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The Rake Appreciation Society book for the month of May is The Marquess Makes His Move. This is the third book in Diana Quincy's Clandestine Affairs series. Rake Appreciation is hosted by Jenn and Crystal (and is one of my favorite book clubs!). I was able to apply this to my reading challenges as well covering flowers on the cover for Love Has Sprung and Shake It Off (character you want to shake some sense into) for the Taylor Swift Quarterly Challenge.
Alex, the Marquess of Brandon, has requested a map of property lines to show that the pond between his and his neighbor's country estates is on his land. When the map comes back wrong and missing an obvious fence-line, he knows instantly there was some type of collusion between the mapmaker and his neighbor. Alex goes undercover as a footman to the mapmaker's estate and finds himself assigned to his wife Rose. What Alex doesn't know is that Rose is actually the one making the maps. As they grow close and secrets are exposed they start to connect in an unexpected way.
So, I have to be honest. There were quite a few things that really bothered me here, but the biggest issue I had was the miscommunications, lies (by omission and not), and the keeping of secrets between Alex and Rose. Now, I get that that is the premise of how they meet, but instead of those just staying as they were, more and more things kept getting added to the the "secrets." At one point, around the 3rd act conflict of they say to each other that they will come clean. Then they allow a few different things to put off being honest with each other, and then Alex gets called away to a fire at his country estate. Then after all that, they don't open up to each other and the secrets get exposed by Alex's family. And then Rose hides something else from Alex. It was just too much for me and I just really didn't like how it was handled.
Now, I will say the technically there's no cheating here if you are worried about that. I don't want to spoil it if you've read the book, but for me I still didn't like how the situation played out. Cheating isn't a big trigger for me, but it has to be done well. Now like I said, technically it wasn't cheating logistically. However, Rose and Alex both hold off because they still think it's cheating in their minds. That's were my issue comes in. There were more things I wasn't too fond of, but I did enjoy the overall premise and though it was pretty unique. I did want the emotional connection between them to be stronger, but I did think it was pretty well written. It's also great to see more representation in historical romance as well.
I'm not sure if I'll pick up more in this particular series, but I'm definitely intrigued to read more from Diana Quincy. I just think I might wait to see reviews of others I follow and trust before picking one up. I did hear that there were a lot of similarities with this book and the others in the this series and that's why I'm more hesitant about picking up those. I'm always ready to try something new though, so we'll see what Diana does next! I also do want to mention that the ratings were pretty varied, so if you want more thoughts check out the live show!
Have you read The Marquess Makes His Move?
Bookishly Yours,
Stasi🍎
STATISTICS: The Marquess Makes His Move, Diana Quincy, 3-stars, 2 days, eBook, 384 pages, published in 2022, traditionally published
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