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A review by books_ergo_sum
A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall
emotional
lighthearted
slow-paced
5.0
What do I even say??
A new all-time favourite, ofc! Why did it take me so long to read this?
The premise of this book has always sounded amazing to me. Regency best friends, they both go off to war, and when she’s presumed dead, Viola took her chance to live as herself. And somehow out of all that we’d get some ‘A Lady for a Duke’ HEA goodness.
✨ Friends to lovers with so much built-in angst? Check.
✨ “I thought you were dead” secret identity drama-lama? Check.
✨ Gender during Regency times? Check.
Even if the author had wielded this premise like a sword (instead of like a pen, which of course is mightier), it would have been a great book. BUT THE WRITING! So soft, so careful, and major Jane Austen vibes. If you love the feeling that this quote from Persuasion by JA invokes:
“There could have never been two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.”
.. then you have to read A Lady For a Duke 🥰
These characters were so consistent, so thoroughgoingly themselves, that I was spellbound by everything they thought, said, and did. Reading this book, I spent just as much time staring into space thinking about a scene or line of dialogue as I did actually reading the words on the page.
What an excellent book!
A new all-time favourite, ofc! Why did it take me so long to read this?
The premise of this book has always sounded amazing to me. Regency best friends, they both go off to war, and when she’s presumed dead, Viola took her chance to live as herself. And somehow out of all that we’d get some ‘A Lady for a Duke’ HEA goodness.
✨ Friends to lovers with so much built-in angst? Check.
✨ “I thought you were dead” secret identity drama-lama? Check.
✨ Gender during Regency times? Check.
Even if the author had wielded this premise like a sword (instead of like a pen, which of course is mightier), it would have been a great book. BUT THE WRITING! So soft, so careful, and major Jane Austen vibes. If you love the feeling that this quote from Persuasion by JA invokes:
“There could have never been two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.”
.. then you have to read A Lady For a Duke 🥰
These characters were so consistent, so thoroughgoingly themselves, that I was spellbound by everything they thought, said, and did. Reading this book, I spent just as much time staring into space thinking about a scene or line of dialogue as I did actually reading the words on the page.
What an excellent book!