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I am a very great fan of Mary Balogh. So much so that I am tracking down her out-of-print backlist and buying second-hand copies at large multiples of their cover prices. Therefore I would not usually write negative reviews of one of her books. This time I have to.

On other occasions, a Balogh book has hooked me right from the first page. I'm sucked in and can barely put the book down. A Gift Of Daisies felt nothing like a Balogh book. Reading the first few pages, I actually had to look again at the back cover to check that it was actually Rachel who was the heroine, not her much nicer and more interesting friend Celia...

I can't recommend A Gift Of Daisies in any way, and will probably hide it at the very back of my Balogh collection so I'll never be tempted to read it again.

This book has a poor vicar for the hero.I loved this book
for its undercurrent of faith&spirituality,without it being hea-
vy handed.David Gower is a complete anathema to the best known
literary vicar,Jane Austen's Mr.Collins.He actually lives his
faith,and will not faulter,or let himself be tempted from his
values.Ms.Balogh has said that she caught a lot of fire from her
fans for this book,but I myself loved it.

This anthology has three of my favourite Regency writers as contributors, so it should be good, I thought. However, I quickly discovered that two of the novellas inside had also appeared in a later anthology, Captured Hearts. So if you've read that, then you've already read the Layton and Balogh contributions to this anthology.

And, as it happens, by far the weakest and least enjoyable story in this is the Layton one, Buried Treasure. Layton departs from her usual Regency genre (why then is she included in a *Rakes* and Rogues anthology?) to produce a rather tedious story about a not-very-likeable pirate and the somewhat boring woman who falls in love with him and whom he intends to seduce and desert. I didn't enjoy this the first time, and didn't bother reading it the second.

I enjoyed Melinda McRae's Sweet Revenge more than I expected. David, Lord Denby returns home after a long absence, knowing that his childhood sweetheart, Chloe, is now widowed. He and Chloe had been secretly engaged years earlier, but then he'd gone off to fight in the Napoleonic wars and had been rumoured killed in action. Griefstricken, Chloe had married his cousin Jonathan. Not long after, David had returned home safely, and he'd seen Chloe's action as betrayal. He hadn't seen her since. Now, however, she was widowed and he's out for revenge. He will make her fall in love with him again and, if possible, seduce her - and then desert her. But will his resolve hold when his own feelings may not be as full of hate as he thinks?

Mary Jo Putney's The Devil's Spawn is not her best work by far. The plot's a well-worn one: Dominic, Lord Chandler, asks his sweetheart's father for permission to pay his addresses. The father rejects him and goes further: lets Roxanne believe that Dominic has been bought off. This same plot was used in a novella in the Captured Hearts anthology. Years later, Dominic returns, with an elaborate plan to kidnap Roxanne and marry her - he has no idea of what she believes about him. It's the really ridiculous nature of this plan, which involves pretending to be a Polynesian savage, which destroys the crediblity of the story. Added to that, there is another cliched revelation in the novella, and an abrupt and unconvincing change in characterisation.

Anita Mills' A Good Woman, set in Texas as opposed to Regency England, is also surprisingly enjoyable. Jack Morgan, former bank robber, is being released after eight years in prison. His only wish is to find the money he buried before being arrested, but a woman with two children and clearly in desperate circumstances catches his attention and he helps her out by paying for a night's accommodation and food for her. The next day they're on the same stagecoach to Huntsville. Beth tries to ignore the drunken, untidy man, while Jack is tired and irritated by the children. However, neither can prevent their decent natures wanting to help the other, and when they arrive in Huntsville Jack sacrifices the remainder of his cash to stop Beth's home being repossessed. Then, when Beth sees the way the sheriff is harassing Jack, she offers him a home. Can the lonely, tired widow reform the cynical ex-con who claims not to have a heart?

And the best in the collection is Mary Balogh's Precious Rogue, which I'd read before. Patricia Mangan is a poor relation, treated as little better than a maid by her aunt. Joshua Buchanan is a guest at a house-party, and the favoured suitor of Patricia's cousin. However, Buchanan - as Patricia discovers when she sees him enjoying the attentions of a married lady guest - is a rake, and he's actually only leading her cousin and aunt on. He has no intention of proposing. However, the rake and the little shadow find themselves having sparky conversations... and the rake finds himself increasingly concerned for the fate of his little bird, as he calls Patricia. And soon he cannot even carry on his usual games with discreet women, because all he can think about is Patricia...

The best novellas in this anthology, as is always the case with anthologies, needed to be longer. The other two would have been best omitted. This gets three stars for Precious Rogue; on average, the rest of the anthology merits two.

Edward, Earl of Raymore, has recently become the guardian of two young ladies, one who is the daughter of his predecessor as Earl (who was his uncle) and the other who is related to the late Countess. Rosalind Dacey, the latter of Raymore's wards, walks with a distinct limp as the result of a childhood accident; to Raymore's dismay, this makes her less marriageable as a result.

Raymore and Rosalind strike sparks off each other from the moment they meet. He wants to marry her off as soon as he can; she wants to be allowed to retire to the country and remain unmarried, thus escaping the humiliation of being found wanting by Society. He's an autocrat who dislikes women intensely, and so he expects her to obey his every order. She resents being ordered around and defies him openly on several occasions.

And yet on one occasion when she goes too far and he tells her off in his study, temper turns to irrestible attraction and he kisses her senseless.

However, someone does apparently find Rosalind attractive enough to want to marry her. But why does Raymore resent her engagement so much? Why does he seem to want to prove that her fiance isn't good enough for her? Can he simply put her out of his mind - and can she put him out of hers?

This is an enjoyable romance, but at times it does become obvious that it's one of Balogh's earlier works. There is rather too much informality between characters, which wouldn't have happened and which isn't Balogh's style in her later work. She also gets a title wrong; Raymore's unmarried cousin is several times addressed as Lady Marsh instead of Lady Sylvia, the latter being an earl's daughter and the former the wife of Lord Marsh.

Raymore's development from a misogynistic, autocratic boor to a sensitive and caring lover was not very well developed either. He went from doubting Rosalind's virtue as a result of the kiss she shared with him to (apparently) assuming that she had to be completely virtuous after all, with no real articulation of this change in his attitude.

All in all, while I enjoyed this book, I'd rather re-read another Balogh, such as A Certain Magic or Tempting Harriet.

To say that this book was disappointing would be an understatement. The only story that was the slightest bit interesting was 'The Treasure Hunt' by Mary Balogh. It is about a young woman, Lady Constance Manning, who realizes too late that she has engaged herself to the younger brother when she is actually in love with the older one. Even that story was somewhat unsatisfying as, in the end, we are left wondering if the younger brother sacrifices his own love so that Connie may be happy or if he is also happy to break the engagement. However, the story itself is very sensitive and touching in the usual Balogh style. I hope she writes a sequel for the younger brother, Sidney. But the other stories are so boring that it is a chore to turn the pages. My recommendation: wait until all short stories by Mary Balogh get published in one volume.

I like Mary Balogh, but I didn't like this book. It was very formulaic and the secondary characters were much more interesting than the main ones.