Sarah's Reviews > Project Duchess

'A series of stepfathers and a difficult childhood have left Fletcher “Grey” Pryde, 5th Duke of Greycourt, with a guarded heart, enviable wealth, and the undeserved reputation of a rogue. Grey’s focus on expanding his dukedom allows him little time to find a wife. But when his mother is widowed yet again and he meets the charmingly unconventional woman managing his stepfather’s funeral, he’s shocked to discover how much they have in common. Still, Grey isn’t interested in love, no matter how pretty, or delightfully outspoken, the lady . . .
 
Beatrice Wolfe gave up on romance long ago, and the arrogant Duke of Greycourt with his rakish reputation isn’t exactly changing her mind. Then Grey agrees to assist his grief-stricken mother with her latest “project”: schooling spirited, unfashionable Beatrice for her debut. Now that Beatrice is seeing through Grey’s charms to his wounded heart, she’s having trouble keeping him at arm’s length. But once Grey starts digging into her family’s secrets, she must decide whether her loyalties lie with her family . . . or with the man whose lessons capture her heart . . . '
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Project Duchess is the first book in Sabrina Jefferies' Duke Dynasty series and is a historical romance with a touch of murder mystery.

I have just finished reading the fourth book in the series and the family connections in the series are complex enough that each book has a family tree at the beginning. Plus I had somehow only ever read this and the fourth book, despite having always intended to go back and read the series from the beginning. Either way though, I was left feeling that maybe there were some family details that I was forgetting and so here I am starting the series and reading the books I missed! I think I'll reread the second book as well though because it's been a year and I want to make sure I have all the details for this mystery.

I'm going to be entirely honest, I wasn't crazy about this book. Beatrice jumps to conclusions about Grey's character and wavers between sticking to those ideas and thinking that she may have misjudged him while fighting an attraction to him. And Grey suspects Beatrice and her brother of conspiring to commit/cover up a murder while also fighting an attraction to her. It just left me not really able to care much about their becoming more of a team when there was still this lurking sense of distrust. Then when they worked through that enough to be more trusting of one another, it felt a bit sappy to me because I just wasn't able to embrace it after their earlier behavior.

But that being said, it wasn't bad. But I am glad that I read other books in this series first because if this was my first exposure to the series, I'm not certain I would have continued on with the series. I remember really enjoying the second book when I read it a year ago, so perhaps this book just fell into the pitfall of a shaky first book to introduce a new series.