TITLE: Mad Duke March
AUTHOR: Sadie Bosque
SERIES: The Rake Review
SERIES ORDER: 3 of 12
PUBLISHED DATE: 3/1/2024
GENRE: Regency Romance
RATING: ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
BLURB:
Whisky. Plenty of it. Keep it coming…
That’s all that Alexander Blackwood, the notorious “Mad Duke” of London, desires. Determined to waste his life away, he manages to offend even his closest friends. But when he carelessly ruins Miss Emily Fitzwilliam while in a drunken stupor, he finds himself chained to the only woman in England who refuses to fear or fawn over him.
It was the best day of her life… Until it wasn’t.
Emily Fitzwilliam loses everything when she is scandalously ruined by the most notorious rake London has ever known. And worst of all, the bounder refuses to marry her! But the wicked Duke who destroyed her life is about to discover that payback is hell.
A hasty marriage neither party wanted is about to become a passionate battle of wills as two warring hearts are destined to become one flesh… whether they like it or not.
Mad Duke March is book 3 in the multi-author series The Rake Review. If you enjoy watching some of London's most notorious scoundrels getting raked over the coals, then be sure to collect all twelve bachelors in The Rake Review!
MY REVIEW:
DISCLAIMER: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Are you mad for the duke?
This was hands down my favorite read so far in The Rake Review Series! I inhaled it in a day and a half!
Sadie Bosque weaves an fascinating tale about The Mad Duke, a duke that is hellbent on destroying his father’s legacy, just like his father destroyed his childhood, and the Emily Fitzwilliam, the lady he “accosts” while he’s in one of his drunken stupors.
I absolutely adored The Mad Duke and Emily. This had a very enemies-to-lovers feel in the beginning as they both despised each other and I was here for it!! The banter in itself was like foreplay! I loved watching their feelings evolve. One of the things I really loved about this story is that there is one scene that I thought for sure the Duke would go back to his old ways, but he did not! Yes, he was angry with Emily but he didn’t cut her down or cast her out, he listened to her!
Alec (The Made Duke)’s backstory is pretty tragic and I love how Sadie used little flashbacks from his childhood to explain why he’s the way that he is. He has so much pain from that time in his life and I loved how Emily helped him see how his bitterness wasn’t doing any good.
Emily's story was heartbreaking too. It’s a shame how limiting women’s options were back in the day. All it takes is one mishap and your entire world can go belly-up. And through no fault of her own, she ends up needing to rely on the good graces of the Mad Duke to help save not only her reputation within the ton, but also the reputation of her family! I really admired Emily’s strength in this book! She goes toe-to-toe with the Mad Duke a lot in this book and it was certainly entertaining! I love how the Mad Duke begins to see and appreciate everything that Emily is!
I also really loved the author’s notes, in the back of the book, about the real life Mad Marquess of Waterford and how she loosely based her Mad Duke on the real one. I also thought the other author’s note was fascinating and am going to do some research on that! I love when authors include little tidbits at the end about how they came up with certain plot points, or why they included this event, or practice, etc.
I’m really looking forward to the next book in The Rake Review. The teaser at the end was very intriguing! This was my first Sadie Bosque book, but it won’t be my last! I am definitely planning to read her backlist when I can.
If there is one book you read from The Rake Review, please let it be this one!
Thank you Sadie Bosque for the advance copy!