Rogue Most Wanted by Janna MacGregor: Review

I received a copy of Jan­na MacGregor’s Rogue Most Want­ed through His­tor­i­cal Fic­tion Vir­tu­al Book Tours. As always, this review reflects only my hon­est thoughts on the book.

Rogue Most Wanted
by Janna MacGregor

Pub­li­ca­tion Date: June 25, 2019
St. Mar­t­in’s Press
eBook & Paper­back; 384 Pages

Series: The Caven­sham Heiress­es, Book #5
Genre: His­tor­i­cal Romance

 

 

Want­ed: an engage­ment of con­ve­nience. Found: A noble suitor.

Raised on a remote Scot­tish estate by her ador­ing grand­fa­ther, Lady Theodo­ra Worth has inher­it­ed an earl­dom as well as the land itself. But when an upstart duke chal­lenges her claim to the title and the Ladykyrk estate, Thea is sud­den­ly in need of a husband—in name, at least. An elder­ly neigh­bor with a thor­ough­ly mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ty and a dash­ing great-nephew just might be the answer to Thea’s prayers. Except she has no inten­tion of mar­ry­ing the first man she meets. That would be utter­ly ridiculous.

It just can’t be him…

Lord William Caven­sham is entire­ly too devot­ed to his family’s estate—ever since he was jilt­ed as a lad–to wed, but he agrees to meet the woman his aunt has tak­en under her wing—and intro­duce her to pos­si­ble suit­ors. But after just one meet­ing with beau­ti­ful, spir­it­ed Thea, Will is deter­mined to help her reclaim her title. And even more­so, he can’t stop think­ing that per­haps mar­riage to this bold, pas­sion­ate woman may be the one thing he’s been miss­ing all along?

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My Review

First thing’s first: I spent the last six pages of this book teary-eyed after Will’s gift.

But, I’m get­ting ahead of myself!  In the inter­est of com­plete hon­esty, it took me a lit­tle while to real­ly get into this book.  I strug­gled a bit in the first hun­dred or so pages.    There were only so many times I could read a vari­a­tion of “but we’re just friends” before want­i­ng to hit my head against the wall!

That being said, it was frus­trat­ing, but not enough to make me give up on Rogue Most Want­ed.  In fact, it had made me all the more frus­trat­ed on behalf of the char­ac­ters.  I could feel Stel­la and Edith’s exas­per­a­tion as they tried to play match­mak­er, pri­mar­i­ly because every­one else could see it was­n’t the case.

By about the halfway point of the nov­el, though, I was hooked.  Steamy scenes between Thea and Will quick­ly picked up—at least the two would recog­nise their bla­tant phys­i­cal attrac­tion!  Of course, as Thea’s prospects of rese­cur­ing her place as Count­ess of Ean­ruig and mis­tress of Ladykyrk grow bleak­er, one has to keep read­ing to see if their devel­op­ing rela­tion­ship can with­stand it.

Sim­i­lar­ly to my recent read­ing of Project Duchess, one aspect of Rogue Most Want­ed that absolute­ly cap­tured my heart (as well as Thea’s) is the rela­tion­ships between the Caven­sham cou­ples.  This is the first book I’ve read of the Caven­sham Heiress­es series, and despite allu­sions to courtships past (and those to come in book six!), it worked quite well as a stand-alone read.  As Thea notes, “Their love for one anoth­er is appar­ent to all.  They’re sim­ply beau­ti­ful” (233). Between the cou­ples and the fam­i­ly at large, it’s clear that Caven­shams tru­ly love deeply and com­plete­ly (or, should I say, “decid­ed­ly” and “thor­ough­ly committed”).

Just as Will and his fam­i­ly love each oth­er so dear­ly, Thea’s love for her late grand­fa­ther and for Ladykyrk and its ten­ants shines. We only get glimpses into the rela­tion­ship she and the late Duke shared, but it’s clear that he dot­ed on her and they shared an incred­i­ble bond.  And her ten­ants’ ado­ra­tion of her is obvious—Thea is imme­di­ate­ly set up as a char­ac­ter we should root for, despite her own belief in some inher­ent flaws (large­ly fueled by The Mid­night Cry­er’s gos­sip).

At the same time, though, so is Will.  In this respect, I almost wish this book had a dif­fer­ent title;  Will is far from a dis­hon­est or unprin­ci­pled rogue. In fact, even The Mid­night Cry­er pro­claims him unwor­thy of any­one who’s any­one want­i­ng him.  Thea, per­haps, could be con­sid­ered a sort of female rogue—and her hav­ing her title in her own right could sup­port the asso­ci­a­tion to a more mas­cu­line-con­no­tat­ed term.

With that in mind, though, one def­i­n­i­tion of “rogue” sticks out—“remove infe­ri­or or defec­tive plants or seedlings from (a crop).”  With that in mind, you get into Will’s and Thea’s minds as you exam­ine the title:  help­ing his fam­i­ly run the estates, an agri­cul­tur­al ref­er­ence would­n’t be unlike­ly for Will, and he cer­tain­ly sees him­self as infe­ri­or, as unwor­thy of love after a long-past jilt­ing.  All the same, Thea wants him terribly—even as she turns away, she admits she wants him more than any­thing, and that los­ing him would be the worst pos­si­ble sac­ri­fice, save los­ing Ladykyrk and dis­re­spect­ing her grand­fa­ther’s wish­es while ruin­ing the ten­ants’ livelihoods.

So, while it took a bit more thought, I came to change my mind even on the title—the obvi­ous under­stand­ing of it may not apply to Will, or even to Thea, but it does work, and quite well, in fact.

As a whole, I did enjoy read­ing Rogue Most Want­ed, despite my ear­ly hes­i­ta­tions. In fact, the rela­tion­ships between not only Will and Thea, but the oth­er Caven­sham cou­ples, might just force me to get my hands on oth­ers from this series.  I can’t help but want to read more about Claire, Emma, March, and even Aval­on’s stories!

Praise for Rogue Most Wanted

“Effer­vesces with light­heart­ed romance…sweet and sul­try in equal mea­sures.” — Pub­lish­ers Weekly

“[An] emo­tion­al­ly rich, exquis­ite­ly wrought tale that superbly cel­e­brates the redemp­tive pow­er of love.” — Booklist

About the Author

Jan­na Mac­Gre­gor was born and raised in the bootheel of Mis­souri. She cred­its her dar­ling mom for intro­duc­ing her to the hap­pi­ly-ever-after world of romance nov­els. Jan­na writes sto­ries where com­pelling and pow­er­ful hero­ines meet and fall in love with their equal­ly matched heroes. She is the moth­er of triplets and lives in Kansas City with her very own dash­ing rogue, and two smug, but not sur­pris­ing­ly, per­fect pugs.

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Blog Tour Schedule

Mon­day, June 24
Review at My Read­ing Chronicles

Tues­day, June 25
Review at Bib­lio­phile Reviews
Review & Excerpt at The Book Junkie Reads

Wednes­day, June 26
Review at Book­ish Rantings
Review at So Many Books, So Lit­tle Time

Thurs­day, June 27
Review at His­tor­i­cal Fic­tion with Spirit

Fri­day, June 28
Fea­ture at Bro­ken Teepee
Review at View from the Birdhouse

Sat­ur­day, June 29
Review at Jorie Loves a Story

Mon­day, July 1
Excerpt at The Lit Bitch
Review at To Read, Or Not to Read

Tues­day, July 2
Review at Amy’s Booket List

Wednes­day, July 3
Review at Curl­ing up by the Fire
Excerpt at Myths, Leg­ends, Books & Cof­fee Pots

Thurs­day, July 4
Review at Cof­fee and Ink

Fri­day, July 5
Fea­ture at What Is That Book About
Review at For the Sake of Good Taste

Giveaway

Dur­ing the Blog Tour, we are giv­ing away two paper­back copies of Rogue Most Want­ed by Jan­na Mac­Gre­gor! To enter, please use the Gleam form below.

Give­away Rules

– Give­away ends at 11:59 pm EST on July 5th. You must be 18 or old­er to enter.
– Give­away is open to US only.
– Only one entry per household.
– All give­away entrants agree to be hon­est and not cheat the sys­tems; any sus­pi­cion of fraud is decid­ed upon by blog/site own­er and the spon­sor, and entrants may be dis­qual­i­fied at our discretion.
– The win­ner has 48 hours to claim prize or a new win­ner is chosen.

Rogue Most Wanted