Tuesday, March 23, 2021

The Merchant and the Rogue (The Dread Penny Society #3) by Sarah M. Eden

The Merchant and the Rogue (The Dread Penny Society #3) 

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Romance, Historical Romance, Mystery
Content: Clean

 

London, 1865 Vera Sorokina loves reading the Penny Dreadfuls and immersing herself in tales of adventure, mystery, and romance. Her own days are filled with the often mundane work of running the book and print shop she owns with her father. The shop offers her the freedom and income to employ and protect the poverty-stricken Londoners she’s come to care about, and it gives her father something to do other than long for their hometown of St. Petersburg. She is grateful for the stability in their lives, but she often feels lonely.

Brogan Donnelly was born and raised in Ireland, but has lived in London for several years, where he’s built a career as a Penny Dreadful writer. He has dedicated himself to the plight of the poor with the help of his sister. His membership in the secretive Dread Penny Society allows him to feel he isn’t entirely wasting his life, yet he feels dissatisfied. With no one to share his life with but his sister, he fears London will never truly feel like home.

Brogan and Vera’s paths cross, and the attraction is both immediate and ill-advised. Vera knows from past experience that writers are never to be trusted, and Brogan has reason to suspect not everything at her print shop is aboveboard. When the growing criminal enterprise run by the elusive and violent Mastiff begins targeting their area of London, Brogan and Vera must work together to protect the community they’ve both grown to love. But that means they’ll need to learn to trust each other with dangerous secrets that have followed both of them from their home countries.

 

While I enjoyed the first two book in this series, especially book one, I liked this third book in the series less than the two previous books. I didn't find the main story line to be as compelling. I originally thought this was going to be a trilogy and that this would be the last book in the series, but it turns out it's not. I feel like I'm not enjoying the series enough to want to keep reading. I think the idea of incorporating the Penny Dreadful stories into each novel is pretty original, but I feel like they interrupt the main story line of the novel and I'm not nearly as interested in what happens in them as I am the main story line. That being said, I am also not completely invested in the overarching plot of the series either. I like the romance plots that are contained within each book much better. So yeah, unfortunately I think I'm going to abandon this series. It was fun for a while, but I'm just not as into it as much I would like to be. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Shadow Mountain Publishing for providing me with an ARC of this book.

 

 

 

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