Risk of Rogues

The Risk of Rogues (Sinful Suitors novella)- Sabrina Jeffries
Simon & Schuster
Release Date: July 2, 2018

Rating:
📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Lady Anne is shocked when Captain Lord Hartley Corry—her former fiancé who left for India after her father forbade their marriage—returns to England and acts as if everything is all water under the bridge. He never fought for her hand or eloped with her as he promised and he thinks she’d still be willing to marry him? Not a chance.

Hartley is equally shocked to literally run into his past love upon arriving at his brother’s house. Though he yearns to take advantage of this second chance to woo his beloved, he can hardly admit that he is secretly a spy—at least not until he can be sure he trusts her. But convincing Lady Anne to let him prove his sincerity by courting her respectably all over again might be his undoing. Because all he wants is to show her how much of a rogue he can be when the right woman is in his arms…

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Lady Anne is known for her unique hats, and Captain Hartley "Hart" Corry is known as a gambler, a wastrel, and a rogue.  While Anne knows her reputation for hats is well earned, she's not sure about Hart's reputation.  If true, she should steer clear of the man she once hoped to marry.  If not, she needs to find out why he never eloped with her as promised and if they can still have a future.  Hart has to convince Anne they are still right for each other without telling her any of his past actions of future plans- all of which revolve around spying.  Can he balance both worlds and come out the winner?

Readers to Jeffries' Sinful Suitors series will recognize Hart and Lady Anne as secondary characters from the other books and be thrilled that they get their own story.  And Jeffries works her usual magic, bringing humor, heart, and happy endings to even a quick novella.  While I'm not usually a fan of second chance romance, Rogues is the perfect kind of second chance story- two people who were kept apart because their parents disapproved, but who were both too young to be ready for marriage at the time- even if they didn't realize it.  Both have lived and grown and discovered themselves as people, and now get to meet again for the first time.

Anne is a practical woman trying to look after herself and her mother, and no longer the romantic, lovestruck teen that Hart knew, so he's both surprised and suspicious when she asks practical questions about things like his future plans and money.  I loved how Anne stood up for herself, refusing to be swept along by passion and chemistry (which was instant and electric) and insisting that she was right to try to get to the truth of Hart's life and reputation before agreeing to marry him.  Both of them were smart enough to recognize that they weren't necessarily the same people they had been eleven years ago and they needed to get to known each other again- but Hart especially was also smart enough to know that the kind of chemistry they had was not something that should be ignored.  Readers can look forward to some truly romantic grand gestures as each works to prove their love to the other, and a most satisfying happy ending in true Sabrina Jeffries' style: discovering the true risk of rogues!

Sabrina Jeffries couldn't finish off her Sinful Suitors series (The Secret of Flirting) without giving us Lady Anne and Captain Hartley's story, and here it is! A short novella, The Risk of Rogues gives readers either the final helping of Jeffries' Suitors characters or, if this is your first taste, a delightful sample of what's in store when you read the rest of the series.  

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review