A Duke in Disguise

Well... This is something that happened.

So, I went into this book blind. Didn't know anything about it beyond the Goodreads synopsis and who the author was. I kept reading it because, until reading the synopsis closer, I wanted to read the third in the series and I do not like skipping books. Even when they only loosely tie together - like this series does.

Anyway, I didn't like Verity or Ash much from the start. Late in the book, there's this quote that sums them up perfectly ‘[...]him cool and detached, her hard and angry.' Not my type of characters in the slightest.

I really, really hated their romance, too. Supposedly, it's friends-to-lovers, but it doesn't feel like that in the slightest. In the story we do not get the ‘oh, I'm in love with my friend' realization - because they have both been in love/lust with their friend since before the story starts. We don't even get pining because everything between these two is ignore, deny and lie.

‘If they acknowledge the potential he felt between them, then they'd want to do something about it.'‘If he let looks like that happen, they'd all find out exactly how fragile their arrangement was.'‘By unspoken consent, they seldom touched. They had never discussed the parameters of their friendship, but they measured out these touches as carefully as any housewife measured out the lumps in the sugar bowl. They were special occasions, feast days, homecomings. Two, three touches a year. Any more frequent and heaven knew what would happen.'

Oh, and speaking of lying.

Ash decides he's going to lie (only by omission, though) to his ‘friend' before they have sex for the first time. A lie that he keeps up while they are lovers, because he's fully aware that if he tells Verity the truth, it would change things.

...

This is unmistakably the point that the book completely lost me and any goodwill I had for it. I'm not getting into it any more than this. I'm not. I still have a headache and I do have some updates I made while reading the book. Suffice to say that if this had been the first Sebastian book I'd ever read, I would have never touched another book of hers.

Finally, what is the marriage obsession? For both of the Regency Imposters so far, that has been THE big hurdle to overcome. Is this typical of F/M historical romances? Because, honestly, it's been so long since I read the few that I did - but I don't remember it being like this.

(Side note: Verity is bi and has only taken women lovers. Ash has epilepsy and is a virgin.)



Preread ‘Review'

snicker/snort ‘Yes, this is an actual M/F romance.' cough Definitely hoping that we will still get some LGBT rep.