The Surprise Of Her LifeSophisticated. Scandalous. In fact, Miss Sarah Hamilton, a proper Philadelphian, finds London society altogether shocking. How can it be that she has awakened from her innocent slumber to find herself in bed next to a handsome–and exceedingly naked–man? The laughing onlookers standing in the doorway are no help whatsoever and surely this amorous lunatic cannot be a duke, … cannot be a duke, as he claims. She is compromised–though she most certainly will not marry him!
The Sweetest Moment Of His
James, the Duke of Alford, is enchanted by his unexpected bedmate–and not at all afraid of her pink-cheeked fury. True, the circumstances and place of their meeting are most unusual, but the spirited American who’s pummeling him with a pillow is an incomparable beauty. If Sarah will only listen to his perfectly reasonable explanation, James is sure that he can capture her heart. . .forever.
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I enjoyed it so much that I had to purchase and read the series! So much fun!
Raised in Philadelphia, Sarah Hamilton arrives in England after her father’s death to find her uncle and only remaining relative. She is wholly unprepared for society, especially when she wakes to find a very handsome, naked man next to her. To make matters worse: said man is a duke, they’ve been seen by his aunt and her cousin, an earl, and now will be forced to marry. Sarah is sure the man is jesting because there’s no way a proper duke could behave in such a fashion and she has no intention of marrying him, compromised or not.
James, the Duke of Alford, is immediately taken with Sarah despite the unusual circumstances of their meeting. He needs a wife and she’s the perfect candidate, if he can just win her heart and keep his grasping, jealous cousin from murdering them both.
I had certain expectations and hopes for this book, perhaps because of the light-hearted title, and was expecting something fluffy and sweet, however, this was rather the opposite of that expectation. The meeting between Sarah and James starts us off on a light note, but things grow decidedly darker from there. James’ cousin Richard is truly evil and mentally unstable, obsessed with taking everything from James because he feels he should’ve gotten it instead, though his true motives with regards to an improper inheritance in the time of their fathers made little sense. As a villain, Charles was too obvious, got away with too much, and had motives that seemed a bit weak.
It must be said that I also listened to this book on audio, and I was not a big fan of the narrator as I couldn’t always understand her male voices. Besides that, there was just a lot going on here with James trying to woo Sarah and the cousin trying to kill them both. I found Sarah to be incredibly annoying. Given that she literally arrived from America with nothing, her constant insistence on not receiving help and her protestations about even simple things such as clothing, got old real fast and just made her seem ungrateful. I really couldn’t root for after that. I hated what happened to her, but I still didn’t like her as a heroine just because of her general attitude and her treatment of James. She made a lot of assumptions about him, mostly based on the word of the man who was very clearly the villain here, a man she knew was bad news, yet she took his word that James was a rake and never really bothered to actually talk to James about her reason for being hesitant to marry him. Instead, she avoided James and acted incredibly childish and immature around him, causing a gradual increase in my dislike of her. I say this so often lately, but I really just want to read some healthy communication sometimes and I think we had enough plot devices in play that we didn’t need to add the miscommunication trope. James was a genuinely good man and very open and honest, willing to discuss anything with her, so I thought he deserved more.
Spoilers from here on.
Finally, I want to briefly address perhaps the biggest surprise of this book: the rape. And not just one, but multiple, including a very near miss for the heroine. Thankfully none of this was by the hero, but it was still very unexpected and didn’t fit with what I thought I was getting into with this book. Thankfully, nothing was irredeemable, but I definitely was unprepared because of the juxtaposition of these dark scenes in what was otherwise a very fluffy book. I was expecting to be delighted by a sweet but sexy virgin hero and heroine scene and that was unfortunately very late in coming and rather underwhelming when we did get it.
Overall, this story wasn’t bad, in fact the writing itself was quite strong, but there was a lot going on and it wasn’t what I was expecting. I did like the hero, but that wasn’t enough to compensate for the plot having so much going on, the abundance of rape that I didn’t expect, and the annoyance that was the heroine.
Blog link: https://mustreadalltheromance.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-naked-duke-by-sally-mackenzie-audio.html
enjoyed the complete series