Review: Very Little to Recommend
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 21, 2014
What the Duke Wants starts off slowly with the usual cast of characters found in a Regency era romances: the brave and beautiful girl/woman and the impossibly handsome/dashing/bad-boy Duke or other titled gentleman.  It follows the typical plot formula of the girl who bravely tries to muddle through some potentially reputation destroying challenge which is complicated by mostly superficial misunderstandings, all of which are ultimately resolved by marrying the aforementioned rake.  Blah, blah, blah...What the Duke Wants is very light on period details to the point that I had to go back to the Amazon description to verify that it is supposed to be set in the Regency Era.  The language used by the characters is "Regency light" with occasional lapses into fairly modern language. Character development is very superficial with heavy reliance on the same themes repeated throughout.  We learn nothing more than the fact that she is very concerned that, in her position as a governess coming in contact with and having feelings for the "forbidden fruit" of the dashing Charles is completely wrong even though he is all she thinks about.  As for him, he can't stop himself from kissing her even though his reputation as a scandalous rake keeps him from being worthy of her.  The only thing that elevates this above one star is the appearance of Lady Stanhope as a character who engages in some fun and well written banter with the male protagonist, Charles.  She doesn't make her appearance until about a third of the way into the story, but without her this would have been just one more in a long line of boring, stereotypical Regency romance novels.Bottom line: You've likely read this one before.