Bethany Bennett - Any Rogue Will Do

For exactly one season, Lady Charlotte Wentworth played the biddable female the ton expected -- and all it got her was society's mockery and derision. Now she's determined to be in charge of her own future. So when an unwanted suitor tries to manipulate her into an engagement, she has a plan. He can't claim to be her fiancé if she's engaged to someone else. Even if it means asking for help from the last man she would ever marry.
Ethan, Viscount Amesbury, made a lot of mistakes, but the one he regrets the most is ruining Lady Charlotte's reputation. Going along with her charade is the least he can do to clean the slate and perhaps earn her forgiveness. Pretending to be in love with the woman he's never forgotten is easy. What isn't easy is convincing her to give him a second chance.

Comment: I had added this book to my TBR because of positive reviews I've read somewhere. I'm always on the lookout for a new author to enjoy, but while this story was interesting, it wasn't amazing to me.

In this book we meet Charlotte Wentworth, who is back to London, to try to see if she can find a husband she would endure to be married to, so that she doesn't have to accept the man her father chose for her. Her season, years ago, didn't go well, when a careless attitude of Ethan, viscount Amesbury, turned her into a laughingstock. But now, she is more confident, she is stronger in her beliefs and decisions and she plans on not being distracted. Things have to change, though, when once more others see her as a possible gossip fodder, and who would come to her rescue but Ethan... 

Now that they are older and wiser, can they join forces to stop the gossip, to both get their goals but aware of not falling in love in the process?

I was eager to be immersed in a new story and while second chance in love isn't my favorite trope, I figured it wouldn't be that difficult to enjoy this one since Ethan and Charlotte had never been a proper couple, so they would need to fall in love from the start and I do like romances where we get to see the process from the beginning.

However, despite some interesting passages and situations, I must say I was a little bored here and there and the fact I was so easily distracted by other things made reading this a lot slower than what I would usually take to finish. I can't say this is a bad story or that things weren't intriguing but I just didn't felt a lot of connection with the characters and somehow their relationship didn't feel as if it was fascinating. I can't say if it's just the writing style or if the execution just wasn't addictive.

Charlotte is actually a good heroine. We learn she went from naive and gullible to someone who learned from mistakes and from too many expectations (or expectations set on the wrong person/decision) and now she is eager to do what she has to and go back to predictability of her life and the tasks she does so well. We also learn her father doesn't see things this way and wants her married and he even chose the prospective groom, someone Charlotte doesn't care for. She plans on having another season, although she isn't a debutante anymore, but this time she will go at it with her eyes open and I must say I applauded her attitude and her decision to be wiser about the whole thing if she wasn't in love with anyone.

Ethan has his own side of things, he is a humble Scottish man, used to work with his hands but circumstances made him the heir to the title and now he must play this part too. At first he wasn't really aware of what the title and the expectations entailed and he didn't behave as wisely as he should. I liked it that we could see he wasn't a bad person, that he had this whole humble side which made him a good person and he quickly decides to make amends with Charlotte when he can, which proves that now he isn't as strict as to not see when he makes a mistake.

Their romance was kind of believable, in the sense that they both had a sort of misplaced idea about the other but they talk, they finally understand the POV of the other person and they behave very maturely. Of course, there's some fun in the whole fake engagement for plot reasons, and I thought this would lead to interesting developments or, at least, some scenes but the whole thing was a little underwhelming and not as marvelous as I hoped it would. Nothing was really done badly or inconsistently, it just wasn't amazing nor memorable for me.

I also think the secondary characters weren't very fleshed out, and sometimes I'd confuse who was who and why would that character be interacting with others in this scene, which means that globally the overall plot felt a little all over the place. Perhaps if more secondary characters had been used better or if the overall tone of the story were to be more romantic, I can't really say, perhaps I'd have appreciated the end result more. Between this and the main characters not being always captivating, this book ended up being only on the average for me.

Grade: 6/10