Zebra, $8.99, ISBN 978-1-4201-4811-4
Historical Romance, 2020

Don’t be fooled by the steampunk warrior heroine on the cover. I don’t know who that person is, but heroine Kendra Douglas spends far more time being cossetted by our hero Lucas Mandeville and his friends than taking a rapier to her enemies. Come to think of it, I don’t recall her even posing on a grand staircase.

Lucas, Lord Foxton, was Once Dishonored, but now he’s back in London, hoping to start anew and put his past behind him. Of course, this is easy considering that he has powerful, well-connected BFFs from the last 11 Rogues Redeemed books—oh my goodness, that’s a large number of books indeed—and they all rally forward behind him.

Kendra is more than once dishonored, she’s more like forever disgraced because she’s separated from Lord Denshire, over scandalous allegations involving her spreading the love around to all his friends and more. Her son was seized from her shortly after she popped out that brat, and Denshire whacks her each time he needs a penny, because somehow she still has control over the money.

You’d think this means she can use the money to do something, but no, she endures like a stoic martyr until she bumps into Lucas during one of his first few forays into Polite Society. He dances with her out of kindness after seeing how much of a pariah she is, and by the third chapter, she has spilled pretty much her life story to Lucas. Wow, that’s scary. Imagine the things she’d say once she starts drinking a few.

Lucas believes everything she has to say because why not. The story has to get rolling, and we really don’t want to waste time on things like characters interacting like real folks would and only start opening up and trusting after a period of acquaintance. He will help her! He will take her in, let her stay with a married friend’s place, and help her get back her child!

The problem with this thing is that it has zero nuance. Kendra is of course a saint. None of the accusations leveraged against her is true, and in fact, she has zero flaws. Her entire arc here is her saintliness being validated and she finally gets back her brat along with finding a true love. It’d be nice if she had a more active role in her character arc, but no, everything only starts coming together after Lucas and Friends come to her aid. Only then does she finally take fencing and self-defense lessons, for example.

Well, you know what they say: you can give a trillion dollars to a romance heroine, but she will still find a trillion excuses to be a miserable, battered, victimized darling.

Thanks to Lucas and Friends, they find a line of eye witnesses to expose the truth about the scandal: Kendra is a saint, and Denshire is a monster. Along the way, Kendra cries and whispers gratefully to her new friends that women have it hard in 19th century England and she is so happy that she has finally found her fam. Oh, and Lucas also gives her great sexy fun times. She has won, people, all because she is pitiful enough and suffered long enough that a man takes pity on her and puts her life back together for her.

All these goes to show: you can only succeed and find happiness in life when you are connected to the right wealthy, powerful people.

This story is already a tepid and dull read because of the near-farcical contrast between the good guys’ saintliness and the bad guys’ monstrous antics. There is no middle ground. The fact that the heroine’s problems are initially established to be so complex, only to be dismantled with hilarious ease by Lucas and Friends only makes the poor darling look like an idiot whose first instinct to every situation is to stoically endure the abuse and play the martyr.

Also, because the main characters’ key points of their past and personality are all established by the third chapter, there is nothing to discover about them. As I turn the pages, all I get are Kendra crying in relief or telling everyone what an abused snowflake she is while Lucas starts getting involved in charities and what not because, hey, saints will be saints. It is almost a shock to read about these two having sex because by that time I have started to envision them as statues in a church and not horny people with actual body fluids to spew during happy moments.

I’m bored by Once Dishonored. It’s a tedious read of pointlessly dull people that are either monstrous or saintly, and the whole thing serves to elevate Kendra as a saint, only she comes off instead like a melodramatic idiot that didn’t and couldn’t do anything unless a brave strong man is propping her up. In real life, they say behind a man is a woman, but in this story, behind every romance heroine is a man, and her spine will fold in and bend over backward unless that man is holding her up.

There are some unintentionally hilarious moments stemming from the portrayal of cartoon villainy here, and I admit to laughing in derision at many of Kendra’s “tender” tearful moments, but on the whole, there is little that I find entertaining in this thing.