Four Nights With the Duke by Eloisa James

As a young girl, Emilia Gwendolyn Carrington told the annoying future Duke of Pindar that she would marry any man in the world before him - so years later she is horrified to realise that she has nowhere else to turn. Evander Septimus Brody has his own reasons for agreeing to Mia's audacious proposal, but there's one thing he won't give his inconvenient wife: himself. Instead, he offers Mia a devil's bargain - he will spend four nights a year with her. Four nights, and nothing more. And those only when she begs for them. Which Mia will never do. Now Vander faces the most crucial challenge of his life: he must seduce his own wife in order to win her heart - and no matter what it takes, this is the one battle he can't afford to lose.

Vander wasn't redeemable in my book. The only reason he eventually said the right words was because they were spelled out to him. He tried every other avenue first.

Also, I hate when books try to rewrite history. He liked her all those years ago, after all? How dumb is the reader expected to be to buy this? We've been privy to this man's internal dialogue, Eloisa.

That man did not like her then. Him having kept the damn poem was so out of left field. If he'd harbored warm feelings towards her prior to their marriage, he wasn't aware of them either. And that's okay!!!! We don't have to fake it. It's okay to fall in love with someone you originally didn't like.

Mia wasn't very loveable. On the surface, she seemed to have a spine. But looking beneath the surface, she didn't really stick to her guns re: Vander at all. She kept pushing him away with all pretenses under the sun until she finally pretty much told him he needed to say the magic words. At which point, he magically found the love within himself.

Nah. Too much handholding for me. This man was not a real yearner.

But in a broader sense, maybe I've just outgrown M/F romance novels. Lately I gripe at things I loved before. The books seem formulaic. Historical romance? Lemme guess. Emotionally stunted Duke with mommy /daddy issues and a witty heroine who goes against the grain brings him to his knees?

M/F has become the Hallmark movies of romance. Fun to have on in the background but not enough magic in it to make a lasting impression.

The only thing I will give this is that it was genuinely laugh out loud funny at times. Susan Duerden was also good on the narration. But I disliked almost everything else.

It breaks my heart to do this, because Eloisa James is one of my all-time favorite romance authors. But I could not even make it more than 100 pages into this book. I tried a dozen times. No matter what mood I was in, no matter how much I wanted to like it, the hero was truly disgusting. I could not make myself want the heroine to actually wind up with him.