When the Duke Loved Me by Lydia LloydRating: ✩✩✩✩✩
I have been so into Lloyd's social media where she does great breakdowns of romance tropes in historical novels, so I had high hopes for a tropey classic historical. Unfortunately, for me, this was less "classically cliche" and more "here are all the tropes, I shall do them all." While the plots hits road trips, and secret engagements, and enemies to lovers, I just didn't feel any chemistry between the characters. It really felt like in the pursuit of hitting all the historical high points, the characters and plot fell a bit by the wayside. The real icing on the cake for me is that 90% of the conflict could have been resolved if even a single person had talked about the events that created the infamous split between the families (this mystery was 100% not a mystery, not even a little bit). Of course I have written zero debut novels, so disregard my opinion as deemed fit, and I would love to see more from Lydia Lloyd since there are a few unpolished gems in here.
Published on 28 August 2023 by Tule Publishing
Book #46 of 2023
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