Scarlett Peckham

One of EW's 20 Must-Reads for April and an Amazon Best Romance of May! Meet the SOCIETY OF SIRENS--three radical, libertine ladies determined to weaponize their scandalous reputations to fight for justice and the love they deserve... She's a Rakess on a quest for women's rights... Seraphina Arden's passions include equality, amorous affairs, and wild, wine-soaked nights. To raise funds for her cause, she's set to publish explosive memoirs exposing the powerful man who ruined her. Her ideals are her purpose, her friends are her family, and her paramours are forbidden to linger in the morning. He's not looking for a summer lover... Adam Anderson is a wholesome, handsome, widowed Scottish architect, with two young children, a business to protect, and an aversion to scandal. He could never, ever afford to fall for Seraphina. But her indecent proposal--one month, no strings, no future--proves too tempting for a man who strains to keep his passions buried with the losses of his past. But one night changes everything... What began as a fling soon forces them to confront painful secrets--and yearnings they thought they'd never have again. But when Seraphina discovers Adam's future depends on the man she's about to destroy, she must decide what to protect... her desire for justice, or her heart.

Society of Sirens, Volume I

The Rakess

Annie Beth

Honestly there aren’t words. I was hooked after the first chapter and didn’t want to stop reading. Why did I wait so long to finish this? It was exactly the kind of historical romance I love and I loved the subversion of the rake to be female and that the usual role of the male who doesn’t want to love or be tied down is then places as the female role with the male lead being the one in touch with his emotions and ready to settle down. 

Becky

Meet the SOCIETY OF SIRENS—three radical, libertine ladies determined to weaponize their scandalous reputations to fight for justice and the love they deserve… She’s a Rakess on a quest for women’s rights… Seraphina Arden’s passions include equality, amorous affairs, and wild, wine-soaked nights. To raise funds for her cause, she’s set to publish explosive memoirs exposing the powerful man who ruined her. Her ideals are her purpose, her friends are her family, and her paramours are forbidden to linger in the morning. He’s not looking for a summer lover… Adam Anderson is a wholesome, handsome, widowed Scottish architect, with two young children, a business to protect, and an aversion to scandal. He could never, ever afford to fall for Seraphina. But her indecent proposal—one month, no strings, no future—proves too tempting for a man who strains to keep his passions buried with the losses of his past. But one night changes everything... What began as a fling soon forces them to confront painful secrets—and yearnings they thought they’d never have again. But when Seraphina discovers Adam’s future depends on the man she’s about to destroy, she must decide what to protect… her desire for justice, or her heart.

Society of Sirens, Volume 1

Sven Test

I was the kind of girl who's offered money, not redemption.

Seraphina is a radical, a complete liberal and feminist woman. You can just imagine all the scandal Sera's life just by being how she is and standing firm on her beliefs, especially the scandal that comes with having lots of lovers at every turn. I loved Sera's determination to bring equality, and show that woman can do the same thing as men. Not only that, her passion for helping women in need also spoke volumes for me.

She goes back to her childhood home, to write her book that will surely bring down the man ruin her. What she wasn't expecting was meeting the nice and gentle Scottish single-father down the road, and ultimately growing feelings for his family.

The loss of you reduces me.

I personally enjoyed this story a lot. I think it's because I really wasn't expecting much, except for the feminism, which I'm glad was shown greatly. I also loved the slow-burn romance! It was so seductive, sweet, and tender. Adam is a wonderful and patient man, whom I think put up with a lot of Sera's attitude, so props to the guy! Him being so forgiving was exactly what Sera needed, to show her he's not giving up, to show her he's seen her worst and is still there for her.

My dilemma was with Sera's character and her way of drinking her way to blacking out. I just didn't feel like that's how Sera should have been. I expected a strong character, with a good head on her shoulders when I read the title, The Rakess. Another dilemma I had was with the pace of the novel. I felt it was slow and a bit dragging. Every single time I had already reached the halfway point, I'd look at the percentage and realized I still wasn't even close.

Sirens, you see, are not born thirsting for justice. Sirens are made.

I adored Sera's friends:, Thais, Elinor, and Cornelia! The fierceness, the fire, the determination they all had brought so much humor to the story! Plus, their friendship was an amazing bonus, with so much care for one another.

Overall, The Rakess is a great start to this series, one I'm so looking forward to reading more of.
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Sheena

“The Rakess” positives are far less than the negatives, leaving me torn on how I feel about the overall read. Starting off with the positive, I liked the strong sensual heroine Seraphina who wasn’t ashamed to showcased her attraction towards the architect, Adam, who did everything in his power to fight the urge to submit to her wild ways. It was a constant (and shall I say tiring?) back and forth between the two throughout the entire novel. I say about ⅓ I was already done and over it, and the repetitiveness allowed the story to draaaaaag on. Despite the 380+ pages, there were far more tedious scenes that could have been cut out to make it a smooth sailing ride. I can’t even tell you how many times I check the % of the book to see if I was making any progress. It seem like I was just stuck and that's something no reader wants to experience.

In spite of the scenes that I found redundant, it wasn’t a complete terror to read. It was easy to see and feel the connection between Adam and Sera, and despite their social standing, I did quite enjoy how their relationship came to be. Moreso, I think the author did a decent job touching sensitive topics such as grieve, death, loss of pregnancy, addiction/alcoholism, animal cruelty, kidnapping and false imprisonment.

“The Rakess” left me caught between a rock and a hard place, and can easily be a hit or miss for readers.

Lauren Sullivan

Content warnings: (view spoiler)[Grief (hero’s wife died in childbirth plus heroine lost a child), stillbirth, alcoholism (in the past and on page), unplanned pregnancy, animal cruelty (including heroine having to kill a dying bird), side character involuntarily committed to an asylum, threats of violence against heroine, sexual grooming and abuse of a teen that leads to heroine being shunned for having loose morals, plus the usual sort of misogyny typical for that period (hide spoiler)]

I’m sorry, but reading that blurb always gets “summer lovin’, had me a bla-a-a-st” stuck in my head. Which is a bit off-key, as this isn’t a breezy summer romance as the Grease comparison would suggest, but rather an absolutely stunning angst-ridden upending of the rake trope, complete with an “unlikeable” heroine and a saintly hero. I adored it, but I want to highlight that there’s a lot of content warnings for this book.

“Sirens, you see, are not born thirsting for justice.
Sirens are made.”

Also, how have I not read anything by Scarlett Peckham before? I’ve heard her recommended a million times, so when I saw the absolutely astonishing cover I couldn’t resist asking for a review copy. And, yes, the cover is *exactly* everything you’d expect from this book. It’s full of feels and angst, and it has that certain something that reminds me of Courtney Milan’s historicals. And if you’ve somehow missed my rabid fangirling, that’s pretty high praise.

Sera’s never told anyone, not even her very best friends, anything of what happened that led to her being kicked out of her home when she was a teen. It’s been years, though, so surely writing her memoirs will be a quick and easy way to raise money to found an institute to teach trades to women. And where better to go than the house she inherited from her parents in Kestral Bay, the scene of it all? But between problems for her friends in London and a chance encounter with a handsome architect, things aren’t shaping up quite how she expected.

“You mean you do corrupt impressionable girls and tempt them to a life of sin, like they claim in the papers?”
“No. But I could be called guilty of inviting nice architects to advise me on building costs when advice is not the only thing I’m after.”

Sera is as messy and unlikeable as every rake hero you’ve ever read. Her paramours are good for distraction or conversation, but not emotions – she’s quick and efficient at turning out one who has the bad taste to be – horrors! – a cuddler. She dulls her own emotions with copious alcohol, and is absolutely flummoxed as to why she’s failing at writing her memoirs. Adam’s a widower with two young children who still works with his brother-in-law at their family firm. He is, in a word, adorable, and I loved him. He’s principled (he considers reputation important, but decency even more so), but not perfect, and he initially struggles to reconcile the rakess who propositions him with the woman who is kind and gentle with his children. Their relationship evolves into everything I’m looking for in a romance novel – supportive, but not overbearing, and the sort where they bring out the best in each other.

“Perhaps this was a trait one needed to become a creature like Seraphina Arden: the ability to feast on threats and turn them into strength.”

There’s a lot to unpack in terms of how the rake trope is gender-swapped while still keeping it “historically accurate” – or, at least, as historically accurate as you can get with a historical romance, and while initially it was quite fun matching up the beats in this book with the traditional rake trope beats, eventually I became so enthralled that I was just sucked in. That’s not to say that there aren’t things I disliked about this book. It is fierce, and while I understand where the author was going and can’t remotely begin to suggest how she would have given an equivalent emotional punch, there was some content I truly wish had been left out, specifically (view spoiler)[the animal cruelty. Which, I suppose, is a weird line to draw, considering this book also involves the sexual grooming and exploitation of a teenager, and I’m not sure if that’s an indictment of our culture or speaks more to what I feel can or should be worked through in books. (hide spoiler)]. I loved how both Sera’s and Adam’s attempts at working through their respective traumas are raw and ugly – there’s no lightbulb moment where suddenly either recognizes what’s wrong and then effortlessly fixes it – and they both make mistakes and assumptions that they have to apologize for and forgive. There’s a good supporting cast of characters, including the Sirens – Elinor, who starts the book after being committed to an asylum by her husband, Thaïs, a courtesan, and Cornelia, a scandalous painter. They didn’t get as much page time together as I would’ve wanted, but I’m hoping that’ll be reconciled in the next books, since it looks like the series will be structured around them. I’m also hoping for an HEA for the hero’s sister, though!

“What if I go, and it’s terrible?”
“Then you will come back to me and say, Thaïs, you jackal, you tricked me with your feeble logic of the slums. And we will gather together, the Society of Sirens, and curse the wicked men and this cruel life. And then we will dry our tears and find our next adventure.”

Overall, this was a wild, angsty, thought-provoking ride. I am very much looking forward to the next adventure in the series!

I received this book from Edelweiss. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I was so pleasantly surprised by how much I loved this book. I thought it would be another historical romance with the twist of the heroine having an infamous reputation but it was so much more than that. Sera is working through some trauma in a pretty self-destructive way and it takes sweet gentle Adam - for whom I would commit a felony - to help her work through it. The writing is top notch and this turned out to be so much more than a fluffy period piece. Can't wait to read more from this author. If you love period romance, feminism, and golden-hearted love interests definitely check this one out.

b.andherbooks

I am going to have a whole slew of content warnings for this romance, one of my most anticipated of 2020. You can find them behind the spoiler.

CW: (view spoiler)[miscarriage described on page, death from pregnancy and a bad delivery, grief, alcoholism, addiction, gas lighting (not by hero or heroine), animal cruelty (birds killed and maimed and left for heroine to find to scare her), forced kidnapping and imprisonment of a secondary female character in an asylum, described torture in said asylum, may be more but these stood out to me (hide spoiler)]

This trope flipping romance has much to love for those seeking dark, soul wrenching stories. Peckham's master of words and language is in full effect her, making you feel every lash of wind and rain on the Cornish cliffs and every dramatic pulse of lust and romance. Adam and Sera's characters are well drawn and the moments they are together shine. I loved how brittle and prickly Sera is, how she strives to embrace her rejection by society and revel in her freedom from expectation, yet how lonely she is and how she longs for love and friendship. Thank god for her friends, who's books I'm also dying for.

Adam is a stuffy, uptight, and grief stricken hero who is both blushingly stern in the streets and domineering and hot in the sheets. I loved that he adored and grieved for his wife. They had a love and lust match which is rare to find in romance novels.

What kept me from loving this story has a lot to do with the CWs listed above involving pregnancy. I'll write a better review closer to publication date, but feel free to reach out to me if you have questions!

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC!

Jo H

CW for miscarriage, a difficult childbirth leading to death and animal death.

My Year of Historical Romance - Book 20
Late Georgian era, England, UK

 This book is a fairly difficult read, that includes some really heavy topics. Seraphina (which on a side note, is a very pretty name) has spent many years, unhealthily at times, self-medicating with alcohol and sex because she wants to take control of her own life and destiny in a way that she was unable to do in the past due to mistreatment by men and therefore society at large. However, none of this takes away from the fact that she IS a radical feminist making her own choices in a time where it was virtually unknown for women to do so. It would have been so easy for her to like the vast majority of women of her time, but give in to the status quo, but I love a woman in bygone times that doesn't do that. Some of Sera's choices may have been on the cusp of self-harm as such ways of dealing with trauma often are, but she and she alone made them. And, she is shown to be dealing with the consequences of her choices; Sera held up her hand to silence them. “This is just harassment, Thaïs. Provocation. And I will not delight the people wishing to scare me by showing them it’s worked.” 

Adam shook his head. This had gone too far. “I’m going for my horse and will have words with [...] about his man. This will be stopped.” 

“No, you will not,” Seraphina uttered, eyes flashing. “Understand me, Adam. Not. One. Word.” She held his gaze intently. He’d never seen her look so fierce.

He paused, his pulse beating in his throat. “Why not, Sera?” 

“Because I know the people here. I have known them all my life. If they want a battle, I know exactly how to win it, I assure you. And it’s by calmly finishing my book.” 

He dropped his shoulders, realizing they were pinned up by his ears with tension. “Fine. But, Sera, I’d like to send a man here, up to your home to keep watch. You have no male servants and the presence of a burly fellow can send a powerful message to those who like to harm wee helpless things. Aye?”
 
She screwed up her face distastefully.

“Yes, Mr. Anderson,” Tompkins said. “I agree that such a step is prudent.” She shot a glance at Seraphina. “If you don’t want it for yourself, think of your defenseless servants.” 

“Oh, very well,” Sera muttered.

And then she turned to her house and kicked the wall so hard bits of plaster sprayed out from beneath her boot heel. “It makes me so bloody angry. Why can’t they leave me well enough alone?” She kicked the wall twice more.

“Sera, love, stop,” Miss Magdalene cried hoarsely. “You’ll injure yourself.”

But she didn’t stop. She kicked the wall with such force that she fell back onto her rear in the grass. She cursed, then let out a wail of pure frustration. 

She reminded Adam of Adeline when the world had spun out of her control, and all she could do was rage at it. So he did what he did for Addie in such times. He crouched down beside her and gently touched her shoulder. “You’re upset, love, aye?” he asked in his softest voice. 

“Yes, I am upset,” she shouted. “I have every right to be upset. My friend was made a prisoner by her own husband. My neighbors are killing birds to threaten me. And yet I am the one considered dangerous to the social order? What have I done? What on earth have I done?” She pounded the grass with her palms.

He wrapped her in his arms and squeezed her tight.

He expected Sera to push him off, but instead she stilled.

“Just take a breath,” he whispered.

She inhaled deeply. Her fingers found his waist and clutched at him. He stroked her hair. Over her shoulder, he saw her friends looking on at them, perplexed. 

“I’m just so bloody angry,” she whispered, as if needing an excuse to let herself seek comfort.

“I know it, Sera,” he murmured. And it was not a noble feeling, but a part of him was pleased that she was letting him hold her. The part of him that flared in indignation when she protested that they were not friends knew she needed kindness. He wanted to show her she could take it from him safely, without worrying he’d lose his head and propose marriage on the spot. 

Slowly, the tension in her body relaxed. She pulled away and brushed off her skirts.

“I’m sorry,” she said, rising to her feet. “Every so often a woman must indulge in a hysterical outburst, lest the things they say about our precarious sanity seem unfounded.” 

She is writing her memoirs, her backstory to how and why she became the notorious Rakess, hoping that by using her own personal experiences, and naming the guilty parties, she can try making inroads towards improvements for ALL women - and make no mistake that this book is intersectional for its time given that one of the three series 'Sirens', Sera's BFFs Cornelia, is a black woman, the other Thaïs, is a working-class sex worker and their mentor Elinor, is an 'older' woman. It just so happens that she ends up falling in love with an equally (that their experiences are equally weighing on them is up for debate, although it is never a competition) traumatised Adam, and his children, along the way as well. And it is worth noting that Adam is no entitled Duke or the like, he is my idea of a 'real' man; he loves his children and his sister, who lives with them, unconditionally, he is thoroughly decent and a talented architect who earned his somewhat limited place in society through hard work and tenacity (although he did have a helping hand). Despite the crosses he has had to bear, he is strong of mind and body and totally swoon worthy, because he has absolutely no need to throw his weight around and bully people to cover up his insecurities and prove his masculinity. He is gentle and kind, and can still throw down 'under the skirts' so to speak!

Nothing about their struggles, even some of the more frustrating aspects, towards their HEA detracted from their relationship for me, even with all the difficulties that occurred along the way, in fact, it highlighted for me that even in times of immense and ongoing personal strife, it is still possible to find love and light. And nothing about Sera finding true love got in the way of her ambition to try and improve society for women in the way she felt compelled to do, and I loved that about her. But I continue to recall a romantic thing that Adam Anderson first said to me in a letter: I am reduced by the loss of you. 

And I have thought often, over our years together, of the corollary: your love increases me. 

You see, he was always wise, my Adam. 

It turned out the more I began to love, the more I became. I did not lose myself by loving Adam, nor our children. I became fuller. Richer. I discovered I could be a Rakess, an Intellectual, a Mother, a Renegade, a Helpmeet, and a Siren, all at once. I do think that Sera's stubbornness and her denial of her feelings for Adam along the way was frustrating at times, and at the end where (view spoiler)[Sera suddenly ends up pregnant is a tad deus ex machina, given how she always tried to ensure this not be the case following her miscarriage when she was younger (hide spoiler)] but neither of these things were enough to ruin my experience with this story. 

And as something of a surprise, the book ends in a minor cliffhanger, not to Sera and Adam's love story of course, but to the overall series arc... and whilst what happened in those last couple of lines of the epilogue was not wholly unsurprising to me, it was a gut punch.

The Rakess was Epic. And beautiful. And heartfelt. And at times Painful. But it was so so worth it, and I was hooked from start to finish. Now I can't wait to read about the other Sirens, Cornelia and Thaïs and their journeys to their HEAs, no matter how difficult they may be. I'm also looking forward to hearing much more about Elinor and also Jack the one man friend they seem to have on their side, other than the new addition of Adam of course.

(April 2021).

PS And as an aside, one thing I did really appreciate was the inclusion of Seraphina using very early versions of condoms. This was an educational point for me as I had previously thought that they had not been invented until well into the Victorian era. Kudos to Scarlett Peckham for that factoid.

Lacey

I had such high hopes for The Rakess as soon as I saw the title, blurb, AND cover. I mean, just look at that gorgeous, old-school vibes cover! And a female rake heroine? YES, please. I'm all for heroines in historical romances (and romances in general) who are feminist and love sex. I was also excited to be reading my very first Scarlett Peckham book – her historical romances have been on my radar since so many have raved about them. And while the concept of The Rakess is great and exactly up my alley, I had a tough time... reading it. The first half was so boring, it was a struggle to get through. The second half did get a lot better, but I’m so sad this book didn’t live up to my expectations.

Seraphina is as liberal, radical, and scandalous as you can imagine a woman who is feminist, fights for women's rights, and has lovers and affairs left and right is in the 19th century. And I truly loved her for all of that. She's on a quest to help women in need, while also taking down the powerful man who ruined and smeared her reputation. While in the countryside to write her exposé, she meets Adam Anderson, a gorgeous, Scottish single father she'd love nothing more to spend her nights with. Instead, this rakess falls for him and his two young children.

The idea behind The Rakess is fantastic. It just wasn’t executed well enough for me. There was barely any romance until 60% of the way through the book. The hero is an absolute Nice Guy and while I loved the gender flipping of the rake into a rakess, I never grew to love Seraphina’s character. She spends most of the story drinking/drunk and barely contributing to the romance. I wouldn't have minded that if she were focusing on the feminist movement instead of the romance, but that also doesn't progress until halfway through the book. It's only in the last 40% did I get the kind of story I was expecting when I went into The Rakess, and the book became so much more enjoyable.

Despite not fully loving The Rakess, I'm still very much looking forward to the other books in the series. We have two of Seraphina's friends who will be getting their romances, who are just as scandalous as this heroine, and I can't wait to see how they will turn out. Plus, I did enjoy Scarlett Peckham's writing – hopefully I'll enjoy her other series more than this book.

The Rakess Society of Sirens, Volume I

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