Review: Love it
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 10, 2014
** spoiler alert ** I was given The Duke's Quandry by the author in an ARC for an honest review. So here goes:This book started off slow, not that it didn't have a lot happening it did, but it took awhile for it to really build to the romantic part and when it did, well it was wonderful. The story features our heroine, Penelope, who is klutzy, wears glasses, a serious scientist/botanist, anti social but who has a good kind heart. She loves to play in the gardens and doesn't even notice the dirt. She is so very different from any other heroine in any other regency, in that she is all those things I mentioned but she is beautiful inside and out.Now about our hero, who we met in the Elusive Wife, book #1 in this series, he is Drake and in book #1 he was an absolutely wonderful guy, not so in this story. In this story his father has died, he has 4 sisters and a mother to take care of. One sister refuses to leave her room because her husbands been lost at sea and so he decides he doesn't want love but he wants the perfectly cold and perfect wife.Why is he not into love? Well his mother was not the perfect wife and he wants a more obedient wife than his mother was to his father. The truth is he is a sole male in a family of strong and independant women and think he just wants one woman, his wife to take control of his sisters and one who listens to him.For most of the book Drake is a jerk. But the author is really good at making heroes terrible and then redeeming them and making you fall in love with them and she does that in this book superbly. So why was Drake terrible? well for one he keeps kissing Penelope, even while he is saying he wants the perfect wife who will never cause him any trouble and he wants a loveless marriage. Even when Penelope gets a marriage proposal from another man he still is thinking of marrying the perfect woman but not wanting he to be with anyone else.Then they end up getting engaged and then married and he makes her give up her science, makes her insecure and is harping on her changing. Everyone keeps telling him to stop but he doesn't listen. However he does love Penelope and the sex is fantastic and on the whole he does make her happy. Then when its time to prove who and what he is.....he surprised me, and he surprises Penelope and you will fall in love with him as he shows the world how much he loves and supports Penelope.What a great story, I truly loved it and when you close the book you will be smiling.