Reviews

To Resist a Scandalous Rogue by Liana De la Rosa

vee79's review

5.0

This is my first time reading this author and while this is book two in a series I didn’t know it until I sat down to write this review. To me that speaks volumes about both the superior writing ability of the author as much as my enjoyment of the book, and please know I REALLY enjoyed this book. I love this book for its historical accuracy even as it shines a light on prejudices of the era. It is so refreshing to me when an author isn’t afraid to show the darker side or history. I love how the leading characters overcome their societal differences and find passion in one another.
Finlay Swinton, Viscount Firthwell is in line to inherit a prominent Earldom as long as his family’s darkest secret stays a secret. After a renewed acquaintance with a woman he shared a single unforgettable night of passion turns sour will his entire future be lost?
Charlotte Taylor has found a perfect job, and with her fond memories of a night of unbridled passion and freedom, she is ready to start her new life. All until that perfect new job causes her become reacquainted with the man she shared that night with. When her past catches up to her will she betray the man she loves to protect herself or will she sacrifice her life to protect his future?
This was a book I couldn’t put down and I can’t wait to get my hands on its predecessor.

militantlyromantic's review

emotional medium-paced

2.5

The set up is, we have Charlotte, recently widowed by a man who worked for the East India Company and newly back in England with no recommendations for employment.  To make matters worse, she is lowborn and Jewish.  Through what is basically a misunderstanding, she ends up meeting Finlay, our male lead, who is a Viscount attempting to run for parliament.  They have a night of passion, he is going to offer her to be his mistress, she slips out before that can happen.

Fast forward some time, turns out she's managed to find a teaching position at a home for orphans run by a family who's helping Finlay with his political career.  I will state, there's a fair amount of this book that felt confusing because I had not read the first in the series.  I'm used to romance series being disconnected enough that not having read the first won't matter, I don't feel that's the case here.  There's a WHOLE bunch of info that you sort of slowly figure out was learned in the first book, not the least of which is that Finlay is actually illegitimate, something not known to anyone but him and his sister--who is married to a Duke and was clearly the female lead of the first book--and that his dad cheated a whole bunch of people out of money and is Not A Good Dude.

The rest of the plot runs on essentially two lines: Finlay needing a high class marriage for his political career because of Daddy's rep, and Charlotte's ex-in-laws being fraudulent anti-Semitic douchecanoes who are trying to ruin her life.

Charlotte and Finlay are both reasonably engaging characters, they have chemistry, the romance works.  All of the things that in a romance novel I would normally base my enjoyment or lackthereof on, are perfectly solid.  I wouldn't call them standout, but both characters have their own stories, their own needs, motives, etc., there's not an undue amount of drama for drama's sake, overall, as a romance, this should rate somewhere as "interesting, looking forward to seeing growth from this author."

Why does it not, you ask?

For a few reasons.  1.  As I said above, one of the first things we learn about Charlotte is that she was over in India, actively and happily engaging in colonization, which makes her a hard character for me to like.  And sure, yup, it's historically accurate that people were colonizing asshats right then, but it wasn't historically accurate that they had good teeth and good body odor and married for love, so I REALLY give absolutely no craps.  It's 2021.  I don't want to read about people actively colonizing others without a thought in their mind to it and getting happy endings.  2.  To add to this, it's made clear, several times over, that Finlay is making his money in sugar.  That is, Finlay is making his money in slave labor.  And I think we're supposed to find it attractive that he's actually in business and not caring that he has a title and all, which, okay.  But also, no, because his business is owning slaves.  So, automatically, both of these people are people who are committing significantly racist acts.  3.  Remember when I said Charlotte was Jewish?  Yeah, um.  That seems to more of a "this makes Charlotte MORE undesirable" than any real attempt to have a Jewish character.  I'm NOT suggesting the author is anti-Semitic, I'm legit not.  But Charlotte only seems to be Jewish in ways that are useful for the plot.

Examples:

a.  Charlotte was orphaned at a young age.  She's from an area that had a pretty significant Jewish community (she's from the country, but contrary to popular belief, Jews existed in both rural and urban areas).  If you look at the historical records, the specific area she mentions being from had a major synagogue.  And yet, for reasons that are unclear, she's barely taken in by family, and nobody in the community seems to care about her/help her.  That's...odd.  

b.  At a certain point in the book, she mentions going to shul regularly, but it's clear she has no community.  Not a single Jewish friend.  Again, super odd.  Like, INCREDIBLY.  It's hard to explain to non-Jews how odd that would be even today, but particularly in that day and age.

c. Her religion never seems to threaten her job or other things that, yeah, it would have.  Jewish emancipation (e.g., making Jews citizens in the eyes of the law, etc.,) doesn't really happen in most of Western Europe until the mid-1800s and it's not SUPER popular at the time it does.

d. BUT her religion is used as a sort of bludgeon by her nasty ex-in-laws, who, quite frankly, could have been just as nasty to her on the basis of class.  The British are pretty into class, as a general rule.  They didn't really need the extra thing to be crappy about when it didn't add anything.

I have this whole thing about how because most of Western society basically sees and has seen for much of this era two types of Jews, those who are secular, and those who are haredi, and therefore completely cut off from everyone else, that there's this concept that being Jewish and living in society is really just the absence of being Christian/the lack of apparent religion.  This is a completely incorrect way of understanding modern Judaism, let alone Judaism in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.  But other than an epilogue that pays some VERY weird lip service to Charlotte's Judaism given that she has technically converted at that point to further her husband's political career and be legally allowed to marry him, Charlotte's Judaism is more of a prop in this book, than a legitimate element of her identity, culture, and personhood, and as a Jewish histrom reader, with VERY few choices in terms of Jewish main characters, that was deeply disappointing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Antisemitism

Minor: Racism

cakt1991's review

4.0

Review posted here: https://courtneyreadsromancesite.wordpress.com/2019/10/11/review-of-to-resist-a-scandalous-rogue-once-upon-a-scandal-2-by-liana-de-la-rosa/

readclever's review

3.0

I enjoyed this book and the fact it was about a less talked about marginalized group. However, the repetitive storylines kept the numbers lower than I liked. Sorry to say. If the book had been a little less bleak, I would have easily given it 3.5 or 4 stars. Bit of a depressing read but I appreciated the focus on something other than a coded white Christian Regency woman protagonist.

sararo's review

1.0

I picked up this book because it was on a list of books with Jewish main characters and I'm always down for reading that. Hoo boy. There was one thing I really liked about the book - namely the author's sensitivity to power dynamics in social relationships in England across class lines. But overall, this book didn't work for me for two reasons: first, the constant references to the Duke (hero's brother in law) making all his money in the West Indies. Given the time period, I'm not interested in books where the hero and his family's money explicitly comes from the slave trade. I know the Duke was the previous hero and maybe the author painted him as a reformer and abolitionist there, but it wasn't apparent here. 

Second, and more importantly, the way the author handled Judaism and heroine's Jewish identity was beyond frustrating. The random Hebrew words and references to Jewish instruments/stories from Jewish mythology were jarring (and at times wrong) and on any sort of deeper level, Judaism didn't seem to be integral to her personality. And the ending - where the heroine

CONVERTS  TO CHRISTIANITY - was just... Don't market a romance as having a Jewish heroine if in the end she converts to Christianity, even if only superficially. Especially given that in her first marriage, the heroine was committed enough to Judaism that her husband converted for her. Her no longer being legally Jewish isn't actually a happy ending.

I don't know the author's own religious affiliation, but a Jewish sensitivity reader would have helped with some of the serious problems here.