Review: When a Rogue Meets His Match

When a Rogue Meets His Match by Elizabeth Hoyt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

But that was the point: Messalina was his weakness. There was no way he could've let her go. 

Second in the Greycourt series, this picks up where the first (Not the Duke's Darling) ended, Gideon Hawthorne spirits Messalina Greycourt to London on her uncle's orders. Gideon has been the Duke of Windemere's factotum for the last ten years and is rumored to do all sort of shady deeds for him. Messalina fears him and does her best to stay away from her uncle and Gideon. When she learns that she is to marry Gideon, her plans for running away from her uncle and taking her sister Lucretia to America rush to the forefront. With more threats to Lucretia, Messalina ends up marrying Gideon and we have a forced marriage of convenience, enemies-to-lovers, and some unrequited love. 

An aristocrat such as she would never give her heart to a baseborn blackguard such as he. 

The first book in the series introduced us to the feud between the Greycourts and de Morays; Messalina's sister Aurelia is thought to have been killed by Ran de Moray. This shattered their group of friends and has set-up underlining secrets and mysteries for the series. While I do think it could be possible to start the series here, you'd miss specifics about characters and emotions, you wouldn't get the full understanding and feel for some characters' thoughts and actions. The other big storyline from the first was an ancient society called the Wise Women, no worries there as it's barely discussed and only to say it has disbanded. While the first was too busy with numerous storythreads and plots, this slows down and focused on Messalina and Gideon. 

His voice when he replied was husky. “Perhaps I do it for you.” 

Focusing on Messalina and Gideon would have worked for me as Gideon's wrong side of the tracks unrequited love for the rich girl could have provided some great angst and tension but for as much as I wanted these two to spark and burn, they more often than not, fell flat. I would have loved a prologue showing a younger Gideon pining for Messalina, showing us why he grew to love her and provide some burning emotion. Messalina, for her part, seems to have always shunned Gideon, so we don't get her really seeing him until they are married. There's some rich girl naivety that Gideon calls out as he is from St. Giles, but there was too much back and forth from Messalina and that caused more of a dragged out feeling than slow burning. Messalina makes the deal that they won't consummate the marriage for one month and the day after, Gideon will give her some of her dowry, which then Messalina plans on using to escape with Lucretia to America. Messalina's plans never truly form, as she's fairly wishy-washy but there is some foreboding tension from the last task Messalina's uncle wants Gideon to complete and why he offered Messalina in marriage to Gideon. The Angst Big Misunderstanding comes and it felt forced in a way that had Messalina looking like she was overreacting and more so to just add some angst. 

Then Messalina looked at him with dancing gray eyes, her mouth pursed sweetly to keep from laughing. She was worth all the trouble in the world. 

Overall, I did think this was better than the first that had way too much going on in it. This focuses more on the couple but while there is alluding to storylines dealing with Messalina's siblings for future books, I'm going to flip and say there wasn't enough going on in this one. Messalina and Gideon didn't give me enough for them to carry the book. I never felt why Gideon loved Messalina, besides loving that she smelled like bergamot which was repeated over and over, when Gideon was trying to bond with Messalina she thought he was playing her and when Messalina pushed Gideon to tell the truth about the task her uncle gave him, she punished him for actually telling her. I do think the underlining threads and plot for the overall series, was cleaned up and feels more on track; Aurelia's death that separated the Greycourts and de Morays is obviously going to tie the characters and series together. Messalina and Gideon were adequate but missing that usual Hoyt deliciousness. 

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