A review by lauriereadsrom1
At the Duke's Wedding by Miranda Neville, Caroline Linden, Katharine Ashe, Maya Rodale

4.0

I really enjoyed all four of the stories, though my least favorite was the last one by Katharine Ashe ("How Angela Got Her Rogue Back"). Normally I am a huge fan of both Ashe's writing and time travel stories, but this one wasn't a keeper for me. I think the biggest problem was that it didn't seem to fit with the other stories in this anthology. As a matter of fact, when I first started reading it, I was very confused because it started with the heroine in the future, and that was jarring because I wasn't expecting such an abrupt transition from the end of the previous story, which obviously took place in the past at the Duke of Wessex's estate. This kind of juxtaposition may work in traditional romance anthologies, but it didn't work so well here because all of the novellas were interrelated. Maybe if the story had begun with the hero in the past, or if there had been some sort of prologue, it wouldn't have bothered me so much.

I was also bothered by the fact that the heroine comes across one way in the beginning of the story (conservative, kind of timid, definitely a rule-follower), but when she goes back in time she suddenly goes in the opposite direction and decides to become a rule breaker. Part of this switch may just be that her modern customs stood out in contrast to the regimented rules of Regency society, but it seemed more like a fundamental change in personality. It was also kind of unrealistic that she wasn't afraid of having been transported back in time, or what might happen if she couldn't get home. The whole thing just seemed too easy.