The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare

 

When I was a teenager, I used to belong to the Harlequin Romance book club. Every month, I would get four historical romance novels in the mail, and I devoured them. My high school years were basically characterized by daydreams about handsome dukes and dashing rakes. Eventually, I became more interested in other genres and started reading different things, but every once in a while I get a strong urge to pick up a romance again. Since that mood was striking me this week, I decided to give The Duchess Deal a try.

The plot of the novel follows a young woman named Emma living in Regency-era England. She is working to support herself as a seamstress after her father disowned her years ago and is barely getting by. She comes across a chance at a more comfortable life when she meets the irascible Lord Ashbury, a wealthy duke who has recently arrived home from the war. He was disfigured in the fighting and is covered in burns on half of his body. This has left him quite bitter and hurt. People react to his new appearance very negatively, which has led him to give up on the idea of ever having a normal life. He still needs to find a wife though, to ensure that he has an heir to pass his property and title onto. When he meets Emma and discovers her reduced circumstances, he immediately proposes a marriage of convenience. Believing that it would be foolish to refuse, Emma agrees.

At first, Lord Ashbury is insistent upon not growing too close to Emma. His plan is to bed her until she conceives an heir, then move her out to a house in the countryside until the child comes of age. However, he didn't anticipate how attracted he would be to his new bride. Similarly, Emma can't deny the connection she feels to her husband. She decides to try and slip past his defenses to form a real relationship, but it won't be easy to earn his trust and convince him that his injuries aren't an impediment to a happy marriage. 

This novel was pure guilty pleasure reading and it was so much fun. Tessa Dare's writing was easy to read and genuinely funny and clever. You know you aren't exactly getting high literature when you pick up a book like this, but it was an excellent offering for this genre, and exactly what I was looking for. I really enjoyed the banter between Emma and Lord Ashbury, and the angsty moments in the story were well done. It was very easy to get sucked into this novel. I was totally engaged the whole time I was reading and I finished it in just a few days.

I think you can't really review a romance novel without commenting on the steamier scenes. Without going into detail, I will say that they were numerous and extremely sexy. Things have certainly come a long way since my old Harlequin romances.

I went into my reading hoping to scratch that itch I felt to read a romance, and this was the perfect pick. This is book one in a four book series, and since they are such easy reads, I'll probably go through a few more of them with the rest of 2020. It will be a nice break before my classics reading starts up again next year. 

Challenge Tally

Total Books Read in 2020: 88