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Une Si Vilaine Duchesse (2013)

by Eloisa James(Favorite Author)

3.68 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

229005822X (ISBN13: 9782290058220)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

J'ai Lu

series

Fairy Tales

review 1: The Ton was stunned when James Ryburn, the heir to the Duke of Ashbrook, proposed to Theodora Saxby, his childhood friend. Theo was thought to be homely and no one understood what James saw in her. But only two days into their marriage, Theo finds out that James was forced to marry her to gain her dowry and cover up his father's crimes. Feeling ugly and unloved, Theo kicks him out of the house and out of her life. Years pass and both Theo and James have changed. When James returns to London, he is determined to win back his wife's heart.I had a hard time with this story. The first 100 pages were interesting and moved quickly. The next 100 was the big separation where Theo runs the estate while James becomes a pirate. Most of it dragged. The last portion of the book just di... moredn't work form me at all. James comes back and tries to win over Theo when she wants a divorce. His answer to the whole problem was sex fixes everything. My rating for this book is 2.5 Stars. I'm hoping the short story about James' fellow pirate is better than this one.
review 2: Stop phoning it in Eloisa James! You're better than this book. I fell in love with this author after reading her Desperate Duchesses series, but everything else since then has been downhill. In this play on The Ugly Duckling fairy tale, Theodora aka Daisy is the ward of some Duke or other. She's not very nice looking and dressing like a debutante doesn't help it. The Duke is a wastrel. He's spent the family's fortunes, as well as chipped into Daisy's inheritance as well. (cliche, but fine. Whatever.) The duke has a son who's apparently as handsome as they come. He forces his son James to marry Daisy (Another cliche). James doesn't want to as he and Daisy have been raised as siblings, but goes along with his father's plan to save the family. In the wooing, he finds himself falling for Daisy (cliche). He kisses her in public, which compromises her and they are forced to marry. (cliche). Things go along fine until (gasp) Daisy finds out that the only reason James married her is because his father made him. She also finds out about the embezzlement. In addition the newspapers are calling her the Ugly Duchess, humiliating her in front of her peers. This is all basic stuff, but we're used to this in this genre. In a book like this, the fun part is not how he loses the girl, it's how he gets her back. And now we get to why I gave this two measly stars. Daisy obviously wants nothing else to do with James. The marriage is over. She sends him away. He takes her way too seriously and leaves. He goes to sea and becomes a pirate (seriously??) for 7 years. Seven. Long. Years. Now, during this time, we expect an Eloisa James heroine to not only transform herself from the duckling into the swan, but also to maybe take a few lovers, have hordes of admirers, and be on the verge of marriage to a handsome, charming, and rich peer. Uh-uh. Not this heroine. She basically lives in solitude focusing on a ceramics business. (WTF? Could there have been anything LESS sexy than a ceramics business?) Her sole companions are her mother, and a distant cousin of James. She has not taken the world by storm, she is in fact, rather pathetic. Then James comes back and...we know the rest. It's all very pat, very basic. Very here's-the-next-installment-of-the-series-I'm-contractually-obligated-to-write. There's no reason for us to cheer for the heroine or the hero. He treats his wife like shit and she lets him get away with it, because sex. It's frustrating from an author who is capable of better. I gave it two stars out of pity. less

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