddening. I would have preferred to see both of them recognize their arrogance over time. Instead, it felt like Avalon came to believe that Devan understood her (and everything) better than she understood herself. This made their partnership feel disempowering.

3. Inconsistent characterization. At the beginning of Wild Wild Rake, Devan is a playboy who enjoys torturing Avalon, who is a moral paragon shocked by the existence of her husband’s mistress. When they meet again, their roles have been reversed and she is the one now comfortable with moral ambiguity. I didn’t think it made sense for Devan to suddenly turn into a kindly father figure after being a bully, and I didn’t trust this transformation.

Meanwhile, Avalon fixates on Devan once he reappears in her life. She runs a constant inner monologue; Devan is a bad influence, he is a “pious killjoy”, he challenges her authority, he’s in league with his brother, he’s an attractive distraction. For example, in the midst of a detailed description of Devan’s first sermon, she begins to ponder why everyone seems to like him so much more than her:

Rumors from The Midnight Cryer swirled around him like bees pollinating flowers. There was always a hint of the forbidden about him. Murmurings that he loved to lavish attention on women, and in return, gloried in their return affections. She’d even heard that he’d had numerous lovers. But the simple fact that he was a man of the cloth made him deserve their respect—though grudgingly on her part—until he proved otherwise.

Still, she had no doubt that he’d had experience with women. Didn’t all men?

Avalon complains about Devan often, but she throws herself into Devan’s comforting arms, sobbing about a sick villager the first time they spend more than a few minutes alone. She says Devan is both a devious “enemy” and is easy to manipulate. How can both be true? I kept wondering “WHY” while reading Avalon’s behavior.

4. Thane. The ten-year old plot moppet’s dialogue was formal and made him sound like a mix of Dickens’ Tiny Tim and Richard Gilmore. Adding to the plot moppetry, readers first learn Devan is a virgin through a conversation with Thane:

Immediately, his parents popped into Devan’s thoughts. “My mother and father were deeply in love, and their marriage was a true gift to my siblings and me. They taught me so much.”

Thane blinked slowly. “Like scripture?”

As one side of his mouth tugged upward, Devan debated whether to proceed or change the subject. “Please tell me,” the young lord said. “There aren’t many who share important things with me.”

Lord Warwyk had to be lonely. Devan hadn’t met any boys the young lord’s age yet. “My parents gave me a wise piece of advice that I’ve followed. They told me to wait for my heart’s true match, and so I am.”

How surprising that he was sharing more of himself with a boy whom he’d just met hours ago than he’d ever shared with any of his friends or family. However, he’d not share all of his secrets, particularly the one that would cause his friends to reel in laughter if they ever discovered the truth.

It was something he’d only share with his wife: He was a virgin and would stay that way until he found that one true love, the woman he wanted to share the rest of his life with. “Maybe that’s what my mother wants.” Thane looked up from his papers and captured Devan’s gaze.

“Maybe she’s waiting for her one true love also.”

Ultimately, I found the characters insufferable, and the style overwrought. I ended up only reading the first and last thirds of the book.

Show Spoiler

Other things that happened, mostly to Avalon’s family and friends: a love triangle, secret pregnancy, escape from an unwanted engagement, runaway teens, an almost rape, a dastardly villain who kills a suitor, the suitor actually being aIive and killing the villain, Devan gets shot, Mary reappears, there’s slut shaming, and the late marquess’ ultimate “torture” turns out to have been to give both Mary and Avalon money in his will.

That’s just in the two-thirds I read. There are so many secondary plots, and it all made me angry and bored. Despite a lovely cover, Wild Wild Rake failed to take advantage of the potential of this story, and left me frustrated instead of entertained.

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Wild, Wild Rake by Janna MacGregor

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  1. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    At the risk of sounding like a “romance snob” (yeah, right), one of my rules of thumb is: “The likelihood of me enjoying a book is inversely-proportionate to the author’s use of “y” in person or place names where use of a different vowel is clearly warranted.” Warwyk would have been a non-starter for me. I recently decided not to read a book based on the heroine’s name—Londyn. A heroine named London would be bad enough, but Londyn felt like a gratuitous insult.

  2. Ren Benton says:

    @Escapeologist: Or if the book begins with a 20-page pronunciation guide because “FjkhvdefDfchSdcg” is pronounced “Chad”…

  3. DonnaMarie says:

    “By a third in, my relationship with this book had deteriorated to a point akin to where you start hating the way your boyfriend breathes.”

    Bwhahahahahaha!

    I hope he the good sense to pour you a glass of wine and retreat to the garage.

    Thanks for taking one for the team.

  4. Teev says:

    Are there any romances with a hero who’s a vicar and a (for real) rake? I can think of non-rakish vicar heroes and rakish vicar villains but I wonder if it is hard to make a vicar a rake without making him a predator who is abusing his position.

  5. JoanneBB says:

    I’ve tried 2 books from this series and couldn’t get through either (1 & 5). Thank you for clearly articulating your issues with this one, I will avoid it.

  6. Kat says:

    Thanks for the strongly-worded review, Shana. Your review’s principal value is reminding me why I dislike reviewers so. I haven’t read the book and I still don’t know much about it other than it didn’t fit within your very well-defined but banal parameters for a romance (including the well-worn convention of a religious man struggling with what must be his inner “unwholesome” thoughts, or another well-worn convention of a woman who must always stand on equal ground to a man). I wonder what’s in the third of the book you were too annoyed and angry to read. Once upon a time reviews were about the actual book written, not a vehicle for the reviewer’s hobbyhorses. If there is a next time for you, and I’ll feel blessed if there isn’t, try describing the book — all of it — for the reader, before sharing whatever criticisms you deem appropriate. Doing so would elevate the quality of the review even if the book was not a favorite.

  7. Kareni says:

    Thanks for your thoughtful and entertaining review, Shana.

  8. SB Sarah says:

    @Kat: your comment and your attitude aren’t welcome. You are cordially invited to fuck right off.

  9. Big K says:

    Great review, Shana. The relationship between the main characters would drive me batty. Now I know to avoid this one.
    I adore my husband, but every once in a while, the noise of him chewing makes me nuts (it’s me, not him) so I snort laughed when I read your boyfriend breathing line.

  10. Princess Pepe says:

    While I appreciate reviewers who take the time to read and review books for us laywomen, and I certainly respect everyone is entitled to their opinion, I am disappointed by the lack of effort on your part Shana.

    First, Devan’s journey as a character- I thought- was one of the best aspects of this novel. While he certainly began as arrogant and headstrong, his realization of his limitations and the need to be with a woman whose strength he at first was intimidated by but came to admire, was intriguing. She not only pointed those limitations out but also helped him improve himself, which was very heartwarming. I didn’t think that the end culminated in Devan brainwashing the heroine into agreeing with his every whim but maybe that’s because I read the entire book? who knows!

    I also understand that bloggers/ reviewers don’t want to sit through books they don’t enjoy, and sometimes feel that a novel or a movie isn’t worth their time. That said, if you want to review a novel and skip the middle third of it, I have to wonder what your purpose is in reviewing a novel in the first place. If you watch the first and final thirds of a film, and then protest that the characters seem stiff and that there wasn’t much development, that seems, at best, disingenuous. With us (the readers) in mind, you should either commit fully or simply explain what was wrong with a novel and why you stopped reading it. As someone who read the book in its entirety, I think your review goes off the deep end once you start talking about the end, while admitting you skipped reading the entire middle third of the book. To be blunt- it seems a bit cheap.

    Lastly, I think you give the game a way too quickly in your review with your first point boiling down to “I came into this book with preconceived notions on what each character’s role and personality would be, and when the author didn’t fit that presupposed role, I was out.” I understand people want to have a solid expectation of something they buy: When I want to eat a gallon of vanilla ice cream, I don’t want to get a gallon of cottage cheese instead! But with a novel or a film, sometimes upending a reader’s expectations is not only the author’s desired intent but also (and more importantly) fun and exciting for a reader. I’m kind of glad that this book didn’t follow the same old rake formula I’m soooooooo used to!

    Anyways, I look forward to reading your next review- probably where you read the first 2/5 and then skip to the end and complain that the finale didn’t make sense!

  11. SB Sarah says:

    DNF reviews are valid in that they explain one reader’s experience. No one reader is the final word on a book, and if you had a different experience, great. But calling into question whether a reviewer did enough is not welcome nor appreciated. It’s rude . If the comments section is going to be polluted with sanctimonious sarcasm I am closing it immediately. I’m not interested in hosting your drive by assholery. Please follow Kat and fuck off.

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