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Vilma's Reviews > Discouraging the Duke
Discouraging the Duke (Dukes Done Wrong, #1)
by
by
Thank you to Dragonblade Publishing for providing this ARC via NetGalley in exchange of an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
"Discouraging the Duke" is the first book in a standalone series consisting of five books that will follow five boys who all gets to know each other when they are all being sent to school for aristocrats who are (sometimes wrongly) accused of crimes.
Miles Notley is the first out of "the five Terrors" and I liked seeing how different he is as Duke compared to how his father and brother were. He was nice and welcoming to his people, not just being a decent human being but inviting them to dinner and events of his life to share with all of them. The first chapters focus on him when he was ten and we get to see firsthand how he watches his younger brother die and then gets the blame for it. I think it would have been better with that informative beginning as a prologue instead, since it was quite long and kind of derailed the romance part of the book much longer into the story. Although, it definitely added to a clearer picture of how cruel and unpleasant his father and brother were and made Miles stand out in a much better light as the story proceeded.
The romance between Miles and Emery is fast as lightning. He literally takes one look at her and decides he wants to marry her. I know that historical romance is not the genre if you want to have relationships who grow under a longer period, but this felt way too fast even for a historical romance so it kind of brought down the book a notch. I mean, insta-lust is fine but instalove is 9 times out of 10 a no-no for me.
To sum it all up, it was an okay read and I do want to read the next book of the series (I am always a sucker for books that follow a group of people and I want to give it one more chance), but it was not anything out of the ordinary unfortunately.
Just need to clear one thing up: for me, a 3 stars review of a historical romance is not comparable to a 3 star review of a fantasy book for example. I have different standards and expectations for different genres, and therefore it sometimes get tricky to rate a book accordingly to how I feel when I cannot help but compare it to earlier reads (even though they are not the same type of books). Soo take my ratings with a pinch of salt and remember that different genres means different ratings systems (I really wish Goodreads would add half stars to their rating system).
"Discouraging the Duke" is the first book in a standalone series consisting of five books that will follow five boys who all gets to know each other when they are all being sent to school for aristocrats who are (sometimes wrongly) accused of crimes.
Miles Notley is the first out of "the five Terrors" and I liked seeing how different he is as Duke compared to how his father and brother were. He was nice and welcoming to his people, not just being a decent human being but inviting them to dinner and events of his life to share with all of them. The first chapters focus on him when he was ten and we get to see firsthand how he watches his younger brother die and then gets the blame for it. I think it would have been better with that informative beginning as a prologue instead, since it was quite long and kind of derailed the romance part of the book much longer into the story. Although, it definitely added to a clearer picture of how cruel and unpleasant his father and brother were and made Miles stand out in a much better light as the story proceeded.
The romance between Miles and Emery is fast as lightning. He literally takes one look at her and decides he wants to marry her. I know that historical romance is not the genre if you want to have relationships who grow under a longer period, but this felt way too fast even for a historical romance so it kind of brought down the book a notch. I mean, insta-lust is fine but instalove is 9 times out of 10 a no-no for me.
To sum it all up, it was an okay read and I do want to read the next book of the series (I am always a sucker for books that follow a group of people and I want to give it one more chance), but it was not anything out of the ordinary unfortunately.
Just need to clear one thing up: for me, a 3 stars review of a historical romance is not comparable to a 3 star review of a fantasy book for example. I have different standards and expectations for different genres, and therefore it sometimes get tricky to rate a book accordingly to how I feel when I cannot help but compare it to earlier reads (even though they are not the same type of books). Soo take my ratings with a pinch of salt and remember that different genres means different ratings systems (I really wish Goodreads would add half stars to their rating system).
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Reading Progress
July 8, 2021
–
Started Reading
July 8, 2021
– Shelved
July 9, 2021
–
Finished Reading
