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?
I have not read this book or anything by Sophie Barnes, but it does sound like something I would try to avoid. I like to be engaged in a book within the first 20 pages for it to hold my interest and this doesn't seem like that would fit the bill. I also am not sure about reading other people's reviews about books, though I've done a few book reviews on my blog. What I have started doing in checking out books is to read a few pages of it before I commit to checking it out from the library (which is usually where I get all my books these days). Let us know if you read another one of hers and what your thoughts are about it.
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Aw that's too bad. I read this one a bit back and really enjoyed it. I haven't tried any others of hers though so no other suggestions there. Hope the next one works better for ya.
ReplyDeleteI have only read a few historical romances recently and haven't read this author yet. Courtney Milan is one of my favorites. She seems to be an author I can count on to write interesting stories with smart characters and a lot of wit.
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