The Duchess Takes a Husband Review

By Harper St. George

The Gilded Age Heiresses Book 4

Star rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Spice rating: 🌶️🌶️

Blurb

 A scandalous arrangement between a London rogue and an American duchess leads to lavish stakes.

Despite her illustrious title, Camille, Duchess of Hereford, remains what she has always been—a pariah. Though her title means she’s technically accepted by London Society, the rebellious widow with her burgeoning interest in the suffrage movement and her American ways isn’t exactly high on every hostess’s guest list. But Camille starts to wonder if being an outcast is not without its perks when the tantalizing answer to her secret fear appears in the shape of Jacob Thorne, the illegitimate son of an earl and co-owner of London’s infamous Montague Club.

Jacob is used to making deals with his club members—he’s just not accustomed to them being beautiful women. Nor have the terms ever been so sweetly seductive as Camille’s shocking proposition. To finally buy his own club and gain the crucial backing of investors, Camille offers Jacob the respectability of a fake engagement with a duchess. In return, the tempting widow has one condition: she wants Jacob to show her if it’s possible for her to experience pleasure in bed.

The lure of such a bargain proves too delicious to resist, drawing the enterprising rogue and the wallflower duchess into a scandalous game and an even more dangerous gamble of the heart.

Genre: Historical Romance

Read if you Like:

🪞Healing from trauma

🪞Widowed heroine

🪞Friends with benefits

🪞Fake Engagement

🪞Neither are looking to marry

My Thoughts:

In a way, Camille's story was woven throughout the whole Gilded Age Heiresses series. We got to see her marriage and see her widowed. I've been really excited about her story. It wasn't quite what I expected but I still enjoyed it.

Camille's story really examines what the "cash for class" marriages meant for women when they went wrong. Harper St. George does a good job describing a situation that wasn't hyperbolic but still is terrible. Camille wasn't locked in a room or sent to an asylum she simply gets treated like property and forced to be intimate with someone against her will. That alone is incredibly damaging. I liked seeing Camille come to terms with that and figure out the future she wanted.

The romance in this one wasn't my favorite. I liked Camille and Jacob, but the switch between I never want another relationship was a little too fast for me. I did like that Jacob took the time to help Camille through her fears about intimacy though.

🌶️🌶️ - A large part of this book is Camille getting over her fears of being physically intimate. There are several open-door scenes but I wouldn't call most of them steamy in the traditional sense. However, physical intimacy is a big theme of the book.