Ratings8
Average rating3.5
Not all dukes are created equal. Most are upstanding members of Society. And then there’s the trio known as The Dis-Graces. Hugh Philemon Ancaster, seventh Duke of Ripley, will never win prizes for virtue. But even he draws the line at running off with his best friend’s bride. All he’s trying to do is recapture the slightly inebriated Lady Olympia Hightower and return her to her intended bridegroom. For reasons that elude her, bookish, bespectacled Olympia is supposed to marry a gorgeous rake of a duke. The ton is flabbergasted. Her family’s ecstatic. And Olympia? She’s climbing out of a window, bent on a getaway. But tall, dark, and exasperating Ripley is hot on her trail, determined to bring her back to his friend. For once, the world-famous hellion is trying to do the honorable thing. So why does Olympia have to make it so deliciously difficult for him . . . ?
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This somehow felt like the middle book of a series but apparently it's the first? (All the talk about how Blackwood and Alice were married and there was some weird tension felt like it was supposed to be a callback to an earlier book but maybe it'll be a subsequent one, but anyway.) Maybe this is 3.5, rounding up - there were a lot more references to the male lead's dick than I usually care for. (I realize these are romance novels at all that, but meh.) I liked the road trip in the beginning leading into the friendship/banter and the wonderful trope of the leads locked together in an out-of-the-way guesthouse in a thunderstorm, which I unironically love for some reason. I hadn't read any Loretta Chase before this, but my library has quite a few of hers on ebook, so I'll have to check them out.
Fun, though definitely not Chase's best. If Ripley thought one more variation of, “I'm a mAN; it's a miracle I can keep myself from ripping her clothes off this very second,” I was going to reach through the pages and strangle him.
I am very intrigued by Alice and Blackwood, though.