One Night for Seduction

This was so much fun! Although fair warning... I stayed up waaayyy too late reading this book hahaha! The heroine is smart as a whip and independent, despite the period. The hero is hero worthy and great fun. I could have happily read a book 3 times as long about thus couple. Just marvellous!

One Night for Seduction is the first book in what promises to be a very interesting series by the extremely talented Erica Ridley and Darcy Burke. The Wicked Duke is a successful tavern owned by Caleb Sutton, the Duke of Colehaven and Valentine Fairfax, Duke of Eastleigh, the original Wicked Dukes, a name the friends earned while at Oxford. In this series we meet Cole, Eastleigh, and the other handsome, charming, sigh-worthy patrons of London’s most notorious tavern. In the first story, the Duke of Colehaven, who has not lost a wager in ten years, bets that he can find a suitable husband for the “unmarriageable” ward of his friend Thaddeus Middleton. Once he meets and spends a little time with her, he will have her married off in not time (the bet is by the end of the Season). Well, it might not be as easy as he thinks. One, she does not wish to be married, and two, he’s not sure he wants her to marry anyone but him (that would cause him to lose the wager). To win the wager, he must see her married to someone else. What is a Wicked Duke to do? Which eventuality keeps his lucky streak alive, winning the wager or winning Diana? Caleb Sutton never expected to be the duke of anything. He and his sister were the distant poor relations until a series of tragedies made him the Fifth Duke of Colehaven. He got a late start, but intelligent and tenacious, worked hard to prove he was capable and worthy of his title. He also made sure his sister was ready for their new lives. He shared his education with her by sending her lessons, books, and other materials. Diana came to live with Thaddeus when her parents died. He has taken good care of her and they love each other as a brother and a sister. Cole and Diana are perfect together. They are both reformers although they have different methods and platforms. Both are very intelligent, headstrong, and care about others. Felicity and Thaddeus are wonderful secondary characters. They understand and support Cole and Diana, and wish to see them happy. This lovely story is somewhat predictable, but has a few surprises. The exceptionally well-done characters win your heart and make the story. I happily recommend One Night for Seduction and look forward to the rest of the series.

Three and a half stars Diana Middleton is a singular young lady. Obsessively interested in order and justice she masquerades as a barrister's clerk testing weights and measures in local shops. She has campaigned (anonymously) for reform of the anarchic weights and measures system in the UK which has 27 different definitions of a bushel.She knows her eccentricities could cause her cousin, and guardian, Thaddeus Middleton to suffer the scorn, ridicule and perhaps ostracism from the ton, should they be known. In order to avoid having her activities curtailed or prohibited she is determined not to marry and has deliberately made herself into a wallflower. Thaddeus is one of three founders of the tavern and brewery known as the Wicked Duke, one night he laments to his two best friends, the Duke of Eastleigh and the Duke of Colehaven that his ward is unmarriageable and dares the Duke of Colehaven to find her a husband by the end of the season. Colehaven finds Diana to be a world of contradictions, dressed in such a way that she blends into the wallpaper at society balls, she nevertheless has a keen mind and proves more than capable of engaging him in wide-ranging discussions of politics and sexism and weights and measures (of course). Pity Diana's outspokenness and appearance preclude her from being the Duchess of Colehaven ... I'm always a sucker for a brilliant heroine, constrained by society who teaches the hero a lesson, especially when he thinks he's rescuing her and this is no exception. However, I felt the novel was too short and didn't really have time to develop the romance between them. I received a free copy of this book from the author, via NetGalley, in return for an honest review.