3.5 stars
From Goodreads, because I’m a month and a half behind on my reviews:
After her livelihood slips through her fingers, Alexandra Mountbatten takes on an impossible post: transforming a pair of wild orphans into proper young ladies. However, the girls don’t need discipline. They need a loving home. Try telling that to their guardian, Chase Reynaud: duke’s heir in the streets and devil in the sheets. The ladies of London have tried—and failed—to make him settle down. Somehow, Alexandra must reach his heart . . . without risking her own.
Like any self-respecting libertine, Chase lives by one rule: no attachments. When a stubborn little governess tries to reform him, he decides to give her an education—in pleasure. That should prove he can’t be tamed. But Alexandra is more than he bargained for: clever, perceptive, passionate. She refuses to see him as a lost cause. Soon the walls around Chase’s heart are crumbling . . . and he’s in danger of falling, hard.
Tessa Dare is one of my go-to authors for fun, escapist romance. Last year, The Duchess Deal, the first book in this series, got me out of a long reading slump and delighted me thoroughly. There are still elements of it that I think about occasionally. As is often the case with her books, there was a whole lot of pretty anachronistic crazy, but it worked for me on every level. Having an ever more active and demanding baby doesn’t so much get in the way of me reading as much as I used to, but it doesn’t leave a lot of time for me to review books as I used to have. Hence, I’m way behind on my reviews again and with this book, less than two months after I finished it, I barely remember a thing about it.
Full review on my blog.
The buzzcut might kill me. If I die soon, that’s why. They’re not even trying for historical accuracy at this point.
“Here lies Ashley, killed by a particularly egregious book cover.” It’s such a lazy cover.
In response to your many dukes question:
She might need to pull out a Royal Duke of Edinburgh.
Oh, I have no doubt that Dare has the imagination to make up any number of titles, but in book 1, she set up four close female friends and it seems statistically improbable that all four end up with dukes (or their direct heirs).