My Darling Duke (Sinful Wallflowers)

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Impoverished viscount’s daughter Katherine “Kitty” Danvers doesn’t have enough dowry money to snag decent marriage proposals for herself or her sisters. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.

He’s determined to meet Miss Danvers and set the matter right, but first he approaches her a different way.

When she’s not writing, Stacy spends a copious amount of time binge-watching series like The Walking Dead, Altered Carbon, Rise of the Phoenixes, Ten Miles of Peach Blossom, and playing video games with her love. Alexander agrees to keep Kitty’s secret but only if she spends a fortnight at his castle without a chaperone, a proposition so outrageously improper that she almost declines it. Maryann, for instance, has been betrothed to a man twice her age and plans to escape marriage by getting herself ruined by a notorious rake (in a book to come, natch).

This turns out well in the end, and the romance and banter does pick up, but the lack of logic grated on me like nothing else. Then one day Alexander finds out about the rumors and want to know everything about Katherine so he requests that all the newspapers are brought to him daily, and every time he reads the papers he becomes more and more intrigued by Katherine and decides he needs to meet her. Which is why Kitty talks to the international press, so it totally won’t get back to Thornton (Facepalm. Once upon a time, there lived a girl named Fallon who was taken far away from home shortly after she was born.

The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read. It took a little bit too long to really get moving for me at the start but other than that no real complaints. Hmmm, the H is finding that spending time with the h is having an impact on him, and it is not what he expected.

While reading My Darling Duke, I realized that as much as I rail against the popularity of magic peen as a plot device, magic cooch is not an improvement.This story had me smiling all over the place for all these endearing moments that won me so quickly. Alexander is passionate about political reform; Kitty has no interest in politics, and deflects any attempts to engage her in political conversation. So you do not regret riding astride… twice, daring to attend Lady Appleby’s ball without a corset, and rescuing a cat in a tree? This could've been a great opportunity to show that a HEA doesn't have to require genetic children or penetrative intercourse, because that's absolutely achievable, but instead it left me feeling very displaced. This was a really enjoyable regency romance, and the antics of the ton and the flirty banter between characters was exactly what I needed at this moment in time.

I didn’t find this particularly wicked, but I have high hopes for later books in the series, since one of the other wallflowers is considering a career as a courtesan, and another befriended a princess. First, we have Kitty, who is a wallflower desperate for marriage so that she can support her family and her sister can have a good match. When Stacy is not writing, she spends a copious amount of time drooling over Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead, watching Japanese anime, and playing video games with her love, Dusean Nelson. They fall into absolute instalust with one another, even though she, y’know WALKED AROUND ON HIS PROPERTY WITHOUT HIS PERMISSION. With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.There are elements of Beauty and the Beast in this story from the Duke hidden away in his estate, to the plucky young bride knocking at his door. It it actually sounds like artificial intelligence robot voice, overly breathy and little intonation in keeping with the sentence.