Complicated Regency Era Heroine Makes Good!

What is your favorite type of heroine? In the romance genre, there are so many different types of leading ladies to choose from. As a reader, I most enjoy reading about complex women who have to overcome emotional or psychological obstacles in order to gain their happy ending. If you like these kinds of characters, you will enjoy reading award-winning author Sarah MacLean’s fourth book in her Rule of Scoundrels series.

The series deals with four partners who run an extremely successful gambling club in London during the latter part of the Regency era. Three of the partners are aristocrats whose lives have gone off the rails. Running “The Fallen Angel” leads them to marriages that turn their lives around.

The fourth partner is the mysterious “Chase,” a shadowy figure who is the most dangerous person in England. Chase has extensive files on the most important people in England. That information can ruin the mighty, bring down wrong-doers and right wrongs.

Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover, The Fourth Rule of Scoundrels, tells the story of “The Fallen Angel’s” fourth partner, the mysterious Chase. If you were writing this book, how would you craft “Chase?” The title of the book reveals Chase’s gender, though not the issues with which she has struggled most of her life.

Chase is a woman whose life was ruined at an early age by a “love affair” gone wrong. It left her with a child and no husband. Luckily, she is the sister of a powerful duke so she doesn’t find herself consigned to walking the streets to keep body and soul together. As the powerful Chase, she lives in darkness and wreaks vengeance on those men who she feels need to have their comeuppance. As the beautiful “Anna,” the queen of “The Fallen Angel’s” light skirt brigade, she is celebrated for her womanly allure. But as Lady Georgiana Pearson, daughter of a powerful duke and sister of a powerful duke, she is invisible to the ton, ruined beyond redemption.

Georgiana’s precocious daughter is beginning to grow up. She notices that she and her mother are not acknowledged and are even given the cut direct when they go for a walk in the park. Georgiana begins to worry about how she might be able to redeem her reputation in society so that her illegitimate daughter can have a “normal” life. There is, of course, a worthy and sexy hero with his own issues that must be overcome to win him his true love. The main story, however, deals with the question: How does a woman with three different identities find her way to a happy ending?

This is an extremely satisfying, beautifully written historical romance. It is a moderately spicy full-length Regency era novel first published in 2014 available in paperback, on Kindle and as an audiobook. The other books in this series are also satisfying reads.

NEVER JUDGE A LADY BY HER COVER: The Fourth Rule of Scoundrels| By Sarah MacLean | Avon | 384 pp.