Outrageous
Outrageous, the second book in Minerva Spencer’s Rebels of the Ton series, left me feeling unsatisfied. I had a hard time buying the romance and it seemed as though there were actually two stories and two heroines in the book – although there were only one of each.
Eva de Courtney, daughter of the Marquess of Exley, has decided to kidnap Godric Fleming, Earl of Visel, to punish him for behaving cruelly to Eva’s brother and his new wife. But Eva hasn’t completely thought this through and soon Godric has turned the tables, ejected Eva’s groom/accomplice, and taken charge of the carriage. Godric, although he is ostensibly the bad-guy, knows that he must now marry Eva as they’ve been alone in a carriage for a few days. Eva is less convinced, but a series of mishaps keep our hero and heroine together – and soon they have to decide if marriage is in the cards for them.
I had a hard time buying the premise of this story from the beginning. Eva is supposed to be a strong, independently-minded heroine, but we are constantly reminded that she is only nineteen and she acts it! The whining, please no more whining! It was also hard to believe the insta-lust. She is so mad at Godric, whom she truly loathes at the beginning, that she kidnaps him. But within the first chapters, she’s already having “sparks of anticipation” flying through her body when he looks at her.
Godric is sparking too and even though he realizes Eva is barely out of the schoolroom while he is thirty-six, he still gets the hots for her. Which could be okay given the time period, but Godric talks about how young and childlike she is all the time – “She was achingly beautiful and unlike any woman he could remember. She was part antagonist, part hoyden, part siren, part child.” When his musings turn more lustful, I was just grossed out. It’s okay to have a nineteen-year-old heroine marry an older man, just please don’t emphasize her childlike qualities over and over!
The story changes focus and direction about three-quarters in and Eva matures somewhat – we finally get a glimpse of the independent woman we are told she is. However at this point, it felt like a new heroine had appeared and the author was telling a different story. Throughout the book, there were moments of interest but there were also some nonsensical scenes that left me scratching my head. And the horse breeding – I feel like I’ve been cursed – this is the second book I’ve reviewed this year that goes on and on about the ins and outs (no pun intended) of horse breeding. I would be a happy woman never to read about horse breeding again!
I was picturing a low-C grade throughout most of the story but near the end there were some meandering plot twists and random storylines added and it just all fell apart. Our hero and heroine end up together but their journey was more like a drunken stagger than a romantic stroll. I think Outrageous is a book readers can safely skip!
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Recent Comments
Wow, this sounds about as bad as the previous volume in the series.
I liked parts of Notorious. This was a dud.
See, I reviewed that one for the site. It got the same grade.
The love scenes worked for me in Notorious. I thought in the bedroom they actually communicated pretty well. It was outside the bedroom they had crazy problems. I also liked the couple better in Notorious. Here everything was a hot mess and the older hero who acted like a child made it unpalatable for me added to the huge age difference.
I was very disappointed in this one. It was a hot mess. It didn’t know if it wanted to be serious or a goofy romp and it ended up being neither. I read the previous book and I had no idea the hero was 36 years old until starting this one.
Somehow in the last one (Notorious?) he seemed so petty and childish I kept thinking Gabriel (or Jibril) was so much older than he was and was just the mature, experienced guy compared to this rash, young firebrand. Finding out this was a seasoned and decorated former military officer acting like a loon just made it worse. I thought just the heroine needed to grow up but he was 100 times worse.
And after all his nutty schemes and unhinged behavior in the last one we are just supposed to believe he “snapped out of it” in one moment on his own and now everything is OK when he was kidnapped by Eva on his way to the abduction of an innocent women (the heroine’s best friend and sister in law).
While Notorious (the previous book) had its problems with the main couple’s communication, other parts worked for me and the love scenes were undeniably hot and between two equally matched adults (in terms of education and maturity if not life experience.)
Here, I didn’t even really enjoy the steamy stuff because Eva and Godric just seemed wildly mismatched and an altogether bad idea.
I’m beginning to think Spencer’s very good THE FOOTMAN (which she published under her alternate pen name of S.M. LaViolette) was just a fluke. I’m on the verge of taking her books off my tbr. I’ve got enough books to get around to reading—I don’t need to include books that are combinations of “meh” and “wtf”.
Have you read the next book after The Footman called “The Postilion”? It’s probably the most balanced and one of the best overall books she’s written.
The heroine is particularly strong and the plot doesn’t go off the rails.
I do have THE POSTILION on my tbr. Perhaps I’ll give that a chance; I remember it was teased at the end of THE FOOTMAN and the heroine is in disguise as a man for some portion of the story.
Yes, it’s well done and doesn’t have any of the crazy plot holes. I’d be interested to see what you thought of it.
The heroine goes through some hard times but she’s smart and resilient and the plot didn’t always go where I was afraid it would.
Please feel free to write us a review! :)
Oh no. Does “horse breeding” mean the 36-year-old man and the 19-year-old girl watch horses mating and are so uncontrollably aroused that they have sex too?
Good one, Marian!!
Luckily not in this book but sadly in a book I reviewed earlier this year. This book just gives us WAAAAAY too much info on the mechanics! Mood killer!
NOT AGAIN!!!!!
I can safely say that I will pass on all books offered for review that mention a horse crazy heroine in the blurb!
To be fair the heroine’s goal is to have a business as a horse breeder with a horse farm or something like that. So the scenes at the end show her building a business and doing work to that end. They are not preludes to romance, thankfully. The one good thing about the hero is that he becomes supportive of her and her work.
Reading about the mechanics of horse breeding aren’t to my taste but they are actually there for a good reason and not (yuck) as part of the “romance” side of the book. After seeing Eva act so childishly it was nice to see she did know what she was talking about when she said she had the knowledge and skills for the work she wanted to do.
TOO MANY AUTHORS HAVE READ RYAN’S DAUGHTER WHY