Union of the Rakes Books in Order

Union of the Rakes is Eva Leigh's Regency love letter to 1980s teen movies and romantic comedies. The setup starts with a group of very different boys stuck together at Eton during an all-day punishment in the library. Years later, those boys are grown men, still tied by friendship, loyalty, and the private knowledge that none of them quite fit the role society handed them.

Yes, the Breakfast Club bones are right there.

The first book, My Fake Rake, takes the makeover and fake-courtship plot and flips it. Lady Grace Wyatt is a scientist more comfortable with reptiles, amphibians, and scholarly work than the marriage market. Sebastian Holloway is an anthropologist, shy and bookish, who agrees to become her pretend rake so she can draw another man's attention. The plan is tidy in theory. Feelings make it untidy very fast.

Would I Lie to the Duke moves the series into money, class, and business. Jessica McGale needs investment to save her family's soap company, but the doors of elite society are closed to a woman of her background. Posing as a lady brings her close to Noel, Duke of Rotherby, whose public charm hides a more complicated, vulnerable man. The romance depends on attraction, but the central tension is trust.

In Waiting for a Scot Like You, the mood turns into a road-trip romance. Major Duncan McCameron is a rule-bound veteran trying to find a place for himself after war. Beatrice, the Dowager Countess of Farris, is a widow finally ready to live for herself. Their journey north includes forced proximity, mishaps, danger, and a lot of clashing ideas about duty and pleasure.

The series works because the 80s references are not just decoration. Leigh borrows the emotional shapes of those movies: the makeover, the lie that gets out of hand, the wild day that changes everything, the friend group that sees behind the mask. Then she drops those shapes into Regency society, where rank, money, gender, and reputation make every choice more loaded.

You can read each book for its couple, but the friendship circle gives the trilogy extra warmth. These men tease each other, worry about each other, and occasionally need to be shoved toward honesty. The result is playful historical romance with modern rom-com rhythm, high heat, and heroines who are never asked to shrink themselves to fit the fantasy.