Hundreds of Years to Reform a Rake by Laurie Brown

Hun­dreds of Years to Reform a Rake by Lau­rie Brown is the first para­nor­mal romance I’ve read in a long time. Josie Drum­mond is a para­nor­mal researcher for Para­nor­mal Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. She has come to Amelia Thornton’s home to cer­tify that her cas­tle is haunted by a descen­dant of the fam­ily. There’s been reports that the late Dev­er­all Waite’s ghost has been seen in Cas­tle Waite but there’s no evi­dence to sup­port such a claim. Amelia’s look­ing for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in order to com­pete in the tourist mar­ket. It’s the only way to give her the much needed funds to restore the cas­tle that’s in dis­re­pair. How­ever, after twenty days into the inves­ti­ga­tion, Josie comes up empty handed and ends her research two weeks early. Just as she is about to leave, how­ever, the ghost of the ninth Earl of Waite, sud­denly makes an appearance.

Josie seems baf­fled by Deverall’s sud­den appear­ance and find it inter­est­ing that he is able to hide his pres­ence in the house despite all of her mon­i­tors and sen­sors. Dev­er­all never had plans for Josie to cer­tify his pres­ence in the house. Dev­er­all advised Amelia to hire her for another rea­son. Dev­er­all goes on to explain that the family’s finances declined after his mother paid a for­tune to a gypsy seer to help her recover a fam­ily trea­sure. So, Dev­er­all wants Josie to accom­pany him back to 1815 to help him restore the fam­ily fiances by thwart­ing the char­la­tan who stole from is gullible mother. In order for Josie to blend into the Regency period, she gets a crash course in Regency set­ting and eti­quette. Josie does go back in time and has to manuever her way through the Regency period. She meets the real Dev­er­all and has to choose between the real Dev and the ghost Dev. The res­o­lu­tion to that was quite inter­est­ing and a bit unex­pected for me.

Over­all, I enjoyed this novel with it’s very nice cover. I thought the most inter­est­ing part of the novel was the peri­odic facts on the Regency period. The author seems to know that period very well, too. I also enjoyed Josie and Deverall’s witty conversations.

“Fox hunt­ing is more than a sport,” Dev­er­all argued. “It is indica­tive of a lifestyle. A reminder of accepted behav­ior pat­terns this cen­tury would do well to read­opt as standards.”

“Such as view­ing women as chat­tel? Such as the old dou­ble stan­dard?” Josie cau­tioned her­self to remain calm. She would lose this argu­ment by default if she let her tem­per fly out of control.

“Morals were upheld.”

“Ah, yes. How could I have mis­con­trued ram­pant syphillis, the white slav­ery trade and open opium addic­tion to be immoral behavior?”

I liked both char­ac­ters espe­cially Dev­er­all. This was also the type of para­nor­mal read that didn’t bother me because there wasn’t much para­nor­mal activ­ity in the book. Despite the good points of the novel, I did have some prob­lems as well. First, the story’s pac­ing was uneven for me. There were parts of the novel where the pages flew by and then other parts that slowed to a crawl. Sec­ond, the plot was pretty thin and third, I wanted more chem­istry between the two char­ac­ters. All in all, a decent read if you enjoy time travel and ghost sto­ries. I really liked the time trav­el­ing aspect of the novel more myself. I also liked the author’s voice/style of writ­ing and would read more of her work. My grade, B.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Lau­rie Brown, His­tor­i­cal Romance