A review by sarah1984
When the Duke Was Wicked by Lorraine Heath

4.0

This was a buddy read with my buddy, Nenia, and here's her review (or it will be once she's finished reading and writes it).

Read for the URR 2017 New Year's Reading Challenge prompt 'Victorian Romance'

Big spoilers under the tags, don't click unless you already know or don't care.

5/11 - I really appreciated the way Heath wrote Grace's character. The way Grace dealt with

Spoiler

her breast cancer

and Lovingdon's dissolute lifestyle were really interesting. She didn't curse him or cry and wail about why didn't he love her or try overtly to get him to change his mind (even if that's exactly what she wanted), she tried to understand why he was behaving that way, how the deaths of his wife and daughter had changed him and through that understanding she was able to get through to him and he fell in love with her without her having to push him into it. Her final revelation of her

Spoiler

scars

to Lovingdon rang true to me

Spoiler

(I'm not missing a breast, but I have surgery scars of my own)

. My favourite scene was Grace's

Spoiler

revelation of her missing breast

. I was worried he might

Spoiler

draw back in shock at the 'ugliness of her scars'

or ask her too many probing questions, but he was really great and reacted exactly as I would want in the same situation. He was fuelled with worry about her long term health that had him throwing his clothes off (a slightly irrational reaction, but maybe he didn't want Grace to feel more vulnerable because she was the only one topless), but considering what happened to Juliette and Margaret I think we (and Grace) can forgive him for that behaviour. I also thought Lovingdon's way of finally dealing with his first wife and child's death was very mature and sensible - not completely erasing their existence from his house, but also not shoving his past love in Grace's face.

The information about the way

Spoiler

cancer was treated (and the fact that it was called a 'malignancy' and not cancer)

was very interesting, especially Heath's author's note that told us a little extra detail about how doctors were treating it in those early days.