Review: Victoria and the Rogue by Meg Cabot

From the back cover of the book:

"Victoria: Growing up in far-off India, wealthy young heiress Lady Victoria Arbuthnot was accustomed to handling her own affairs - not to mention everyone else's. But in her sixteenth year, Vicky is unceremoniously shipped off to London to find a husband. With her usual aplomb, however, Lady Victoria gets herself engaged to the perfect English gentleman, even before setting foot on British soil.

The Rogue: Hugo Rothschild, ninth earl of Malfrey, is everything a girl could want in a future husband: he is handsome and worldly, if not rich. Lady Victoria has everything just as she'd like it. That is, if raffish young ship captain Jacob Carstairs would leave well enough alone. Jacob's meddling is nothing short of exasperating, and Victoria is mystified by his persistence. But when it becomes clear that young Lord Malfrey just might not be all that he's professed to be, Victoria is forced to admit, for the first time in her life, that she is wrong. Not only about her fiance, but about the reason behind the handsome ship captain's interference."

Published by Avon Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, in 2003, this book is written by the well-known Meg Cabot of Princess Diaries fame. I'm a fan of Cabot from her Mediator books. Cabot's heroines are always loveable, and above all, hilarious. Victoria, like Cabot's other female leads, is funny, but is set in a historical setting rather than modern as her other books are.

Victoria and the Rogue is not a book that will provoke deep thought. It is not a books that you will reread again and again to get its meaning. In fact, you probably don't even have to read past the first couple chapters to figure out what's going to happen - but it is a wonderful book. Written for teen readers specifically, Victoria is only sixteen, the book offers a funny, chaste love story with a likeable heroine. While there are kissing scenes, there is no hot and heavy sex scenes, which would make the book unsuitable for younger readers.

This book is one of Avon's True Romance for Teens series. My love of Cabot and a good love story sparked my interest and I decided to look into the rest in the set. Cabot also wrote another called Nicola and the Viscount, but the rest of the series are written by seperate authors.