How is this Romantic? My Fake Rake

Foiled again, in my search for a romance author other than Tessa Dare. I anticipated loving My Fake Rake, based on the premise of a secret admirer/bookish scientist who falls for a woman who's trying to grab the attention of someone else.

The progression of this strange situation, where Lady Grace enlists Sebastian to pose as a rake to impress another guy was a cute premise on the back of the cover, but soured quickly, as its execution here showcased just how selfish, self-centered, and utterly unsympathetic Grace is as a character. She wants to gain the attention of someone who isn't interested in her for herself by playing ridiculous, childish mind games. When she starts to have feelings for Sebastian, the long-time friend, (who she had feelings for when they first met, by the way), she can't exactly define her attraction as such, even though she has no problem defining it when it refers to another male - so not clueless, and not in denial, either. I don't know what kind of ridiculous mental hoops Grace has to go through to hold up this premise for the length of the book.

Sebastian is just as bad. He's so eager to please Grace, who he constantly expresses attraction for but at the same time isn't attracted to  (as in, he thinks to himself "she's beautiful - wait, what? where did that come from?) that he doesn't see Grace's flaws for what they are, doesn't realize that she's doing the same thing to him that she regrets has happened to her, and doesn't realize that in order to get her attention, he needs to change himself dramatically. The same way Grace is trying to change herself to gain the attraction of another.

This is not what I'd call progressive, female-forward, or any kind of positive. Also, it made no sense. It could have possibly made sense, but not the way that it was written here, that people can recognize their attraction to other people but not each other, even when the symptoms of attraction are described in identical ways.

I wasn't rooting for anyone, which is the kiss of death for a romance series.

K. Rating: 1/5