Cover Image: A Rogue by Night

A Rogue by Night

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Member Reviews

I usually love Kelly Bowen's books, but this series isn't my favourite. A Rogue By Night is so ridiculously implausible that it was hard for me suspend disbelief.

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Apparently I never reviewed this book when I read it! It's been over a year but I do recall enjoying this book though not as much as the first two books in the series. I think the sisters' stories felt more dynamic and I just didn't care about the brother as much. Still love this author though.

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This was probably my favorite in this series. Kelly Bowen writes such unique characters and different plot lines. I mainly picked this up to finish up the series and finally get to King's book, but I ended up loving it more than expected.

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Harland Hayward is a physician, smuggler and Baron. He has chosen his life to save his family from financial ruin.
Katherine comes from a family of smugglers and she wanted no life of it anymore. She meets Harland as he is tending to her brother and then has her work with him as a physician. Her life does become in danger even though Harland is out to protect her family.
Katherine has void she does not need a man or smuggling anymore. But Harland and her have chemistry that they can't deny.
I have enjoyed this series and received this from NetGalley for review.

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A suspenseful romance filled with a lot of adventure and a gently built romance. The characters were well-written and the conflict interesting and well-paced.

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I didn't realize that this was part of a series, but I am excited to have learned it, based on how much I enjoyed this one.
Two strong, smart main characters, both caught between their family duties and their own morality. Smuggling, prison breaks, and a steamy romance. What more could you want?

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A slow start to the story and yet the ending was rushed and without any epilogue. There just wasn't enough between those bookends to keep me interested.

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Harland and Kat’s Story is one of struggle that is born of love and compassion with an interesting dash of rebelliousness! I enjoyed this story and recommend to anyone who enjoys romance.

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As usual with Kelly Bowen, this historical romance was a romp of a ride. I genuinely enjoyed the characters and their dynamic in the cast.
I also loved the reasons behind why our couple ends up spending time together. I found it very clever.
All in all, I would recommend!

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While I had already guessed big brother's big secret and his overall wokeness is hinted at in the previous books, I really enjoyed how Harland's character was given even more depth and layers in A Rogue By Night. But more than anything, I loved Katherine. Just like Clara and Rose before her, she is fiercely independent, intelligent, and feminist to the core. She was willing to do what was necessary to care for her family, stood up for herself, acknowledged and embraced her emotions, and accepted love when it was offered to her. Honestly, out of the 3 heroines, she may be my favorite. I truly enjoyed Harland as well. My only issue with this book is the relatively abrupt ending. I would kill for an epilogue or a few more pages or sentences even! But all in all, A Rogue By Night was a great wrap up for the Hayward siblings.

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Kelly Bowen is officially one of my most awaited, consistent authors. I loved this book! Truly, I’ve loved this whole series. From the out-if-London locale to the quirky aunts - to the daring and perfectly flawed heroines, I love it all. Do yourself a favor and dive in!

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Again, a very well written, well developed story by Kelly Bowen. An excellent book with likable characters. Bowen is a reliable writer and no historical romance enthusiast should miss her books.

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A Rogue by Night is a breath of fresh air. The entire plot was unique. One that is not commonly found. Both of the main characters are doing what they must to save their family from ruin. Danger, suspense, and mystery swirl among the pages. A family of smugglers trying hard not to get caught made for an intense read. Then, there was a titled doctor who is helping his family too. He smuggles stuff just like Kate's father and brother. Kate becomes worried when he brother is injured. Her brother could have been caught. How many times could they tempt their fate? 

Kate is a healer and loves her family with a fierce protectiveness. She is strong and smart. I really liked her. Her personality was easy to understand and follow. Kate takes up the criminal life one last time to save her brother and father. That's when she met the dashing doctor. Sparks flew. Heat bubbled up with every page. Between the danger of being caught and the blossoming romance, Kelly Bowen caught my attention. I was hooked. The doctor is a good man  with an appetite for breaking rules and being reckless at times. Kate is a good woman who sacrifices herself for her loved ones. This story was well-written. There was plenty of action, dialogue, and emotion to keep readers, like me, tuned into the plot. Overall, I highly recommend this historical novel to all.

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Loved Katherine and Harland. As other reviewers have said, these two were unconventional but believable for the time period. Really enjoyed this one!

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

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I adored this book. I devoured it in just one sitting. It was a cute story with stakes that felt realistic and characters who had development.

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Received in exchange for a honest review.

So the book was nicely paced and kept me in the moment. I enjoyed the content and loved the cahracters. I loved Harland. He is so complex and has many layers. He is fascinated and attracted to Katherine. She intrigues him. I love how he isn’t as he seems and that he truly cares about those around him. He works hard and in order to save his family from ruin, he had to do something against his nature and it intertwines him with Katherine’s family. It also has Katherine have issues with him when she learns of the many facets of Harland.

Harland is loyal, smart, kind, gentle and love his family. He is attracted to Katherine and truly is a good guy. Katherine is a good character. At first she comes off as a bit stubborn and a litle uppity. That is until her brother is injured and they are in danger. She too is attracted to Harland but doesn’t quite trust him but she does slowly change her views.

I love the romance dynamic and how Katherine as she learns all about Harland she sees that there is more than meets the eye. She sees that he isn’t just a lord but one that cares and is in a rock and hard place. I do love how she helps him in the end. Their love is a slow build and we see them build up and support one another.

The story is fun, entertaining, and endearing. You fall in love with the characters and the plot line as well.

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This was an enjoyable adventure about two smugglers as they fight against a fanatical captain, past heartaches, stolen paintings and injured prisoners, and the possibility of a happy future. I enjoyed the story and the characters a lot. They worked well together and their story progressed well and wasn’t rushed. This series keeps getting better and better and I really liked how strong Katherine was and how Harland kept getting surprised by how strong she was with each situation they found themselves in.  If you haven't tried this series, I do recommend trying it out, because they are all enjoyable stories.

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I really am a fan of Kelly Bowen and although I found this romance to be a little--I don't know--quieter than some of the others I've read from her, I still found it to be a solid read.

The previous book in this series centered on the sisters of Harland, our hero here. He is a baron, but also a doctor and a reluctant smuggler. He's in the service of King (whose book I am still waiting for) and must continue to do the man's bidding in exchange for the criminal kingpin saving his family from ruin.

Our heroine is Katherine, a healer and also reluctant smuggler. She was born into the life and only wants to get herself and her family out. She and Harland cross paths when her brother is shot and the baron doctor helps hide him from the troops looking to hang him. She doesn't want to like the man--she's been burned by a peer before. And he doesn't want to ever open his heart to someone who could break it the way his wife did.

Of course, they share an attraction and a mutual respect that gets harder and harder to ignore.

Bowen did a good job making me understand how and why Katherine became the woman she did, but Harland's backstory felt much more superficial. I understood, but I didn't feel it as much. However, I loved how he saw the value in her and never treated her as less than his equal as a doctor. And while I would've loved an epilogue, Bowen gave me an ending that satisfied.

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3 Wine Glass #Review of A Rogue by Night by Kelly Bowen
Kimberly's Thoughts:
“I don't like to be told what I can and can't do. What is right and wrong based on nothing but preconceptions and ignorance.” He stepped closer. “I don't think you do either.”

A Rogue by Night follows Harland Hayward and Katherine Wright as they get caught up in smuggling, doctoring, and falling in love. The Devils of Dover's previous two books starred Harland's sisters and while you could start here like I did, I think I missed out on the hows and whys of Harland's character. We're introduced to him as a surgeon, learn he's also a Baron, and is the go-between in a smuggling business. It's obvious that he doesn't want to be apart of the smuggling, we don't get in depth scenes with him in this capacity, but we don't learn why he is apart of it until halfway through the book; his parents died suddenly leaving the family in debt (this may have been explained in the previous two books). I was also a little unsure of his desire to be a surgeon, where was the passion to pursue this line of work when it is stepping outside the norm as he was a baron? Missing some of this background on Harland's character had him feeling only like a pencil sketch to me and I never felt connected to him.

“I chose to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. [...]”

Katherine was the better flushed out character to me and read strong on the pages. I still thought the why and how she became a de facto surgeon in the army was left unexplained too long in the book. I think some emotional moments that would have endeared her to readers *Spoiler(a flashback to the moment she was betrayed by her lover, the war raging as she helped save the lives of soldiers would have been highly emotional)* were left out or lost their impact by her simply revealing them in one paragraph. Katherine and Harland were pretty busy from the get go and I missed some time to simply get to know them. Katherine is interested in medicine because of her mother and she got into smuggling because of her father, both explanations or impacts from these past occurrences got lost in the current action; they both could have added to the emotion of current events if given more depth in their relaying.

Forget intrigued. Despite his best intentions, he might also be smitten.

The attraction between the two was pretty immediate, especially from Harland's side. I thought the romance was weak, there wasn't time to enjoy the initial spark, then growing, and eventual succumbing. The situation that led them to travel to London and then France together felt very forced, there already seemed like numerous opportunities for them to be together, Haverhall School (a plot continued from the first two books), smuggling danger, or doctoring. Katherine and Harland were two characters with an abundance of personal similarities, so conceptually, their attraction was easy to understand, but the emotions never came off the pages for me.

If you've read other series by Bowen, most notably Season for Scandal, you'll recognize the character of King and a few others, I have a feeling the clamoring for King's story is going to increase as we get another look at this enigmatic character. Other secondary characters played their roles well, adding to the story and lead characters without stealing the show. The journeys Harland and Katherine go on, the character of the captain trying to shut the smuggling down felt over-the-top at times (did a smuggler kick his puppy once?), they sometimes felt contrived (who the colonel turns out to be at the prison), and a little too many off-shoots but I also enjoyed how Bowen tied everything together.

The last thirty percent was top notch writing and drew me into Katherine and Harland's lives but this was ultimately hurt by the lack of emotion, chemistry, and spark I felt was missing between the two. Flashbacks to previous moments in the lead's lives would have created a stronger emotional base and had me feeling these characters more, especially Harland, the issues from his former marriage/wife felt very foggy. If you've been a reader of this series or Season for Scandal, you'll probably enjoy seeing Harland get his happily ever after and getting a peek at King, but I'm not sure I'd recommend starting here.

And because no matter what she tried to tell herself, they were indeed the same. Different. Alone. Untouchable. Until the moment when they weren't.

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I've heard good things about Kelly Bowen's books many times before, and I wish I hadn't waited so long to read one. I loved "A Rogue by Night"! It was such a refreshingly different take on historical romance, featuring a heroine (Katherine) who was not a member of the nobility, and a hero (Harland) who was an aristocrat but also chose to become a doctor. Harland and his family were considered to be "peculiar" by Society, but they did whatever they wanted to do anyway, and I loved them for it.

I thought the smuggling plot in this story was very interesting. When smuggling has been featured in previous books I've read, it has always been painted in a negative light because of the criminals, like King, who tended to get involved in it. It was very interesting to consider the motives of people like Katherine's family, who only turned to smuggling out of desperation and a need to support their families. They really had no other choice, especially in the wake of the Napoleonic wars when so many veterans returned home and there weren't enough jobs for all of them. They just did what they had to do to survive, despite the potential dangers.

I enjoyed how Katherine and Harland's relationship unfolded as well. They both had a lot of baggage from their previous relationships, but they managed to overcome it together. Harland stood up for Katherine when necessary, such as the times when he made others acknowledge that her medical skills were equal to his own, but he also let her have her independence. I appreciated that he didn't try to badger her into a relationship, but instead let her take the lead.

This book stood very well on its own, but I do plan to go back and read the first two books in this trilogy. I really enjoyed Ms. Bowen's writing style and look forward to checking out more of her work in the future.

*ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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