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    To Ruin A Gentleman
    To Ruin A Gentleman
    To Ruin A Gentleman
    Audiobook3 hours

    To Ruin A Gentleman

    Written by Shana Galen

    Narrated by Heather Wilds

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Angelette, the recently widowed Comtesse d'Avignon, only invited Viscount Daventry to her country house party as a favor to her sister. When the handsome British lord arrives—two days late—he's full of unnerving tales of unrest and violence in Paris. Angelette assumes it's all exaggeration . . . until her chateau is attacked and her life threatened. Daventry rescues her, and the two are forced to run for their lives. But when danger closes in, will the viscount stand at her side or save himself?



    Hugh Daventry visits France frequently to import wine for the family business. On his way out of the country, he stops at the comtesse's house party out of obligation. But after meeting the raven-haired beauty, he tries to persuade her to leave France with him. When the peasants attack, he realizes he's already too late, and now he must protect Angelette, whose sharp tongue is far from angelic. Too soon the couple is caught up in the rising revolution, dodging bloodthirsty mobs, hiding from soldiers, and embroiled in the attack of the Bastille. Hugh wants nothing but to leave tumultuous France for the calm of England. He knows Angelette is intelligent and resourceful—a survivor. But can Hugh survive without her?



    Contains mature themes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMay 28, 2019
    ISBN9781977319975
    To Ruin A Gentleman
    Author

    Shana Galen

    Shana Galen is three-time Rita award nominee and the bestselling author of passionate Regency romps, including the RT Reviewers' Choice The Making of a Gentleman. Kirkus says of her books, "The road to happily-ever-after is intense, conflicted, suspenseful and fun," and RT Bookreviews calls her books “lighthearted yet poignant, humorous yet touching." She taught English at the middle and high school level off and on for eleven years. Most of those years were spent working in Houston's inner city. Now she writes full time. She's happily married and has a daughter who is most definitely a romance heroine in the making.

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    Reviews for To Ruin A Gentleman

    3.5/5

    11 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      2.5 rounded up to three stars fairly generously. The heroine seemed unreasonable to me, both characters acted recklessly, and I'm not sure I bought their love story. It just didn't work well for me. But was short and not horribly painful.
    • 3/5
      I was looking for some historical romance set in a different time period and thought of the French Revolution. This book was recommended, so I decided to try it.
      It does a nice job of portraying the beginnings of the Revolution and ties it to the story of the Scarlet Pimpernel. It's fine and the romance is okay, but everything seemed just a bit convenient. I enjoyed the Pink Carnation series by Lauren Willig much more, but that isn't the fault of this book. It just wasn't exactly what I was looking for.
    • 3/5
      I will read anything - literally anything - that references The Scarlet Pimpernel, and I've had the second book in Shana Galen's 'The Scarlet Chronicles' series on my Amazon wishlist for months, waiting for the price to come down. Then I noticed that the first book was on sale for 99p and decided to risk a romance novel in my dedication to the cause.

      Yikes. My main issue with this novella and the romance genre as a whole is the use of the term 'romance', which two online dictionaries define as 'a close relationship between two people who are in love with each other' and 'love, especially romantic love idealized for its purity or beauty'. Sir Percy and Marguerite in the original novels are romantic. Viscount Hugh Daventry and Angelette (seriously), Comtesse d'Avignon, are more like two randy teenagers copping a feel every five minutes. Despite the author throwing the usual tropes at the pair - he has 'cornflower blue' eyes while hers are nearly violet, she has to strip off her skirts to escape the revolting peasants and gets a smudge of dirt on her cheek, which he has to tenderly remove (despite the fact that she covered her petticoats in self same muck on purpose), he wants to protect her while she keeps walking into danger - all I got from the two of them was high levels of hormones. She's been widowed for a year, he's a dedicated bachelor - she notices his tight breeches and muscles beneath his shirt, his mind is filled with thoughts of her legs: 'He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to draw those heavy skirts up and run his hand along her bare calf'. Tl;dr - I did not pick up on any heartfelt feelings like, oh I don't know, love. And his bedroom endearments were just creepy: 'So soft', 'so warm'.

      I also struggled with this being 'the true story of the Scarlet Pimpernel' - by all means, flip the original narrative with Sir Percy and the League to involve the main characters of the retelling but at least make the twist convincing! Daventry's son Thomas confronts his father about 'the old story about the Englishman who rescued Frenchies during their revolution', after being told by Sir Andrew Ffoulkes to ask his father 'about the real pimpernel', and concludes from his father's reaction that Daventry was not just a member of the League but the Pimpernel himself. With a roll of the eyes, I was prepared to swallow the misappropriation of Sir Percy's role - only to plough through 200 pages of 'Screw your family, come with me to England!' versus 'I cannot leave France, even though the peasants just burned down my husband's chateau!' and discover that he is not the Pimpernel, Angelette is! I'm all for role reversals but the woman does precisely nothing to earn the many adjectives thrown at her (loyal! brave! clever!), apart from stalking around Versailles in her petticoats and then shagging Daventry in the Parisian comfort of a Vicomte's townhouse. Suddenly, after being rescued by Sir Percy - I absolutely loved his cameo appearance, hence the generous rating - and brought into his plans for saving enemies of the fledgling Revolution, Angelette suddenly takes over: 'It must be a secret league,' she said. 'No one in France or England must know who ranks among the members.' I just had a mental vision of Percy's face while this random woman, dressed in a bedsheet after sleeping with a man she's known for a week at most, tells him how to do exactly what he's been doing perfectly well without her assistance. She later tells her son that there was no one 'Scarlet Pimpernel' but a League of them - adding with all due modesty, 'But I suppose I founded the league, along with your father and Sir Percy. And, of course, I devised the moniker, though Sir Percy is largely to thank for that as well.' Sure, Comtesse!

      At least now I can delete book two from my wishlist, having no interest in reading the further 'Plot? What plot?' adventures of the 'real' Scarlet Pimpernel!