Duke and I

I wanted to like this, but I overall found it pretty slow going - neither of the leads really came alive for me, and I found the other Bridgertons more interesting. I usually love the fake-relationship trope, but again, this didn't take off in the way they normally do. Things seemed to pick up, and then That Sex Scene. I don't care whether it's a man or a woman, refusing to let someone pull out or stop having sex with you (even if you believe they consented at first, which is gonna be ambiguous at best if they were drunk and/or sleeping), in the hopes of conceiving a child with them, is reproductive coercion at best and flat-out sexual assault at worst. And Daphne didn't seem to think she'd done anything wrong, and Simon's inner monologue when he's thinking about it is just about the most victim-blaming stuff I've read in a romance novel. I know it's never as easy as just switching the genders, but seriously, if it were a man insisting on coming inside a woman who doesn't want to conceive, we call that sexual assault, Julian Assange. The book somewhat recovered from that, but not enough for me to recommend this book, which is a bummer, since I've heard so much good about this series. Hopefully the next one is better.