Barbara’s rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Series: Rogues to Riches #6
Publication Date: 4//13/21
Number of Pages: 368

Grace Burrowes writing is always excellent and I always enjoy her stories. I have read almost everything she’s written, and I think this may be my least favorite. That may be because I have been waiting for Stephen’s story since the beginning of the series and it just wasn’t what I’d imagined for him. Then, add to that the cavalier way the story treated bisexuality during a time when it could get you HANGED, it just didn’t sit well. It wasn’t that I minded the bisexuality – it was that nobody thought anything about it – nobody was careful about mentioning it – and everybody seemed to be bisexual. I’m pretty sure that if I lived during that time and I was bisexual, I would most definitely NOT be discussing it with anyone – much less everyone. Because I wouldn’t care to be hanged. Also, I think bisexuality was just gratuitous to be politically correct. It added nothing to the story and didn’t move the plot along in any way.

As I mentioned above, we’ve met Stephen before, but we have also met Abigail Abbott before as well. Abigail Abbott is the plain-speaking, Quakerish, no-nonsense inquiry agent who helped the family earlier in another book. Stephen and Abigail met then, so he was pleased to see her when she showed up at his residence until she asked him to murder her. Oh! My Goodness! But, she didn’t actually want him to murder her – she just wanted him to help her disappear and for it to appear she had died. Someone is pursuing her – and she doesn’t know what lengths they’ll go to to get what they want from her. She knows WHO is after her and he’s a rich and powerful peer. She just doesn’t understand WHY exactly. She knows a lot more than she’ll tell Stephen, he doesn’t need to know all of that – he just needs to help her die.

Stephen, of course, has no intention of helping her die – pretend or otherwise. Since his family is powerful and they all outrank the peer who is causing the problem, he offers an alternative. He will court her – and she will stay in his brother’s home where she’ll be well protected.

Unlike some other reviewers, I actually liked Abigail for Stephen. She was no-nonsense, she was plain-spoken and direct, his disability didn’t bother her at all and she was able to physically offset his disability when needed. I wasn’t a big fan of her big ‘sacrifice’ at the end because it didn’t seem, to me, to go along with her no-nonsense, plain-spoken personality.

Overall, I enjoyed the story, but I don’t think I’d read it a second time.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.