I have had an embarrassment of riches--books to review on the RWR site--and I'm commandeering Tuesdays for book reviews. The first book I'm reviewing for this new tradition is the much anticipated and eagerly awaited Sarah MacLean novel, A Rogue By Any Other Name.

I am a lucky pirate and you can be too.

I just finished reading Sarah MacLean’s newest delicious truffle of delight: A Rogue By Any Other Name. Delectable. Actually “truffle” implies something light and frothy—and this was really dark, rich, and sustaining. Like Starbuck’s coffee, maybe. A little frothy foam on top for sweetness, and dark and rich goodness to flood your veins and make you believe in a new day again. Yeah. Like that.

The hero was yummy, yummy delectable, though a bit of, well, a rogue. He, of course, has excellent reason to be a rogue—you burn for him, you do, but he’s a truly complex and broken hero who you want to wrap in a snuggie, feed him soup, and reassure him it’s all going to work out all right. The heroine does us one better and devastates him in (and out of) the bedroom. (Which is only fair, because he does his own share of being a devastating creature.) So when I wasn’t sad and weepy for either the hero or the heroine’s unfair life situations and hurt feelings, I was amazed my fingers weren’t scorching, turning the pages to some of the hottest love scenes I’ve read twice. (Believe me, they all need to be read twice. The man is delicious.) Complex, sensuous, life- and love-affirming—this book had it and a box of chocolates. Love really does conquer all.

As far as plots go, it works a nice Shakespearean kind of revenge. Our hero is young and foolish—as young men frequently are—and during a “winning streak” at the gaming tables, wagers everything not entailed on the turn of some cards. He loses everything to his guardian, the guardian who had spent the last several years building up the fortune that the hero was due to inherit through no work of his own. Of course, our burned and bitter hero seeks revenge at all costs, to claim back his inheritance and ruin the man who ruined him. The book is only missing a sword fight to make it really Shakespeare, but there are a few really lovely brawls for the pirate who adores a bit of blood-lust in her novels.

There are romantic moments galore to show the growth between the hero and heroine—mostly to show how far he has come because he has a long, long, long, long, long way to get to his happy ending. In fact, when I finally arrived at the Happily Ever After and our hero was pouring out all his apologies and “I love yous”, I was a bit, “Okay, enough already. He’s waxing way poetic.” But then I thought about it. I loved the hero—I felt bad for him—but he was an ass. He needed to grovel. If he was effusive in his praise of his bride, she deserved it for putting up with all the shoddy behavior he exhibited to her.

This story was just the sort of fantasy I love to get my hands on and consume in one sitting: Beauty and the Beast—the selfish prince who doesn’t believe he’s worthy of being loved by the woman he’s fallen in love with. Only her love can transform him back into a man, and it does.

Ms. MacLean hit this one out of the ballpark and set up her next book in one fell swoop, and I don’t know how she did it, but she managed to make me long for the next book even more than I longed for this one! Well done, Ms. MacLean!

Best of all, A Rogue By Any Other Name is out today, February 28, 2012. Go get it!

Now—to make another pirate as lucky as me. One lucky commenter will win a copy of A Rogue By Any Other Name (not my copy—a new copy I didn’t drool on). To be eligible, your comment should be either your favorite book featuring Beauty and the Beast as its structure or the book/series you’re looking most forward to devouring this year?