The Rake's Regress (To the Manor Reborn 1) by Lollie Plantaganet

The Rake's Regress (To the Manor Reborn Book 1) By Lollie Plantagenet – 2.5 stars

As a reviewer for Books Laid bare Boys, I receive a variety of different tropes to read; ones that I would not necessarily choose if I was browsing on Amazon, but in the past I have been delighted and nicely surprised by reading something different. In this case, The Rake’s Regress, I am yet to make up my mind and will have to read the second book in the series to form a fully informed opinion. Initially, I was intrigued by the 1905 setting. The author has clearly well researched the time period, and the historical references seem to me to be accurate and relevant. This includes the speech.

The story centres around a young impoverished Lord Archie Blankley, who has been left pretty destitute following the death of his parents. To resolve this issue and save his family stately home, Archie finds a wealthy American heiress to marry. She in turn wants the title but not the husband, so she marries Archie then leaves him in the care of his new Valet, Hans Pierce. Pierce is a gay Daddy who turns Archie into a baby and keeps him in the nursery. At this point, I began to wonder if I could finish, however, I was more than a little curious to see where the story was going to go. the detail was impressive and the character development quite good, however, the overall experience left me wanting.

Lollie’s writing style is true to the historical time, yet didn’t seem to be edited all that well. Throughout the book, the character POV switched continually. Usually, authors dedicate a chapter to each character so that the reader is aware of which perspective the narrative hails from. In this book, that was missing although as the two main characters have quite definite ‘voices’ it wasn’t too difficult to figure out.

My overall impression is that there is a lot of promise there. I wouldn’t leave a review based entirely on whether the trope appealed to me or not, but this is quite an extreme practice and I believe more explanation around why Hans practices it and to what benefit and outcome he wants to gain from it, would have given me more context. I hope the second book answers my questions and pans out to be the enthralling story I was hoping for.