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

2.0

An ok read read, but not without serious annoyances. Moreover, it has a trope that I Do Not Care For, pairing a jaded widower who is hung up on his dead wife for most of the book with a young ingenue that's known the hero since she was a child and has loved him forever (I just find it weird when a guy falls for a girl he saw as a child right up to the point he starts wanting her).

Spoiler

The hero's constant, adamant refusal that he couldn't POSSIBLY love the heroine as she deserved to be loved grew ridiculous, intolerably stupid. I didn't much care for him and his philandering drama-queen, navel-gazing ways.

Not a knock against anyone who likes this trope, but I do not, and had the summary been clearer about what the setup of the romance really was, I wouldn't have read the book. The characters were boring and mostly unsympathetic until the very end, the added melodrama of the ending felt pasted-on, the "bad guy," a third character, was a disappointing plot device, complete cardboard.
If you stumble upon this book, do read it

Spoiler

especially for the unusual topic of breast cancer in historical England--although it is extremely undeveloped

, but certainly, no need to seek it out.