A review by fulltimefiction
Romancing the Duke by Tessa Dare

3.0

I don’t know about you, but historical romance is what I call guilty pleasure for (nothing guilty about it of course but you get the idea). I haven’t read many books that fall under this genre and I discovered how delightful it can be with Tessa Dare’s book [b:The Duchess Deal|33259027|The Duchess Deal (Girl Meets Duke, #1)|Tessa Dare|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490030736l/33259027._SY75_.jpg|53979944]. Hence, I was very excited to read this one and was saving it for a special occasion. Sadly, it paled in comparison. Yet, I wanted a light enjoyable read so it was good enough for that.

The story is about Izzy, the daughter of a famous author, who is left with nothing after her father died. However, she soon discovers that she’s been gifted a castle. The castle of a blind duke who tries to shoo her away by threatening to ravish her. They try to find out how his castle was sold. Plus, we have some cosplayers who are loyal to her father’s books.

Romancing the Duke was still fun and cute but I didn’t love it. It was humorous sometimes, I love Dare’s style, but I wasn’t completely into it. What I liked though is that we had an outsider “obstacle”. I got tired of the love interests fighting towards 85% or so of the book and then we have a resolution at the end. In here, the problem was from the outside and you have no idea how much I appreciated that. It’s more logical than a stupid useless fight. Sure they did fight but it wasn’t the major “something keeping them apart”.

I only recommend it if you’re looking just for that sort of read, a fun historical romance with some entertaining scenes aka the cosplayers, and a mean hot duke. A story that doesn’t take itself too seriously (nor should you). But it’s not the best in this genre.