Roxie Brandon, $0.99, ISBN 978-0463346983
Historical Romance, 2019

As I am reading Roxie Brandon’s The Rogue’s Bride, I am told that the hero, Lord Anthony Randall, is 24 years old. 

The heroine, Regina Hopkins, never has her age explicitly stated, but if convention holds, she’d be younger than the hero.

I then look back at the cover art and my goodness, if the man is 24 and the woman is younger than that, those two must have had a very hard life or a daily diet full of happy powder.

Okay, okay, let’s get to the story before anyone accuses me of being some kind of elitist because the author didn’t spend a lot of money getting a more story-accurate cover image. 

It’s a familiar story. Anthony, the future Earl of Daventry, is a naughty boy, so his grandfather stipulates that he should marry by his 25th birthday, which is about two months away, or he would be stricken off the will. Our hero has a temper tantrum and pouts because how dare things don’t go his way.

Regina Hopkins, meanwhile, acts and thinks like thirteen-year-old Disney belle, seeing the world in shades of sunshine and rainbows. Seriously, this is another story that is meant to be a clean romance, but it ends up portraying chaste sweetness as some kind of child-like naïveté that gives me the creeps. Of course, Regina needs to marry because of the same old reasons.

It’s supposed to be a marriage of convenience, because dying old men are so easily fooled, but Anthony sees Regina, immediately falls for him because I guess of all the women he’d bedded, he’d never met anyone that behaves like a prepubescent ray of innocence and purity. He soon wants the marriage of convenience to come with wagging pee-pee fun.

The best thing about this story is its ability to end before this very familiar plot line outwears its welcome.

It’s a short story. As a result, the hero doesn’t get to prolong his childish tantrums, while and the heroine doesn’t creep me out that much with her constant nodding at everything everyone around her says and does.

Therefore, the story ends when it should, sparing me the more tedious prolonging of tropes and predictable plot development. The characters are basically stereotype central and the story holds no surprises, but the author knows when to pack up her things make an exit with this story.

Hence, while the story isn’t particularly deep or memorable, it knowing when to stop means that it ends being a vaguely pleasant story instead of yet another tired old rehash.