Dukes Prefer Blondes

Dukes Prefer Blondes (2016) Loretta Chase

Set in London in 1822.

Lady Clara Fairfax is this season’s popular beauty. But she’s turned down multiple marriage proposals, never quite sure of what she wants.

Raven Radford is the grandson of a duke, but as his father became a barrister and married a divorcee, he is most definitely not acceptable in polite society. So he also became a barrister and tends to defend poor children.

I got about a quarter of the way through, then put the story down and read things that were more interesting. But I decided to go back and finish it, because it wasn’t horrible, and perhaps I’d just hit a slow part.

This book just wasn’t my cup of tea. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t for me.

I did like Lady Clara, who was the historical equivalent of a tomboy.

Not many years older than her charge, Davis had been hired immediately after one of Clara’s many childhood contretemps, this time at Vauxhall. She protected Clara from fractures, concussions, drowning, and— most important to Mama— Clara’s becoming A Complete Hoyden.

I thought that part was well done, since a girl with nothing but older brothers and an adventurous spirit would have been far more likely to get into trouble and be more than the demure miss society expected, but she wasn’t completely out of time, which was nice.

And I liked Raven Radford, who is a prickly jerk, partially because of how he was treated by his extended family as a child.

“They been teaching me. I can read and write now. And I can do ands.”

“Hands?” Radford said.

“Ands,” Fenwick said more loudly, as if to a deaf person or foreigner. “What’s fourteen and six and six again? Twenty-six. Ands!”

And I thought that the bits about Clara wanting to safe just two children was lovely.

But put it all together as a whole and I was just a little bit bored. Not quite enough mystery perhaps.

So it wasn’t a bad book, it just wasn’t for me.
Rating: 6/10

Publisher: Avon

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