Book Review: The Rebel (Book #1 in the Harlequin Desire “Dynasties: Mesa Falls” miniseries) by Joanne Rock

Right off the bat, I just want to start off this review by saying that one of the main reasons why I decided to read and review The Rebel by Joanne Rock is because not only is the romance genre one of my favorite genres of books to read, it’s also my favorite genre of books to write reviews for. Surprisingly, I barely read or reviewed any books within the romance genre last year; so one of my reading goals for 2020 is to not only read and review more books within the romance genre in general, it’s also my goal to review Harlequin romance novels for my blog on a hopefully relatively regular basis, and I ultimately decided to kick off pursuing that particular goal of mine by reading and reviewing this book.

(Check out my review for Andrea Laurence's Harlequin Desire novel, The CEO's Unexpected Child, here.)

Reading Harlequin romance novels has honestly been one of my favorite guilty pleasures in life ever since I was in the eighth or ninth grade, and I’m thirty-two years-old now. While The Rebel is one Harlequin romance novel that I bought on a whim when I was at Barnes & Noble one day in November; rather than being a book that pre-ordered on Amazon like I essentially stockpile a bunch of Harlequin’s new releases every month, I’m ultimately so, so, so glad that I decided to buy this book, because reading it really reminded me of why I’ve always loved Harlequin romance novels so much! Honestly, I found The Rebel to be very satisfying and enjoyable for reasons beyond the obvious romance aspect of the book. The plot of The Rebel and Rock’s writing for the book featured several of my favorite storytelling tropes that I absolutely love, aside from loving the romance genre; namely stories involving dysfunctional families, and revenge plots. Considering the fact that The Rebel and Harlequin Desire romance novels in general are fairly short, it’s very possible that Rock could have easily written this book in such a way that the writing came across as if she was trying to do too much in a short amount of time, page wise. Instead, as weird as this might sound to some people, when I first started reading The Rebel, I was repeatedly gushing over all of the things that I was loving about the book in my head in a way that reminded me a lot of Bill Hader playing the character, Stefon, on Saturday Night Live.

Book Haul: February 2018 Harlequin Romance Novel-centric Book Haul

Here are some Harlequin romance novels that I bought on Amazon at the beginning of February, along with my copy of the sixth and final book in Morgan Rhodes' Falling Kingdoms series, Immortal Reign.

My copy of the sixth book in @morganrhodesya’s Falling Kingdoms series, Immortal Reign, along with the new releases of @harlequinbooks romance novels that I ordered for February, came in the mail today! While I’m excited about all of these books, I’m definitely the most excited to read Immortal Reign since I’m a HUGE fan of YA fantasy books. 😀 #bookstagram #bookhaul #bookaholic #bookworm #booklover #bookmail #bookblogger #bookblog #immortalreign #morganrhodes #harlequin #harlequinromancenovels #harlequinromance #billionairesandbabies #andrealaurence #joannerock #karenbooth #fallingkingdomsseries #fallingkingdoms

A post shared by Taylor Madison Street (@tmswriter6) on Feb 6, 2018 at 9:57am PST

If you're interested in learning more about these books, here are links to Amazon's pages for these books:


For the Sake of His Heir (Billionaires & Babies series) by Joanne Rock





Rags to Riches Baby (Millionaires of Manhattan series) by Andrea Laurence





Between Marriage and Merger (The Locke Legacy series) by Karen Booth




Immortal Reign (Book #6 in the Falling Kingdoms series) by Morgan Rhodes 

I’m confused, is this a romance novel, or some kind of Jane the Virgin reboot? (My thoughts on The CEO's Unexpected Child by Andrea Laurence from Harlequin Desire's Billionaires and Babies miniseries; Book #2431)

I’d like to start out this review by saying that something I’ve been interested in doing ever since I decided to start reviewing books for my blog on a regular basis is to review Harlequin romance novels. If you’ve visited my blog before, and you’ve read my other book reviews, then there’s a pretty good chance that you’re aware of the fact that despite me being a guy and subsequently not being the target demographic for the romance genre, I’m a huge fan of the genre. When I was in high school, Harlequin romance novels were definitely a major guilty pleasure for me. Admittedly, Andrea Laurence’s The CEO's Unexpected Child is the first Harlequin romance novel that I’ve read in years. However, I’ve continued to think about them quite a bit over the years since I was in high school, and I’m 29 years old now.

As I’ve thought about Harlequin romance novels over the years, I’ve definitely realized more and more just how silly and ridiculous they can be at times. One of the things that I thought about a lot when I was reading Emma Chase’s Tangled series and her Legal Briefs series, as well as Sylvia Day’s Crossfire series, and Lauren Blakely’s book, Big Rock is how cliché and unoriginal Harlequin romance novels can be. In a lot of ways the plot of Harlequin romance novels are a dime a dozen, so I went into reading The CEO's Unexpected Child with pretty low expectations. Honestly, I has half expecting to feel compelled to write an incredibly snarky review for The CEO's Unexpected Child about how ridiculous and I thought the book was once I was finished reading it.

Originally, I was planning to pretty much judge The CEO's Unexpected Child solely in comparison to all of the other Harlequin romance novels that I’ve read in the past; rather than have the same expectations for this book that I would have for pretty much every other book that I read when it comes to judging how character and plot development is handled in a book, as well as various other aspects of a book. That being said, I ended up being pleasantly surprised by how much I ended up liking this book. While I originally wasn’t going to hold The CEO's Unexpected Child to the same standards and expectations that I’ve had for the other books I’ve read and reviewed, I found myself thinking a lot about my thoughts on Sylvia Day’s Crossfire series, particularly my complaints regarding that series.

If I’m being honest, I ended up liking this book more than I like every book in the Crossfire series, with exception of the first book in the series, Bared to You. Personally, I think that Andrea Laurence did a much better job of not only providing good character development for the two main characters in The CEO's Unexpected Child, Claire Douglas and Luca Moretti, she also did a very good job of convincing me that there’s actually something special between Claire and Luca when it comes to their relationship in just this book alone; compared to how Sylvia Day has handled character and story development for the two main characters in the Crossfire series, Eva Tramell and Gideon Cross, as well as her ability to write their relationship in such a way that I can actually believe that there’s a genuine connection between them, and the reader is able to understand why they should root for their relationship to work out throughout the series. Personally, I think it’s quite an accomplishment that Andrea Laurence was able to do that considering the fact that not only is The CEO's Unexpected Child a standalone novel, it’s also significantly shorter than the books in the Crossfire series. Don’t get me wrong, The CEO's Unexpected Child is by no means perfect, but it’s still a pretty good book that exceeded the expectations that I had before I started reading it.