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A review by jackiehorne
I've Got My Duke to Keep Me Warm by Kelly Bowen
2.0
Gisele, Marchioness of Valence, faked her death four years earlier to get away from her physically abusive husband. She's spent the past four years creating a network to help other abused women escape and hide from their abusive husbands. Now, though, her former husband, the Marquess of Valence, is on the marriage mart again and Gisele resolves to stop him from abusing any other women. She persuades James (Jamie) Montcrief, the bastard son of a Duke, a hero of Waterloo plagued by guilt over , to help her, although she doesn't seem to have any real plan in mind when she takes him on. Of course, they fall instantly in lust with each other. The two travel to London, and about 200 pages in, Gisele gets the idea to appear and disappear to the Marquess, leading him to act crazy in front of his peers and persuade every parent that he is an unsuitable match. The plan works.
The writing here is OK, but this one hit a lot of my "do not believe it" buttons—a severely abused woman can, in the 1810's, create a country-wide network to rescue abused women? Same woman has no difficulty engaging in sexual acts with her partner in "crime"? People conveniently tell their secrets to James, despite just having met him? Also hit my "yuck" button by including short scenes from the evil Marquess's POV. And Gisele and Jamie are Mary Sues to the max, so noble and do-gooding that they are impossible to stomach. Add in lots of Hallmark-level emotion and you get a book that looks good on the surface, but turns out to be just as unappealing as its ridiculous title. Not an auspicious start to 2015 reading...
Spoiler
the death of his brother in battleThe writing here is OK, but this one hit a lot of my "do not believe it" buttons—a severely abused woman can, in the 1810's, create a country-wide network to rescue abused women? Same woman has no difficulty engaging in sexual acts with her partner in "crime"? People conveniently tell their secrets to James, despite just having met him? Also hit my "yuck" button by including short scenes from the evil Marquess's POV. And Gisele and Jamie are Mary Sues to the max, so noble and do-gooding that they are impossible to stomach. Add in lots of Hallmark-level emotion and you get a book that looks good on the surface, but turns out to be just as unappealing as its ridiculous title. Not an auspicious start to 2015 reading...