Hundreds of Years to Reform a Rake by Laurie Brown

Laurie Brown has written exactly the kind of romance novel I enjoy most in Hundreds of Years to Reform a Rake. It has humor, mystery, ghosts, history and romance all packaged up nicely into an enjoyable paranormal love story. What can I say? I'm a sucker for paranormal romance, and judging from the fact that paranormal romance is one of the bestselling romance subgenres, I'm not the only one.

Hundreds of Years to Reform a Rake tells the story of Josie Drummond, who is a modern career woman. In fact, she is a professional paranormal investigator, and she has been hired by the ghost of Deverell Thornton, the ninth Earl of Waite, to go back in time to when the earl was still living during the Regency period. She is to prove that Madame X, the medium Deverell's mother hired to contact her dead husband, is a dangerous charlatan who wants to swindle his mother out of the family fortune. Sounds intriguing already, doesn't it? Wait until you hear the rest of it.

Josie meets the living Earl of Waite, who of course has no idea who she really is, much less that it was his own ghost who brought her from the future, and predictably, they make each other's hormones rage. So amidst all the trials that Josie has to face, trying to unmask Madame X while at the same time pretending to fit in as a proper, respectable lady in the complicated scene of the Regency period, she and Deverell fall in love. Unfortunately, time is running out for the lovers, because the longer Josie stays in the past, the more she forgets about her future, and in the end she has to choose between her modern comfortable life as a professional, and life in the Regency period with Deverell. We all know how that's going to end, but the journey is so much fun.

As with most romance novels, and especially romances with paranormal elements, many things don't make perfect sense, I mean, Deverell's ghost has abilities that are way too out there for us to even try to believe. But then again, sense is never the point with romance novels. It's all about the romance; boy meets girl, girl meets boy, they fall in love and live happily ever after. The fun is in the telling of it, and Laurie Brown has done such a great job with Josie and Deverell's love story. Hundreds of Years to Reform a Rake is pure fun, great for a late weekend night read, or a rainy Sunday afternoon, or anytime you just feel like having a dose of romance. If you enjoy paranormal romance as much as I do, you'll enjoy Hundreds of Years to Reform a Rake.