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A review by mweis
The Portrait of a Duchess by Scarlett Peckham
3.0
*I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*
I am loving this trend of historical romances that don't whitewash history, though in this case I was a little uncomfortable with a white woman writing a Black main character. Personally, I think the book would have been more successful if she hadn't because the way she wrote Cornelia felt a little flat to me. I do think the effort was made, but compared to for example Alyssa Cole's An Extraordinary Union or Adriana Herrera's A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, Cornelia's experiences as a biracial woman didn't feel as nuanced.
I also struggled a bit with the central conflict in this story. Cornelia and Rafe are older characters and still communicating worse than teenagers, which in the "Before" chapters makes sense because Cornelia is 18 (also this age difference is a little off-putting?) but when she's 38?
That being said, I think this was an overall fun read. While I didn't necessarily love the conflict between the characters, it was easy to get swept into the plot. I also was not expecting this book to feature a bisexual hero or a threesome, but I was very here for all of that.
I haven't read the first book in this series, but I would be interested in going back to read that and the forthcoming sequel.
I am loving this trend of historical romances that don't whitewash history, though in this case I was a little uncomfortable with a white woman writing a Black main character. Personally, I think the book would have been more successful if she hadn't because the way she wrote Cornelia felt a little flat to me. I do think the effort was made, but compared to for example Alyssa Cole's An Extraordinary Union or Adriana Herrera's A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, Cornelia's experiences as a biracial woman didn't feel as nuanced.
I also struggled a bit with the central conflict in this story. Cornelia and Rafe are older characters and still communicating worse than teenagers, which in the "Before" chapters makes sense because Cornelia is 18 (also this age difference is a little off-putting?) but when she's 38?
That being said, I think this was an overall fun read. While I didn't necessarily love the conflict between the characters, it was easy to get swept into the plot. I also was not expecting this book to feature a bisexual hero or a threesome, but I was very here for all of that.
I haven't read the first book in this series, but I would be interested in going back to read that and the forthcoming sequel.