Winnifred D.'s Reviews > Damned If I Duke

Tropes: rake/spinster; house party; marriage of convenience
Steam level: 3ish
Part of a series, but works as a standalone.

3.75 stars rounded up. This is a smoothly written book, with nice doses of humor and steam, and I enjoyed it overall, but didn't feel it quite lived up to expectations. While the MFC, Prue, is laudably strong-willed and unafraid to be herself, the MMC, Jasper, is consistently patriarchal and highhanded, the standard over-imbibing duke who doesn't know how to love, making it hard to believe his sudden character arc toward the end. Even though his gruff behavior is obviously supposed to hide that he cares for Prue, he's too overbearing and dismissive at key moments. While most of the scenes in the first half, set at the house party, work well--particularly a slow-burn billiards competition between the MC's--I didn't like the way Jasper cornered Prue into marrying him and how he tried to control her as soon as they were married.

There's also the "I'm going to abandon my wife the morning after our first night together" scene, which always makes me cringe. Prue deserved more grovel from Jasper than she got, and I didn't really felt the connection between them that they could have had. I wanted to see more support from him and I wanted her to have more of a chance to confront the nasty ex-mistress and the general nastiness of the Ton in the final chapters.

Secondary characters, such as Jasper's grandfather and the MC's from the previous book, do bring a lot to the storyline, mostly in the first half.

Bottom line: while this is fun, I had really hoped that there would be more chemistry between the MC's and less reliance on tropes. If you have a soft spot for old-school, overbearing dukes, you might like this more than I did.

I read an advanced reader copy of this book and this is my voluntary review. Thanks to th publisher, author, and Net Galley.