Review: Loved It - Can't Wait for MORE!!!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 7, 2014
Miss Emily Parr is surprised when no one accompanies her in her carriage taking her to one of the first balls of the season.  Shortly into the ride, Emily does realize that someone has joined the driver up top and peeking through the curtains, realizes that there are outriders accompanying her carriage. Even if she wished to escape, at this rate of speed she would probably be killed.  Deciding to hide under the box seat in the carriage Emily hopes that the kidnappers (obviously sent by her odious uncle’s business partner) will think she’d escaped.Well, Emily had been kidnapped but not by her odious uncle’s business partner, Blankenship, but by the five noblemen making up the infamous League of Rogues!  What they could possibly want with her was anyone’s guess, but Emily is not about to go down easily and leads this group of rogues and their leader, Godric St. Laurent, Duke of Essex on a merry chase.  That is until Emily decides, that with the devil’s dark good looks and mesmerizing green eyes she should be trying to catch the duke for herself!***  Well, for the beginning of 2014 I have to say that WICKED DESIGNS was a completely perfect read for me! Fun and full of action!  I was totally caught up in Emily’s kidnapping and her many attempts to outfox her kidnappers.  In the beginning, the kidnapping was payback from the Duke towards Emily’s uncle who had cheated him in a business deal.  His reasoning was to hurt the uncle by effectively ruining his niece - not physically or so the plan went but ruining her reputation instead. Not well done of these gents, and certainly not well thought through with regard to a very sweet and innocent young woman such as Emily.Godric’s initial plan had a lot of weaknesses and his treatment of Emily - a prisoner in a gilded cage- was not right. One could really be upset with him because Godric had not truly thought the repercussions out of how much he was destroying an innocents reputation who had never done him any harm!  However, the tables were turned on him when Emily captured his heart -even though it took a while for him to realize it - the story and romance was divine.Emily was marvelous, intelligent, and strong.  I loved the many ways she was able to outsmart the rogues in her many escape attempts and her antics were totally endearing and fun.  The secondary characters all found a place in my heart as well with Emily enchanting them all to the point where they all became her protectors.  Ashton, was one of my favorites and he pretty much assigned himself as her guardian angel (though in truth, Ashton probably was no angel either. - Can’t wait to find out!)Bottom line:  While some may have issues with the original thinking of these noblemen agreeing to go along with a kidnapping to ruin an innocent young woman, I loved the adventure and the spunkiness of the heroine.  This is an original series and I can’t wait to read more of these rogues who all deserve their comeuppances from spunky heroines like Emily!Marilyn Rondeau, for [...]