REVIEW: Once More, My Darling Rogue by Lorraine Heath

Once More, My Darling Rogue by Lorraine Heath: Disagreeable characters and unlikely situations are seldom the formulae for a winning novel. However, “Once More, My Darling Rogue” delightfully proves that wrong.

Lady Ophelia Lyttleton is highly disagreeable, and believes and acts as if she were above most people. In particular, she feels highly superior to Drake Darling, a commoner of low background who was essentially adopted into the Duke of Graystone’s family when his guardian married the duke. Drake runs Dodger’s Drawing Room, a gentlemen’s club. For various reasons, although Olivia is best friends with Grace, the daughter of the Duke of Graystone, she loathes Drake, to the extent of publicly shunning him and calling him “boy.” Drake finds her irritating and annoying, if beautiful, but her cutting remarks make him feel as if he was back in the gutter where he was born. At Grace’s wedding to the Duke of Lovingdon, Ophelia manages to push him just a little too far, and Drake pushes back, literally, into an alcove where he provokes her into a kiss.

She should have been repelled, horrified. Instead she was entranced, drawn into sensations such as she’d never experienced. He was so terribly talented at eliciting delicious responses that began at the tips of her toes and swirled ever upward, a tingling of nerve endings, a lethargic warmth, that weakened her knees, her resolve to push him away.

Much later, while walking home along the Thames, he finds a woman washed up on shore, covered in mud and largely unconscious. Blanketing her with his coat, he picks her up and carries her to his home, which luckily isn’t far away. After stripping off her wet clothes, he starts to clean her up and soon discovers that the unfortunate, nearly drowned woman in his bed is none other but Lady Ophelia. However, all is not right with Ophelia; she has amnesia, and can’t recall her name or her family or anything about herself. Drake, believing that this could not be a permanent state, decides to take advantage of the situation by telling her that she is his housekeeper. “Phee” as he calls her, is puzzled, but accepting, and is, in general, a nicer, softer and less lofty version of herself. So, while Phee learns how to keep house, Drake works on trying to find out how she ended up in the Thames, and they both learn how to deal with the raging attraction that exists between them.

Olivia and Drake remind me of something that I learned in the psychology courses I took in college…that children aren’t bad, they just do bad things. Olivia and Drake do bad things without being bad people, which is good, because it keeps them likable when they could just as easily have been unlikeable. There is something about Olivia that makes her uptight and superior, yet sympathetic. She has obvious good parts (as Drake muses, she’s friends with Grace, so she must be not as bad as she seems) and his mother talks to Drake about the sadness that is in her. Drake, on the other hand, is so sensitive about his past that he can’t see who he has become, and he has a huge chip on his shoulder. Olivia and Drake also remind me of something my mother told me when I was in junior high—that being tormented by someone of the opposite gender usually means they like you and don’t know how to express it appropriately. Oh, so obvious! But fun too, like when you were in school and you could see two of your friends sniping and picking on each other, and you know it was because they had mutual crushes.

I’m one of those readers who are highly interactive and emotional—I yell at the characters, give them advice (usually when they are being very stupid), and have occasionally been known to throw a book when it all gets too much (paperback, with ereaders I just switch them off and walk away). Sometimes I stomp away and never come back to that book. Sometimes I come back, and, even more rarely, I am rewarded for returning by finishing a great book that was able to engage me emotionally. “Once More, My Darling Rogue” is that sort of book. There was a moment when I wanted to fling it away, when I couldn’t see how the author could write the book out of the corner it was in without changing the fundamentals of who the characters were. However, Lorraine Heath does manage it, and I am happy to say that if you get to that point in this book (and you will know where it is) keep on reading. You’ll be glad you did.

Book Info:

Published August 26th 2014 by Avon

They are England’s most eligible bachelors, with the most scandalous reputations. But for the right woman, even an unrepentant rogue may mend his ways…

Born to the street but raised within the aristocracy, Drake Darling can’t escape his sordid beginnings. Not when Lady Ophelia Lyttleton snubs him at every turn, a constant reminder he’s not truly one of them. But after rescuing her from a mysterious drowning he realizes she doesn’t remember who she is. With plans to bring her to heel, he insists she’s his housekeeper—never expecting to fall for the charming beauty.

While Ophelia might not recall her life before Drake, she has little doubt she belongs with him. The desire she feels for her dark, brooding employer can’t be denied, regardless of consequences. So when her memory returns, she is devastated by the depth of his betrayal. Now Drake must risk everything to prove she can trust this rogue with her heart once more.