Review: A Reluctant Review
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 1, 2013
THE RELUCTANT DUCHESS is a historical romance by Catherine Winchester. The story is a fairytale about an impoverished woman who readily forgets her title in favor of earning a living and is rewarded with her own prince in the form of a Duke who happens to be the grandson of George the III. The couple blithely move through one disaster after another to reach their HEA. Annabelle's mother has dementia and her half-brother is a psychopath but she has a coffee house to run and a Duke to love. If the reader suspends disbelief, the fairytale is acceptable (although an editor should have caught the typos).The author used a great many historical facts but the story easily ignored societal practices of the era. Coffee houses never saw genteel women and ones who acted as Annabelle did were ostracized; not taken up in ready friendship by a daughter of a king. Putting all that aside, this reader just couldn't feel much for the hero and heroine. I felt the writer's tone was not in sync with the pathos of the story. Annabelle's life and the events of the novel called for soul wrenching angst. Only occasional bursts of it appeared and passed quickly. The prose should have been moving but the shallow spirit was too weak to make this reader have any empathy. I felt the plot called for more grit and less pastry. Maybe it was all the laudanum.