Author: Lisa Kleypas
Original Title: Cold-Hearted Rake
Release Year: 2015
Literary Genre: Historical Romance
Setting: England, Victorian Era
Series: 1st of The Ravenels
Vote: 9
This romance will be released the 27th of October 2015
There are not enough words to describe my yearning for this novel. The wait was barely tolerable. Lisa Kleypas is undoubtedly my favourite author, she has that refinement in her style that is very difficult to find in this genre, moreover she's in general and indubitably a great author, also beyond the romance boundaries.
After the too-long-break from historical novels, she's finally back, and Cold-Hearted Rake proves, with fierceness, how she was missed. Lisa Kleypas' style is instantly recognisable, but this romance possesses a sort of more consolidated maturity compared to its predecessors (stating this I don't mean to downgrade the latter, how could it be so? Among them there are my favourite novels of all times, the most overwhelming and touching pieces in the story of the genre).
Here there is a combination of features which made me think, not with little nostalgia, to some of her previous works and characters, Craven, Westcliff, Hunt, Rutledge, Cam, Leo, St Vincent, Beatrice, Amelia, Daisy, Aline, Evie, Poppy, Lysette...however at the same time there are also novelties, there is a deeper attention to, at the time, contemporary social matters, the background is different and for some aspects more complicated to portray, throughout the whole story there is that atmosphere of sweet melancholy which follows changes, especially epochal ones, such as the decadence of aristocratical privileges and the consolidation of the working-class power.
