Review: A Rogue at Stonecliffe

A Rogue at Stonecliffe by Candace Camp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.3 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

To save the woman he loved, he would have to give her up. 

A Rogue at Stonecliffe stars two characters that were introduced in the first of the series, An Affair at Stonecliffe. While you'd be a little lost understanding some family and friendship dynamics, I do think you could jump into the series here. Annabeth and Sloane were two characters that instantly caught my attention when I was reading the first. Annabeth the quieter friend and Sloane the black sheep cousin, and when it was hinted at that these two had a past, I was highly anticipating their book. I was locked into the beginning of this with a prologue that showed these two madly in love, only to have it come to a screeching halt when Sloane is approached by a spymaster for England's foreign office and blackmailed to become a spy and smuggler. Turns out that Annabeth's father has been dealing with his own blackmail and is in danger of being outed as a turncoat, giving English secrets to the French. Sloane, not wanting Annabeth to have to reap the emotional and societal repercussions of having her father revealed as a traitor, breaks off their engagement and leaves to go be a spy in the war. 

“I didn't lie to you.” His eyes burned into hers, and he moved closer. 

Twelve years go by and Sloane's looked down in society as a smuggler and traitor to England, so even though the war is over and he's made money, he still stays away from Annabeth. If you read the first, you'll remember that Annabeth finally agreed to become engaged to her childhood friend Nathan when he was on his deathbed. When she starts cleaning out the home her father left her in his will for them to move into after they're married, it stirs up a hornet's nest. Like I said, I loved the beginning of this, with seeing how happy and in love Annabeth and Sloane were to the heartbreaking decision Sloane had to make to not tell Annabeth why he was abruptly leaving her. When these two finally talked after the twelve years separation, you could feel the love and hurt. It was teeth gritting emotion that I anticipated burning up the pages but the story took a little bit of a pivot with concentrating more on the spy mystery. 

He'd been chasing the wrong villain. 

Annabeth gets kidnapped with her maid and when Nathan goes to Sloane, thinking he's behind it, it alerts Sloane to the danger Annabeth is now in. Sloane realizes that Annabeth's maid is really an old spy buddy he worked with during the war, Verity. Verity was hired by a P.I. to find a document that was supposedly written by Annabeth's father outing, not only himself as a traitor, but the person that blackmailed him into committing his acts and is a traitor themselves and one the foreign office has been searching for. The plot pulls in the spymaster Sloane and Verity worked for and some of Annabeth's family and friends as they become redherrings, along with Annabeth's grandmother and her not to be messed with pug readers will remember from the first. The mystery plot gets a bit loose with having to search out puzzle boxes Annabeth's father made and hoping the document is in one of them and they begin to travel around sort of searching for them. Really though, it's to deliver the forced proximity for our second chance couple. 

Was it because she wanted to prove that she could resist Sloane? Or because she wanted to give into the temptation? 

I thought this couple had the chemistry in the beginning and the potential for amazing explosive emotion to revel in throughout the story and when they were together and focusing on their issues, I did feel pulled back in but the mystery just takes over too much in the second half. It gave the story kind of an uneven pace, heating up when Annabeth and Sloane focus on them and then slowing when the mystery plot dragged out too much with it's going in circles. There was also too much stagnated repetitiveness with some of the relationship, I wanted Annabeth and Sloane to get into it earlier and develop from there instead of saying some of the same stuff over and over. 

Sloane was not the boy she had loved. But she had the uneasy feeling that she was falling in love with the man he'd become. 

I did enjoy how Annabeth's character did show some growth, she realizes that she has just been letting other people dictate her life, she didn't fight for Sloane when he first left her. I liked how this had Annabeth taking more agency at the end and fired up her character. I'm not sure I saw the same in Sloane, he has some of that self-righteousness attitude, saying he left and took all the blame when he was trying to protect Annabeth but gets called out on it some when it becomes clear he never truly felt good enough for her and was always waiting for the other shoe to drop in their beginning relationship. I would have liked Sloane to show more actionable want for Annabeth at the end, that we got glimpses of in the beginning. 

A groan sounded deep in his throat and he turned, setting her on the dresser, sweeping away the objects atop it and sending them tumbling to the floor. 

The ending reveal of who was behind the traitorous deeds was somewhat predictable but delivered with some last second danger. I was a little disappointed in how quickly and a bit ho-hum, with the oft used, “she almost died!” so now I'm going to go for her declaration of love we got from Sloane at the very end. I wanted a bit more of the beginning's teeth gritting emotion instead of the focus on the spy mystery but I still think this was a couple that people will enjoy reading about.

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