Laura Guhrke 'The Wicked Ways of a Duke'
Hmm, I had the same response to the second book of Jacquie D'Alessandro series; this is pretty good, but not as good as the first girl bachelor book 'And Then He Kissed Her.' Let's see, Prudence is an orphan who lived with her unlikable Aunt and Uncle until she was seventeen. She left them to live in London and now supports herself quite well as a seamstress.
Now that Rhys (aka Adonis) has inherited the Dukedom, he must marry an heiress or face complete ruin. When Prudence inherits millions from her erstwhile father who abandoned her mother, they have a match made in heaven.
What I liked so much about the first girl bachelor book was how strong the heroine was, I know some people disliked the hero, but I thought his conversion was believable, and a direct result of his interaction with the heroine. In this book, Prudence definitely dances along the edge of too stupid to live. She doesn't ever fall off the edge, thank god, but she's darn close. Rhys is an almost unredeemable user but the author plants enough goodness in him that his conversion is also quite believable. So in the end, these guys are an enjoyable couple, just not a awesome couple.
As an aside, I liked that Prudence was plump but felt it was mentioned a bit too often. I'm still traumatized by the sentence I read in some romance novel from the 1980's "....her concave stomach...' Probably I read that in more than one romance novel over the years....So GO PRUDENCE!
Historical Romance 2008: 4 out of 5 tight stays.
5 comments:
That cover design is certainly more risque than the previous Guhrke book. I don't know how I feel about seeing a big man-nipple on the cover of a book. Looks like it's cold out....
I believe the common term is man-titty. You should see the back cover, be afraid, be very afraid.
Romance novels as a whole have come a long way from the "concave belly" thing (yes, I remember that phrase; equally traumatizing). It's nice to have some regular girls out there getting romanced too, not just the skinny ones.
Although I must admit, I still expect the hero to be physically perfect. Maybe not as amazingly endowed as seems to be the trend, but I might have a problem if he was pudgy. :)
Ya gotta love the double standard, but it IS basically a woman's fantasy after all.
True enough. It's also a double-standard world, so there. People generally don't critique men for packing on a few over the winter...but I do run on. Anyway, I just finished writing a novel and gave my hero a bit of a beer belly. Just a bit. I found it oddly endearing, at least.
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