ISBN: 9780345518873
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Length: 363 pages
The second installment in the Stud Club trilogy by Tessa Dare takes place far from glitz and glamor of London. Twice Tempted by a Rogue opens with Rhys St. Maur (the hulking Lord Ashworth from the previous novel, One Dance with a Duke) journeying home to visit his ancestral estate--now in ruins.
Tessa Dare's writing is so expressive and rich. So many romances, both historical and contemporary, seem to take setting for granted. Tessa Dare doesn't use shortcuts. She uses language to totally immerse the reader in the world and the characters. It's so vivid, sometimes I feel as if I'm watching a movie rather than reading.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil...
He’d been walking through this valley for a long, long time. Trod so far into death’s shadow he’d felt his feet turning to dust in his boots, the breath in his lungs burning acrid as sulfur. A living ghost, that’s what he was. He’d returned from war to a newly inherited barony, and his sole duty now was to haunt the English aristocracy.”There's no question that Rhys has struggled with a death wish, tied to childhood trauma and abuse. And his journey home to visit the ruins of his ancestral estate is both an attempt to gain some form of closure with his past and an acknowledgment that no matter how much he would like to die, fate has other plans for him.
