While the Duke Was Sleeping - Sophie Jordan (Rogue Files #1)

This was my third Sophie Jordan book and my second of her historical romances--it does interest me that she doesn't use another pseudonym for writing adult romance than the name she uses for her young adult books, but that's besides the point--and I think it might be my last.  See, recently, the Washington Post published an article called "How Trump killed off my romantic lead" by romance author Sarah McLean, which focused on toxic masculinity in romance novels.  McLean herself cops to being guilty of having this problem in past novels and the article addresses how she strove to steer away from it in the book she was writing at the time of the election.  I haven't read the book in question, but the article was heavy in my mind as I read While the Duke Was Sleeping, because if there's an absolutely toxic hero I've encountered recently, it's Struan Mackenzie.

The plot here follows heroine Poppy Fairchurch, a shopgirl with an infatuation for the Duke of Autenberry who routinely buys flowers from her for his various lovers.  When a fight in the street snowballs into Poppy pushing him out of the way of an oncoming carriage and the duke ending up in a coma, Poppy accidentally makes herself out to be his fiancee--and finds herself welcomed into his family with open arms.  Or at least his family that doesn't include his bastard half-brother Struan, the guy Autenberry was fighting with to begin with, and who came to London to get revenge on Autenberry for the sins of his father.  Ah, the drama.  And how does Struan decide to get revenge?  Why, by taking Poppy, Autenberry's fiancee or possible mistress, of course.

I liked Poppy as a character, I really did, other than her absolute inability to say, "Oh, hey, this is a misunderstanding" and peace out.  Clearly her perpetuating the misunderstanding had higher stakes than her saying "no" to Strickland, the duke's best friend, when he tells her to go along with it in the first place.  But besides that, I did like her.  She's struggling to raise her fifteen-year-old sister, who is prettier and flightier than is probably good for her.  She dreams of true love, even though I'm not convinced she really thought that she was ever going to marry the duke, not even at the height of her infatuation.  But Struan was another matter.  He and Poppy had chemistry, undeniably--but Poppy didn't want him.  She told him no, repeatedly, because even though they had chemistry, she thought she deserved better, or at least different.  And yet Struan repeatedly sexually assaults Poppy, ignores that she says no, and is absolutely horrible to her in the process.  This isn't sight unseen in romance novels, of course--but most recent ones have been better about this, and Struan belongs firmly in the era of bodice rippers rather than in our modern one.  Our modern age of historical romance, that is.

There were some promising side characters here and the sequel to this, The Scandal of It All, seems to have a promising main couple--but after finding the other romance I've read by Jordan weird and this one just outright uncomfortable due to the absolute toxicity of the hero, I'm just not convinced I can go for it.

2 stars out of 5.