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A review by hellhorse
Dare to Love a Duke by Eva Leigh
4.0
This book has everything I enjoy in a romance - strong characters, tense conflict, and decent sex scenes. The book also made a point to show people of color and queer people in Regency England as part of society, not as exotic stereotypes. I could see myself reading this again, which for me is very rare with romances.
This one falls short of 5 stars, however, because of a few things that bothered me while reading. Almost all Italian sayings in the text were superfluous since she’d say or think the English translation directly after. And while I appreciate the social justice-themed plot, some of the language in the book felt way too modern and slangy for a 19th century setting. At one point, Lucia notes that Tom’s kindness wasn’t performative and I fully rolled my eyes because it sounded like a snarky tweet. At times it felt like the book was intentionally hitting on “woke” concepts really hard as if to say that it’s okay to root for this couple despite the fact that Tom is a wealthy aristocrat from a conservative family. It made his and Lucia’s relationship seem a lot less messy and complicated when they’re casually talking about their class and gender power imbalance. Don’t get me wrong, loved that those ideas were on the table, but I found their introduction into the text to be kind of clunky, as though Tom and Lucia were having a realistically awkward 2019 conversation in 18-something.
As much as the stuff in the previous paragraph bothered me, the book was good enough that I was able to put it aside (mostly) and enjoy this smart, sensitive, and surprisingly hot romance.
This one falls short of 5 stars, however, because of a few things that bothered me while reading. Almost all Italian sayings in the text were superfluous since she’d say or think the English translation directly after. And while I appreciate the social justice-themed plot, some of the language in the book felt way too modern and slangy for a 19th century setting. At one point, Lucia notes that Tom’s kindness wasn’t performative and I fully rolled my eyes because it sounded like a snarky tweet. At times it felt like the book was intentionally hitting on “woke” concepts really hard as if to say that it’s okay to root for this couple despite the fact that Tom is a wealthy aristocrat from a conservative family. It made his and Lucia’s relationship seem a lot less messy and complicated when they’re casually talking about their class and gender power imbalance. Don’t get me wrong, loved that those ideas were on the table, but I found their introduction into the text to be kind of clunky, as though Tom and Lucia were having a realistically awkward 2019 conversation in 18-something.
As much as the stuff in the previous paragraph bothered me, the book was good enough that I was able to put it aside (mostly) and enjoy this smart, sensitive, and surprisingly hot romance.