How To Marry A Duke by Vicky Dreilling

Mixed bag romance

3 stars

Tristan, the Duke of Shelbourne is looking for a wife but all he finds are silly, simpering girls. So in order to make the best choice, he hires London’s respectable and proper matchmaker, Tessa Mansfield.

Tessa is determined to find a love match for the duke even if his criteria are a little more practical. So she invites 24 of the ton’s most beautiful women to compete in a scandalous competition for his hand. But then she breaks a matchmaker’s number one rule by falling in love with the groom.

This is Vicky Dreiling’s debut novel and overall it was a fairly enjoyable read. However it really didn’t present anything new or different from other romance books and I’m not sure I’ll actually remember much about it in a couple of weeks.

Tessa was an enjoyable character – independent and strong without being a cliché. Unfortunately all the other female characters were insipid dimwits that I couldn’t take to at all. I also liked Tristan – your typical rakish duke brought down by love but if I’m honest the pair had little chemistry and not enough heat or emotion to give you that ‘butterflies in your stomach’ feeling that you want when reading romance.

The story was a little disjointed and didn’t always flow. Towards the middle I wondered whether anything exciting was actually going to happen and the ending was so drawn out that I could have screamed! I felt that all the characters were ridiculously proper on occasion – probably correct to the time period but a little dull none the less. And the hugely devastating secret of Tessa’s turned out to be fairly tepid compared to other books I’ve read which was a little anticlimactic.

I actually enjoyed reading this book and it was never a chore to pick it up. It wasn’t overly exciting but if you’ve got it on your bookshelf then it’s worth a read. 3 stars.