Anna Bennett

This book contains several of my favorites—a heroine who is an author/journalist, a grumpy, redeemable hero, and lots of plot development through female friendships and sisterhood. It contains some genuine crazy-sauce elements, like a mysterious origin story, not one, but TWO trips to Gretna Greene, and amnesia! Unfortunately, it also contains one of my least favorite tropes. Nash “can’t possibly love anyone,†least of all Lily, because he’s emotionally stunted (like every other English male in the peerage during the Romance Novel Era).

I say Romance Novel Era, because it’s not exactly clear which historical time period this is set in. If that’s something that annoys you, this might not be a book for you. However, the characters are beautifully developed, the relationship is built in a believable, genuine way, and I am really looking forward to the other characters’ books.

ARC provided by NetGalley and St Martins Press in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review.… (more)

I love historical romance trilogies. In the first story you meet a lot of very interesting people, and the story focuses on two of them. In the next story you get a laser look at another couple of people, usually one you met in the first book and someone unexpected. And – bonus – you get to catch up on that first couple and many of the others. By the third book you feel like you know them all. There’s another couple, one old, one new, and they press on will they-won’t they to their glorious HEA. Maybe, hopefully. You’re never quite sure until the end. it’s a great formula, with the only drawback being that while you can’t wait for that third book and the big wrap-up, at the same time you dread it because you know it’s The End for the series. Author Anna Bennett is so excellent at this. It Takes a Rake is an excellent example, in fact.

Kitty is the little troublemaker from book one. Willful, headstrong, clever, orphaned, being raised by a bachelor uncle who has no idea what to do with her. She’s the reason Blake and Hazel met and got their HEA. Kitty? We meet her and kind of forget about her.

Kitty is a young lady in book two, a member with Hazel and Poppy of the little group The Belles of Bellehaven. She’s refined, calmed down a bit, but we can still see her independent streak and determination. But this is Poppy and Keane’s story and we enjoy the trek to their HEA, happy for how Kitty is growing up, how she belongs, but mostly smitten with the two lovebirds.

Book three, though, is all about Kitty. All about all-grown-up Kitty. A talented heiress ready to come into her own. Not so much about getting in trouble these days as knowing her own mind and intending to follow her own path. Which is to become a successful architect. Remember, however, that we are still in the Regency Era and young women don’t really get to do whatever they want without consequences. How is Kitty going to deal with this? By never giving away her heart and never being under the thumb of any man who will try to control her, that’s how.

And now we come to the fun part that Bennett does so well. Enter Leo, childhood friend of Kitty, and an old rival in architectural talent and dreams. When he returns to Bellehaven after several years away, they meet again and Kitty feels something, but she won’t let that little twitch take hold. Nope, no way, not Kitty. She has plans. As for Leo, he has plans too but as soon as he sees her he realizes that childhood crush he came close to acknowledging before chickening out is no long a crush. Nope, now it’s love. Through a series of hilarious misunderstandings where she thinks he’s come back looking for a wife, she offers to teach him to be a rake, to attract women and find that wife, although this soon starts to stick in her throat and grate on her. These two together are laugh-out-loud funny, tender, sweet, hilariously oblivious, and eventually steamy enough to make you break out in a sweat. And, yep, we get our bonus and catch up on Hazel and Blake and Poppy and Keane and everybody else.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for providing an advance copy of It Takes a Rake. It was delightful, suspenseful, swoony and totally, completely enjoyable and satisfying. I just hope fantastic author Bennett is busy writing another trilogy; I can’t wait! I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own.… (more)

From the time they were in their teens, nobody could vex Miss Kitty Beckett like Leo Lockland. She was fifteen and he was seventeen when they began apprenticing at Leo’s grandfather’s architecture firm. Both were gifted but in very different disciplines. Kitty could dream up the most wonderful, fantastically beautiful buildings and bring them to life with her colorful renderings. Leo was anything but fanciful. His world was orderly, with neat lines, perfectly planned, and nothing left to chance. His strong suit was calculating everything to do with the design – the math was his strong suit – Kitty, well, not so much in the math department.

Leo – OMGoodness – I did love Leo, and he is why I rounded my rating up to 4 stars rather than down to 3. Leo had loved Kitty from the day he met her but she was totally oblivious to it. He never stopped loving her even though he abruptly left – without saying goodbye to her. Now, he’s returning to Bellehaven Bay to run his grandfather’s architectural firm – and to hopefully win the heart of Kitty. He’s willing to do anything – change in any way – to win her. So, when she offers to teach him to be a rake, he readily accepts. Anything to keep him close to her. Whatever she wants – he gives. Sometimes, I thought he gave too much, but it never annoyed me, so I continued to give high marks to Leo.

Miss Kitty Beckett has severe abandonment issues. It is her opinion that everybody she loves abandons her for one reason or another. Therefore, she cannot depend on anyone – she can only rely on herself. She will marry because she wants children, but she’ll marry a rake who will leave her to live her own life while he leads his. She’ll never love him and won’t be hurt when he abandons her. Even her nemesis, Leo, abandoned her without even saying goodbye. Now, though, he is back to plague her.

I enjoyed this, I believe, final book in the series because it was well-written, witty, nicely paced, and had some characters I loved. I even mostly liked Kitty, but I got very, very annoyed with her and her refusal to change her mind about marriage and love. She had wonderful examples of loving and caring all around her, but she chose to ignore those. When she was still steadfastly against a life with Leo closer toward the end of the book, I found myself wishing he would just tell her to go live her lonely, loveless life and he’d find someone who would love him in return.

This was a nice wrap-up for the Belles and included a lovely epilogue that included all of the Belles and their families two years later.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.… (more)