Rowena's review of What a Duke Wants by Lavinia Kent

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Rowena's review of What a Duke Wants by Lavinia Kent.

Hero: Mark Smythe
Heroine: Isabella Masters

What woman would refuse a Duke’s kiss?

Running from a dark secret past, Isabella Masters craves peace and stability, a life far from the prying eyes of society.

She does not dream of landing a lord.

But in the arms of a stranger with magnificent eyes, she loses herself in one breath-stealing kiss— only to discover she has been misled by a reluctant Duke.

Angered but enthralled, she dares not submit . . . though her passionate heart begs her to. He cannot wed her . . . but he must not lose her.

Only one possibility remains— one too scandalous to consider . . . yet too tempting to resist.

This book solves the mystery of what happened to Isabella Masters. If you've read the other books in this series that feature Isabella's siblings than you might have been looking forward to this book. I didn't read either of the other books and so I didn't even know that all of the mystery behind Isabella's past from this book was talked about in previous books. Well, I should say that going into this book I didn't know but as I read through this book, I started picking up on the details that were screaming at me, "You're reading this series out of order again". Really, all I could do was sigh because that seems to be my thing these days.

Oh well, that didn't stop me from enjoying this book. From the beginning of the book where we meet Isabella griping about the uppity duke who can't sleep so she has to bring her young charge to the stables to quiet him down in the cold night had me laughing and when she starts griping to the actual duke unknowingly, I knew that I was going to enjoy this book.

Isabella was one of those heroines that I spent a great deal of the book trying to figure out. I knew that I liked her but trying to piece her secret together made for an entertaining way to spend reading this book. The way that her thought processes moved at a lightning speed made me smile while reading this book, she thinks fast and she talks fast and I liked her.

Mark had my heart from the moment he took Baby Joseph into his arms and held him while Isabella got some rest. From that moment on, I just knew that I was going to love him and I did. He was just so yummy. I loved the easy way he was with Isabella, I loved seeing his inner struggle with his attraction to her at first and then watching him grow to care and then love Isabella was just too sweet for words.

This book has definitely shown me that I'm missing out on not reading more Lavinia Kent. Outside of the Real Duchesses of London books, I haven't read very many of her books. Just haven't been in the mood for them, I guess but I hope to fix that soon. I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading many more books by this author. My only gripe with this story was that if Isabella's story started in the other books, her reunion with her family was kind of short. I wanted more page time with her family but outside of that, this was a great historical story and I'm glad that I read it.

Grade: 4 out of 5.

This book is available from Avon. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

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