Who Wants to Marry a Duke

By Sabrina Jeffries, pub date Aug 25, 2020

4 Stars. Best enjoyed by one’s self–just trust me on this…

Marlow “Thorn” Drake, Duke of Thornstock, had met Miss Olivia Norley far before his brother Grey hired her on as a chemist to test his late father’s remains. Her face is burned into his memory from a scandously shared kiss many years before, when he first came back from England. That kiss changed his life in more ways than one, and not in a good way. With the sour memories turning themselves over in his head, he is convinced that this beautiful bluestocking is up to something besides stoking the fire in him…

Miss Olivia Norley, a bookish science-minded woman, also remembers that kiss with Thorn, and the denied marriage proposal thereafter. She never could figure out why he acted so very coldly toward her the next day or why he came to offer in the first place. Although that evening played over and over in her head for years after it happened, she can’t let that get in the way of the one chance she has to make herself a name in the science community amongst her Uncle’s peers–regardless of the very real chemical reaction reigniting between Thorn, now a rake of the first order, and herself.

Will Thorn and Olivia give in to the the draw they feel toward one another, or will their past and their secrets continue to keep them at arm’s length?

This is a delightful bodice-ripper romance rife with secrets, murder, misunderstandings, and plenty of compromising content! I really love a good Edwardian romance and the one was the perfect thing to get me out of a reading slump. Olivia is a smart and logical person who wants nothing more but to make a name for herself in the science community and is fiercely driven to do so. At first, she approaches Thorn’s advances as experiments as she has no misgivings about his lusty intentions. Despite Thorn’s better judgement and suspicions of this woman who once spurned his marriage proposal, he has an undeniable attraction to her. This book contains a good dose of mystery, a healthy heaping of folly, and enough heat to light a bunsen burner!

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the advanced galley in exchange for a fair and honest review. ❤