I read The Trouble With Being A Duke by Sophie Barnes as part of the historical romance reading challenge I’ve signed up for. My goal is to read, and review, 15 historical romance novels this year. I’m pretty sure I’m already a little bit behind, but that’s just life.
I didn’t love The Trouble With Being A Duke. I gave it two stars on goodreads, which means it was okay. It just didn’t grab my attention. I finished reading about four other books while I was working my way through this one, which is never a good sign for me.
The book starts off really, really slow. The first several chapters are devoted to telling you about a ball, describing the ball, describing what people are wearing at the ball, and establishing the fact (over and over, in case you manage to forget in a few pages) that the Duke is a reformed rake. It takes quite a while for much to happen that really grabs your attention, and even then it's really just mediocre.
It really felt like it could have made a good novella, but the decision was made to turn into a novel, so there are a lot of what seem to be filler pages. And a lot of harping on the fact that the Duke is a reformed rake.
I haven’t read anything else by Sophie Barnes, so I don’t have a good point of reference for whether or not most of her books are more interesting and feel less like reading a lot of filler material. Many of them are reviewed well, so I may give another one a try, though most likely not another one from this series.
Have you read this book, or any other books by Sophie Barnes? Any suggestions for one that doesn’t drag?
