Cold-Hearted Rake

Title: Cold-Hearted Rake

Author: Lisa Kleypas

Genre: Historical Romance

Time: 5.3 hours

Rating: 7 out of 10

When I first knew that Lisa Kleypas’ latest book was a Historical Romance, I did a little dance of happiness.  Kleypas is one of the handful authors that I really like (so much that I collect actual books of hers instead of going for ebooks).  She is soo good that I re-read her books prolly a gazillion times.  But when she started to write Contemporary Romances, it was still good but I preferred her Historical Romance novels.  And then the god-awful Brown-Eyed Girl, happened.  I was worried that that’s how her books are gonna be like from now on. 

Returning to her Historical Romance roots with Cold-Hearted Rake, I thought, maybe I’ll get back the Kleypas that I absolutely adored.  But I was disappointed.  It wasn’t that bad, actually.  But with the Kleypas books I grew to love, this paled in comparison.  If this was the first book of hers that I read, I would probably not search and read her other books much less collect it.

The thing with Kleypas is that she has this skill of transforming clichéd stories into a book you’d want to savor and read over and over again.  She somehow makes the characters engaging and likable.  When I finished Cold-Hearted Rake, I wondered if it was me… did I outgrow Lisa Klepas novels?  Was I just not in the mood for a Historical Romance?  Did I have a higher expectation because this was a Kleypas novel?  Or perhaps Ms Kleypas is just finding back her footing in the Historical Romance genre seeing she’s been away for a while now.  I’ve read the excerpt of her next book and it’s a plot that’s been done a hundred times before but it did sound promising.  As this is the first of another one of her series, we can expect another 3 or 4 historical romance books from her so I’m crossing my fingers that the next one will be better.