Let Sleeping Rogues Lie, by Sabrina Jeffries

TITLE: Let Sleeping Rogues Lie
AUTHOR: Sabrina Jeffries

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 368
PUBLISHER: Pocket

SETTING: 19th century England
TYPE: Straight romance
SERIES: 4th in the School for Heiresses series.

REASON FOR READING: Jeffries was Author of the Month in my yahoo book group, and though the more recent books of hers that I've read have been disappointing, I really loved some of her earliest.

When Madeline Prescott took a teaching position at Mrs. Harris’s School for Young Ladies, it was to help restore her father’s reputation. Instead, she’s in danger of ruining her own. The devilishly handsome Anthony Dalton, Viscount Norcourt, has agreed to provide "rake lessons" to Mrs. Harris’s pupils so they can learn how to avoid unscrupulous gentlemen, and Mrs. Harris has tapped Madeline to oversee his classes.

Madeline has always believed attraction to be a scientific matter, easily classified and controlled—until she finds herself swept into the passionate desire that fiercely burns between her and Anthony. Nothing could be more illogical than risking everything for a dalliance with a rake . . . but nothing could be more tempting either.

There's only so much preposterousness I can take in a book, and there was enough in the first three chapters of Sabrina Jeffries' Let Sleeping Rogues Lie that I couldnt' bear to go on.

The hero is fighting for custody of his recently orphaned niece. Unfortunately,since he's a well-known rakehell, the only way he's got to make sure the courts will choose him over his evil uncle and aunt, is by proving he can give the girl a good education. He'll do anything to get her into this School For Heiresses place, which offers what everyone knows is an unusual curriculum. Right, let's stop here. As if that would have been the sort of thing that would have swayed the courts in his favour! Actually, it does sounds as if it might have, only in the exact opposite direction Anthony's hoping for. Moving on.

Even more preposterousness ensues. There's no space in the school for the girl, so the headmistress is ready to reject his application, until one of the teachers intervenes. She proposes that Anthony prove his good intentions by providing the school's students with -wait for it!- rakehell lessons. God. And this is only the most preposterous part of a half-baked plan this stupid woman (the heroine, mind you) has to rehabilitate her father, ruined by the machinations of evil uncle (same evil uncle mentioned above, how's that for a coincidence?). Apparently she needs to meet this particular person (I didn't read far enough to understand exactly why), and the only way she finds of doing so is come up with the rakehell lessons idea, so that Anthony will be indebted to her, so that in return he'll have to invite her to a nitrous oxide party, so that there she might get an introduction to the man she's after, who apparently is fond of nitrous oxide parties.

And this happens in between puzzling conversations, in which the heroine discusses the habits of rakehells and prattles on about observing them in ther natural habitat (she's of a scientific bend, see, and this only proves it!), and Anthony somehow dares her into a kiss (although why she would be dared into it I never understood). Too much for me, I refused to waste any more of my time with this idiocy.

MY GRADE: A DNF.