A review by tessisreading2
How the Duke Was Won by Lenora Bell

3.0

A fun, extremely frothy historical romance set in the never-was world of Romance Regency Era. Historical details are great but the overall historical accuracy is not; this is one of those books which creates a regency England as a modern romance reader would like to find it (dukes who work in trade and are highly concerned with the welfare of factory workers, illegitimate daughters who make love matches to highly titled nobility, etc.) rather than as it actually was. There is definitely a market for these kinds of books, but I sometimes find them difficult to swallow. The weight and seriousness of the historical detail sometimes makes it feel almost irreverent to read a book which revises the historical facts so severely. For some reason I'm perfectly happy to read a book where a duke in 1810 marries a harum-scarum vicar's daughter for love, but when he starts to wax prolific on the treatment of factory workers and the plight of poor little match girls, I recoil: dukes didn't care about those things, very few people cared about those things, serious reform movements wouldn't come about for decades (and are never the subject of a romance novel because they are wildly depressing), and I can't believe in a fairyland corner of England where all was wise and wonderful when ugly reality has intruded into the book already. This makes me feel mildly guilty as a person, because of course ugly reality existed, but as a reader, it's very difficult for an author of escapist literature to address ugly reality and come up with a make-believe solution that rings true.

This is why I'm surprised I enjoyed this book so much. Perhaps it's simply that there was so MUCH ridiculousness in the book

Spoiler

- the heroine is skilled in Japanese martial arts, the heroine is the illegitimate daughter of a courtesan, the duke hero is raising his own illegitimate daughter in his household as his daughter, the hero is also concerned with introducing England to the wonders of the cacao bean, the hero is sullying his hands in trade, the heroine wants to start a boarding school for poor young women to save them from prostitution, both hero and heroine are extremely concerned with the plight of factory workers and the evils of slavery, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, not to mention the general implausibility of the scenario where four gently-bred young women are basically carted out to be auditioned as a duchess and possibly be ruined in the process -

that it just was easier to go with it than be annoyed. A light easy read.