[Historical Romance] Lady Derring takes a lover by Julie Anne Long

Backlog #7

I've read a ton of Historical Romance, but I never came across Julie Anne Long before. You could say that thanks to recs on Goodreads I kept seeing their name when I added my faves to the collection. So I decided to check it out (especially the ratings felt quite high in the HR category).

And the series called Palace of Rogues called out to me.

Who knew I will be so disappointed.

(tbh an ugly cover, I like the style of covers like novels from 80'-90' the most or more vague and artsy instead of inaccurate dresses, modern-looking people and pictures too crisp and unnatural like they glaringly scream "I'm a Photoshop collage")

A mistress. A mountain of debt. A mysterious wreck of a building.

Delilah Swanpoole, Countess of Derring, learns the hard way that her husband, “Dear Dull Derring,” is a lot more interesting—and perfidious—dead than alive. It’s a devil of an inheritance, but in the grand ruins of the one building Derring left her, are the seeds of her liberation. And she vows never again to place herself at the mercy of a man.

But battle-hardened Captain Tristan Hardy is nothing if not merciless. When the charismatic naval hero tracks a notorious smuggler to a London boarding house known as the Rogue’s Palace, seducing the beautiful, blue-blooded proprietress to get his man seems like a small sacrifice.

They both believe love is a myth. But a desire beyond reason threatens to destroy the armor around their hearts. Now a shattering decision looms: Will Tristan betray his own code of honor…or choose a love that might be the truest thing he’s ever known?

The Palace of Rogues. Book 1

I WAS SO BORED.

I can't stress enough how bored I was by reading it. I think counting ants on the ground is more thrilling than this.

And I actually felt like I will be able to read it, since the beginning was so out of ordinary. Lady Derring meets the mistress of her husband, they're both in desperate situation and decide on their venture - boarding house.

Next thing is a grand and crazy plan on how to survive - remodel the building, having their own set of rules of who to allow inside (so this place will become a home for others)

But there is a secret about this building.

Basically it was a whore house in the past, now Dilalah wants it to become a borading house near the docks. They indeed renovated it quite a bit and were waiting for people to come over. But for some reason some bad rumors started spreading so people won't go there at all. Only few people became residents and one of them is our MMC and Captain Hardy.

Capain Hardy was cracking down smuggling all this time and one of the last cases before he plans to retire is to follow the lead on smuggled cigars. One of the leads is - Lady Derring, since the smuggling is connected to her late husband.

So we have the initial and potential conflict of the novel, he came with agenda, but managed to fall in love (about this "love" later).

But the entire novel is so boring and uneventful that it hurt. Not to mention that both characters felt kinda blind to obvious presence of cross-dressing men in the vicinity. And author doesn't make it a secret that something is very odd about two "sisters" who barely speak, look at you etc.

You would think there will be some sort of intrigue or anything else, but no.

They spent it felt quite some time just thinking of following those two "sisters" and figuring out that they're smugglers and /spoilers/ the Palace of Rogues has a secret passage, you could get there through one of the rooms, but it was occupied by unknown person from the very beginning, both smugglers wanted to trespass but never succeeded, the other part of the passage is in the neighboring stables, the problem was that there is a door between Palace and stables which was not only locked but blocked by crates, so they couldn't take things out without disturbance.

But what seemed illogical is that smugglers (according to Hardy) could scare the residents into obedience and just take the load away, but they never did it and waited until Hardy became a resident as well. Well, of course because Hardy was there and they knew his identity they never made a big move.

Anyway most part of the novel is how Delilah and Hardy just danced around each other, uneventful smuggling case which was so boring it was maddening.

This blindness to recognize to cross-dressing men who obviously looked rough dropped a shadow on Hardy's perfect image.

As for Delilah... well she is a kind person, but unlike kind she is also kinda naive and lacked self-preservance. Like the case with late-night visitor, if it wasn't for Hardy she would be assaulted. I mean no money are worth it, when she obviously had a gut feeling there was something odd about the man.

Naive because she believed in any story told, agan being blind to cross-dressing men (I'm surprised her more experienced partner, her husband's mistress did not recognize it as well) who also told her their own fairy tale how and why they need a shelter. It's not bad being kind, but she felt more stupid.

Note: find it ironic since Derring, sounds like "daring", but there is only one aspect in which Dililah is daring, wanting to get laid.

The "love" felt more like "lust". In historical romance it's sometimes hard to judge because there is an attraction almost from the first time people see each other, here it felt the same, the two noticed each other. But honestly it felt more like physical attraction than anything else and stayed like that for quite some time. All in all I did not buy it.

The only good part is that indeed few of the residents elt liek at home during this time despite the silly rules, on the contrary it allowed them to bond. Plus thery novel-y part about a couple who both escaped engagement and travelled to this place but eventually escaped to Gretna Green to marry.

This book made me want to DNF the rest of the series. I may try to read the second book, because it is about the mistress (she has ridiculous last name) and the mysterious resident that checked in first but never appeared.

RATE: 2/5. How people find it so appealing is above me.