Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

Kerrigan has some balls to have the dedication page say #metoo and then immediately have a chapter where a 17-year-old girl gets raped by the headmaster of her boarding school. At least it seems like he only got one thrust in enough to break her hymen before she killed him with his razor. Then her 2 friends, Francesca and Cecelia, and the groundskeeper Jean-Yves help her bury the body. That's the premise for the series. Alexandra and her friends all have red hair and they have this secret underground club where they call each other male names (Alexander, Frank, Cecil) and do men things (drink port, smoke cigars, etc) - things girls aren't supposed to do. My only gripe with the prologue was the info dump from Francesca who reveals her secret that she was the daughter of servants in her household but they were all murdered and the house torched, a boy, Declan, helped her escape, and a group of gypsies set her up to impersonate the daughter of earldom(?) to inherit it all by some made-up sounding rule that allowed a woman to inherit. Just poorly written but necessary since its the plot of the book then that 10 years later, Alexandra is invited to the wedding of Francesca to Piers, the Duke of Redmayne, who was fulfilling a contract betrothal set between him and the real Francesca when they were children. Francesca accepted it as a way to infiltrate their household as she suspects it could be his family who murdered hers.

ANYWAY with that huge info dump,

Alexandra never recovered from her rape and avoids all men, binds her boobs, wears concealing clothes, got her doctorate in archeology, and is a 28-year-old spinster. But she's also pretty fascinating because she's been all over Africa, Egypt, the Mediterranean, etc. studying ancient ruins/civilizations. (a bit implausible since she was traveling along this whole time. In reality she was way more likely to be raped in any of those locales lol... let's just move past this plothole). She encounters Piers at the train station when she does some Arabian magic to secure his horse and she mistakes him as the groundskeeper. She finds out the next morning he's the Duke and they all get shot at. One guy had a piece of paper on it that said "Red Hair" in Celtic and Alexander thinks someone is out to kill one of her friends, likely her, because someone has been blackmailing her for the past 10 years and she's been paying them but her family is also recently financially ruined.

She proposes to Piers that he marry her in exchange for the hiers he wants. He agrees since he's attracted to her. And he has another motive we learn quickly. Piers is also very adventurous and he was mauled by a panther and has scars especially on his face, earning him the Terror of Torcliff nickname now. Woman are "frightened" of him. While he was recovering, his fiancée got with his cousin Patrick who was second in line to inherit. Pretty inconvenient that he didn't actually die. He wants to marry and produce heirs as a fuck you to her.

This is finally where the book gets good as there's a lot of heartbreaking scenes where Piers helps Alexandra experience how pleasurable sexual acts can be (she never touched herself even seems like) and she feels protected and safe with him. But when he discovers she doesn't have a hymen he assumes she's been lying and may be with child. When he finally puts together all the clues that she was raped (she sews her drawers closed, she doesn't want to be taken from behind or pinned down, no hair pulling, etc.) he feels horrible for all the assumptions he made about her. Because he plans not to have sex with her until after she's had her period to ensure she's not pregnant with another man's child.

Meanwhile they go to Normandy where they're uncovering his ancestors' remains. On the voyage there's another assassination attempt, and then in the caves of the ruins someone sets off some explosives that cause a cave-in, and Piers is buried before Jean-Yves and Alexandra dig him out.

Ultimately it was Julia, a classmate, who was blackmailing Alexandra. She was the headmaster's lover and she let him do some BDSM stuff to her, she was jealous that he wanted Alexandra (this is a very flimsy reason to blackmail someone for 10 YEARS).
Then Alexandra's scholar buddy Forsythe shows up with a shotgun and says he's been hired by Patrick to kill Piers, it was him sitting the traps. Patrick himself shows up with a pistol and a fight happens where Julia gets blown to bits by Forsythe, and Piers kills both men.

The epilogue is 2 years later. Alexandra and Cecelia are super pregnant and they're all holidaying with this Polynesian tribe known for their pregnancy rituals/success.

Very adventurous plot. I think I liked overall Alexandra's journey from victim to ~normal, but there were just too many info dumps and plotholes for me to love this book.

Content Warnings

chelsreid1's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

tesseliza's review

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

kim03's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No

4.5

Wonderful.
A few remarks / neutral:

The reader is thrown right into the um. Trauma. So once I read the dedication at the beginning, I mentally prepared and got through it. After that, the book kinda veered into healing (concerning the trauma)
The language got some getting used to. I had some problems understanding what happened at the beginning, which I guess could be called a blessing in disguise.

What I liked:

The language (once I got used to it). It was beautiful, poetic at times and fit right in with the story (the content and time)
The characters. They were so well flashed out. They were products of their time yet a reflection of people from the present (humanity and its problems are timeless, after all); their actions and reasons are understandable and reasonable. It made perfect sense why they each thought the way they did, acted the way they did, both with each other and with others. His character was fascinating in particular. He was aggressive yet charming and sweet. Confident yet insecure. As a whole, he was big and dangerous yet safe and secure. She was healing at a realistic pace, her feelings were all valid. To add: their 'modern' values still made sense for me in the historical context and made me feel even more right and secure with the story.
Their love. The two of them were just so cute and lovely together. There was a back and forth of course, because problems / drama, but even that made sense in the context of their past.

Tropes: marriage of convenience
Triggerwarning: rape & sexual assault, murder death of a parent
Mood songs:
Taylor Swift: »This is why we can't have nice things«, »invisible string«, »seven«, »the lakes«, »Afterglow«

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