Stupid Nerds In Love | My Fake Rake by Eva Leigh

Title: My Fake Rake
Series: Union of the Rakes #1
Author: Eva Leigh
Published: November 26, 2019
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 384
Rating:

Summary from Goodreads:

Lady Grace Wyatt is content as a wallflower, focusing on scientific pursuits rather than the complications of society matches. But when a handsome, celebrated naturalist returns from abroad, Grace wishes, for once, to be noticed. Her solution: to "build" the perfect man, who will court her publicly and help her catch his eye. Grace's colleague, anthropologist Sebastian Holloway, is just the blank slate she requires.

In exchange for funding his passage on an expedition leaving London in a few months, Sebastian allows Grace to transform him from a bespectacled, bookish academic into a dashing—albeit fake—rake. Between secret lessons on how to be a rogue and exaggerated public flirtations, Grace's feelings for Sebastian grow from friendship into undeniable, inconvenient, real attraction. If only she hadn't hired him to help her marry someone else...

Sebastian is in love with brilliant, beautiful Grace, but their bargain is complete, and she desires another. Yet when he's faced with losing her forever, Sebastian will do whatever it takes to tell her the truth, even if it means risking his own future—and his heart.

As a fledgling herpetologist and overall awkward bean, Lady Grace has spent most of her life on the outskirts of upperclass Regency society. She has friends she’s met through her studies, but lately…she wants more. And when her longtime crush comes back to England, she decides it’s time to take matters into her own hands. And that requires help from her charmingly awkward anthropologist friend, Sebastian.

Sebastian is a giant nerd with the body of a virile Viking warrior. He also has the soul of an earnestly clumsy Golden Retriever. With the help of a bemused duke and a thoroughly exasperated valet, Grace transforms Sebastian into the image of sartorial rakish elegance with the intent of making her crush jealous. It works! Before long, Grace is the toast of the ton.

Except…why is Sebastian giving her so many fluttery feelings? Why can’t she stop thinking about kissing him? What does he look like…NAKED?!

I present to you Lady Grace Wyatt: an absolute dumdum.

My Fake Rake is a delightful feel-good Regency romance. It’s one of those stories where you know exactly where things are headed, but every step in the journey is so soft and adorable that the fact you’ve been anticipating it for 100 pages already is part of the charm of the story. Eva Leigh knows just how to make readers anticipate the romantic action. Watching Sebastian and Grace bumble around and act like “learned scientists” is not frustrating—it’s lovely. You know the entire time that, obviously, these two idiots are going to accidentally lock lips and discover an unknown depth of feeling. You know they’re going to try and deny those feelings until they can’t possibly do it any more.

Grace and Sebastian. Two highly intelligent and successful people with the self-awareness of a hunk of decayed limestone. I love them so much.

It’s also worth noting that “friends to lovers” is often a trope that I dislike a lot, for a couple of reasons: (1) somebody often pines hopelessly for a period of several years and loses some self-respect in the process; and (2) one fine morning, somebody just “wakes up” and realizes their best friend is their soulmate, usually because of a physical makeover. However, none of those annoying sub-tropes happened in My Fake Rake. Grace and Sebastian discover their feelings for each other more or less simultaneously, and the only pining that occurs is while they’re both being awkward dunderheads and think the other isn’t interested—a space of about two weeks, not two decades.

On that same subject, Leigh did a great job capturing the characters’ uncertainty and conflict regarding confessing their feelings for each other. They’ve been friends for several years, and both are hesitant to blow up that relationship by taking a chance on romance—even after they’ve absconded from a society ball to have sex in a barn. I think it’s very accurate that a big obstacle in this situation would be a desire to preserve the existing friendship, even at the cost of foregoing happiness. Of course, here Sebastian and Grace were not good at all about picking up clear signs that feelings were 100% reciprocated. Like I said: idiots.

To conclude: My Fake Rake is a delightful read for those who enjoy light, fluffy historical romances with soft heroes and smart heroines. Watching these two nerds fall in love was fun and super satisfying.