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A review by madeline
Duke Most Wicked by Lenora Bell
1.0
I will admit I never really love a Lenora Bell - I think her books are often unforgivably cheesy, and the writing often feels like a self-congratulatory "aren't I so funny?" when I... don't think so. But this book is honestly horrific. Maybe if I hadn't read it in this exact moment it'd be 2 stars and not 1 but here we are.
Brandan Delamar, Duke of Westbury, has been doing his damndest to keep his dead father rolling in his grave with such frequency that the corpse has likely created a small weather pattern in the graveyard in which he is buried due to air displacement. He's successfully gambled away his entire fortune, including his five younger sisters' dowries, which he feels no shame about until he overhears a potential suitor for one of them saying she'd only be suitable as a mistress, since she has no money to offer. The idea of his sisters forced to "descend" into sex work is what sparks his realization that he must marry for money, which he promptly sets about doing.
In a day where childbearing bodies are increasingly and increasingly regulated, it's unconscionable to me that you would write a romance novel whose plot hinges on the hero destroying his sisters' chances at happy, loving, secure, and safe marriages by gambling away their dowries to spite a dead man. It's ridiculous. And then, the heroine, who is a lowly music tutor and not the heiress he seeks, is forced to publish her own work under her father's name because he cannot be arsed to finish the symphony he's been working on for years, content to let her do the commissions he sees as inferior for rent and bread money while the patriarchy prevents her from working under her own name.
Of course, an 11th hour secretrevised will reveal means that the hero's fortunes are restored with no work on his part, and he's free to marry our heroine. After so dutifully destroying his sisters' futures, he gets to swoop in and reveal that everything is fine with literally no work on his part. Incredible.
This book may be the death knell in my relationship with Lenora Bell. I cannot believe her agent and editor took a look at her proposed plot, took a look at the state of the world, and said "this'll go over well!".
Thank you Avon and NetGalley for the ARC.
Brandan Delamar, Duke of Westbury, has been doing his damndest to keep his dead father rolling in his grave with such frequency that the corpse has likely created a small weather pattern in the graveyard in which he is buried due to air displacement. He's successfully gambled away his entire fortune, including his five younger sisters' dowries, which he feels no shame about until he overhears a potential suitor for one of them saying she'd only be suitable as a mistress, since she has no money to offer. The idea of his sisters forced to "descend" into sex work is what sparks his realization that he must marry for money, which he promptly sets about doing.
In a day where childbearing bodies are increasingly and increasingly regulated, it's unconscionable to me that you would write a romance novel whose plot hinges on the hero destroying his sisters' chances at happy, loving, secure, and safe marriages by gambling away their dowries to spite a dead man. It's ridiculous. And then, the heroine, who is a lowly music tutor and not the heiress he seeks, is forced to publish her own work under her father's name because he cannot be arsed to finish the symphony he's been working on for years, content to let her do the commissions he sees as inferior for rent and bread money while the patriarchy prevents her from working under her own name.
Of course, an 11th hour secret
This book may be the death knell in my relationship with Lenora Bell. I cannot believe her agent and editor took a look at her proposed plot, took a look at the state of the world, and said "this'll go over well!".
Thank you Avon and NetGalley for the ARC.