A Rulebook for Restless Rogues by Jess Everlee
Historical Romance/LGBTQ+
July 11 by Carina Adores

Review by Kate H.

Jess Everlee follows up her debut novel The Gentleman’s Book of Vices with the second in the Lucky Lovers of London series, A Rulebook for Restless Rogues. It takes up two of the more interesting side-characters in the first book, David Forester, the manager of the queer club “The Curious Fox,” and his schoolboy compatriot, Noah Clarke, who frequently appears in the club as Miss Penelope, the cheating card shark. It takes a little while to lay out their personal histories, in chapters that alternate between their teenage days in boarding school and the present of the novel. I suppose what we have in this romance is a friends-to-lovers-to-friends-to-lovers trope. It takes a bit of a nudge from their compatriots, as well as an outside threat to bring them together again. It’s quite lovely when it happens. I loved the way Everlee wrote these moments of re-discovery. But even though we know David has been pining for Noah for a long time, Noah’s realization that he’s in love with David seems sudden and less convincing

The outside threat that the two men face is that the owner of “The Curious Fox,” Lord Belleville, is using a pending police raid on the club as an excuse to consider shutting the place down and selling it. He tells David that if he wishes to plan for a more profitable future for the club, he must come out to his country house to discuss it, with a plausible wife in tow. We understand by this point that for David the club is everything – not just a job, but a family of people he must protect from the threats and hostility that gay men encountered in London at the time. He is willing to do anything to save the club, short of actually getting married. Lord Belleville initially comes across as a caricature of a villain, and he only gets worse as the book progresses. But when everything comes to a head, the resolution is underwhelming in an “out of nowhere” kind of way. 

There were a few things that I felt were missing from the close third-person view we get of Noah and David. David doesn’t want to talk very much about Lord Belleville, but since we could see his thoughts, I felt like we should have been privy to more. Similarly, Noah dressed like Miss Penelope at a time when that could have only multiplied his risk. We see what being a tailor meant to him: the cloth, and the designs, and his attitude towards his Penelope dresses seems to echo his interest in male clothes. Was that what he got out of dressing as Penelope, or was it something else?  

In this series, Everlee has created an ensemble of characters that were a delight to re-encounter in the 2^ndbook. Charlie and Miles from the first book appear several times, as well as Miss Jo and Miss Annabelle. But my money is on Warren the bartender for book 3!

Grade: B