📖 Book Review ~ The Widow and the Rake by Sarah Mallory

17 September 2026

My thanks to the author for my copy of this book

After an unhappy marriage Fay Bellington is now content to live a quiet life in Harrogate, until she discovers her beloved niece is in dire trouble. Fay goes to London and seeks help from a childhood friend who is now Viscount Winterburne. But Anthony Doune is no longer the lanky boy she remembers – he is now tall, dark and incredibly attractive…

📖 Book Review

When she learns that her teenage niece is in trouble Fay Bellington leaves her quiet life in Harrogate and travels to London to enlist the help of a childhood friend with whom she has had little contact with since her own marriage and subsequent widowhood. Anthony Doune is everything Fay remembers from her time spent with him at her childhood home however, she is little prepared for the effect that meeting him again will have on her now that they are both mature adults. Moody, dark and mysterious Anthony Doune is everything that Fay’s deceased husband wasn’t and whilst the attraction between them is obvious and not unwelcome, the only problem is that neither of them wants to commit to a relationship especially when they are seeking dangerous people who are determined to do Fay’s niece irreparable harm.

The Widow and the Rake is a lovely friends-to-to lovers romance which has all the hallmarks of this author’s usual fine attention to historical detail whilst at the same time keeping the human interest very much at the forefront of the story. The Regency period once again comes alive, from the excitement of gaming salons, to romantic evening soirées, we stroll arm in arm with the great, and the no-so-good, of London society whilst at the same time observing from the sidelines a sensual love story developing between two lovely characters who are infinitely right for each other. The twists and turns along the way are exciting and the will they, won’t they element of Fay and Tony’s relationship kept me turning the pages, so that I read the story in one glorious sitting.

About the Author

Sarah Mallory was born in the West Country and grew up with a love of books and history. She has had over 40 historical novels published and won the Rona Rose Award from the Romantic Novelists Association in 2012 and 2013.

Website

Twitter @SarahMRomance

BlueSky @sarahmallory.bsky.social