Daily Archives: July 16, 2014

“Who ever thought a duke would be so daring?”

Summary

She can’t resist a dare.
Lillian Phillips could not imagine how her quiet, simple life had come to this. Blackmailed by the Made Duke of Thornwood into accepting one wild dare after another…all because of a pocket watch. Desperate to recover her beloved father’s pawned timepiece, Lily did something reckless and dangerous and delicious – something that led to a night she’d never forget.

He has a reputation for scandal.
When Devon Grey, Duke of Thornwood, runs into the mesmerizing, intoxicating, thieving woman who literally stole from his bedchamber – with his new pocket watch – Devon plots his revenge. If the daring wench likes to play games, he’s happy to oblige. After all, what’s the use of being the Mad Duke if you can’t have some fun? But the last laugh just might be on him…

-From the back cover

Review

I’m just going to say it outright.

I thought this book was kinda mushy.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love mushy books and such, they are a simple read and fill your head with fluff and make you all warm and fuzzy, but for some reason I didn’t love this book as much as I thought I was going to. I guess I’m not into more….”medieval” romance literature as much as I thought, but I will try more incase maybe it was just this book.

So I’ll present what I liked and what I didn’t like in this book as there were some good things as well.

First off, what I didn’t like. Let’s rip that band-aid off. I didn’t feel like there was a lot of description. There wasn’t a ton of character development and I really dislike how it objectifies women. I’m all for woman empowerment, and I know that a woman wrote this, but it always gets on my nerves when women are treated like cattle, especially in this. The main character talked tough like she would fight back, but she didn’t do anything. She needed the Duke to come in and save her and while the ‘damsel-in-distress’ is good to read and all and many people like it, for this book…I don’t know, I didn’t work for me.

I also felt that the ending was kinda rushed. It was just suddenly all this stuff was happening, all this information was thrown at you, and BAM, the book ended. I was left sitting there like, “WTF…what just happened?”

In addition to this, this is a romance book. Most romance books either are just completely flirting and teasing or there is outright sex. This book I felt was in between. The one or two sex scenes in this book were…kind of lacking in my opinion. The description was fluffy (not saying it should be explicit, but it was too child-like) and it just got on my nerves. I’m not saying that you should use crude language or foul descriptions, but don’t make it all fluffy..it just ruins reading it. Either go for it, or don’t at all. People who usually read these types of books know all about this stuff, so just go for it in my opinion.

Now to the things that I did like.

The story overall was creative on how it progressed and the slow romance between the Duke and Lily, and it had many good qualities of him pursuing her, realizing his feelings for her, and going after her. Then there was the brother Solomon…I just wanted to smack him so much and I love when there is one of those characters. It pushes you to read on to find out if something happens to him in the end.

Overall, I would recommend this book, even though there were downsides. But these downsides pertained to me personally and my overall reading experience. I am sure that many others would like it as it has a classic love story and a male fighting for a womans love. So many would love this book and I say that you give it a shot if you’re interested in this type of stuff.

Let me know what you think and happy reading!