Wagering for Miss Blake

Wagering for Miss Blake- Callie Hutton
Entangled: Scandalous/MacMillan
Release Date: June 11, 2018

Rating:
📚📚

Warning: Spoilers Ahead!

Synopsis: Mr. Giles Templeton, third son of the Earl of Wexford, is a rake of the highest order and a confirmed bachelor. Yet, marriage-minded-mamas continue to drag their daughters to his attention. He's everything a young lady of the ton could want—handsome, wealthy, charming, and kind. For Miss Suzanna Blake, though, Giles is missing the one thing her parents require in a potential son-in-law—a title. 

Giles has a golden touch—investments, horses, connections but when he falls…hard for Suzanna, she turns him away, despite the passion sparking between them. At wit’s end, Giles wagers her that not only will she marry him but he’ll make her fall in love with him. If Suzanna wins, she gains a sizable fortune for her favorite charity but she faces a loveless marriage to a titled man. Though her heart yearns for a true love-match with Giles, she has never gone against her parent’s wishes. All bets are off when happiness lies in losing a wager.

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Callie Hutton's Lords and Ladies in Love series (Denying the Duke) continues with Giles Templeton's story, Wagering for Miss Blake.  Giles and Suzanna meet at her cousin's wedding to his friend and Giles is instantly captivated.  He goes from thinking there's no point to marrying to being ready to propose in an hour flat.  Suzanna recognizes an attraction right away, but is far too sensible to assume that will lead to marriage.  Not only do they know nothing about each other, but her mother refuses to allow Suzanna to look at anything less than a titled man.  

Although Giles' insta-love was pretty hard to believe, they do have a nice, instant chemistry that made you think a relation could work.  Suzanna's claims that she will only marry a title ring false and it's impossible to blame Giles for thinking he can change her mind, since Suzanna herself actually doesn't care about titles.  He might be annoyingly arrogant in believing he'll win her hand if he just keeps asking, but since he actually courts her, I was able to deal with his arrogance.  Suzanna, I had a much harder time with.  I spent the first half of the book wondering why it mattered that her mother wanted a suitor with a title since Suzanna herself didn't care- and wondering why she didn't admit to Giles early on that that was the problem. After we finally meet Suzanna's parents, things are a little easier to understand.  Her mother is a complete terror and rules over her father so he only makes decisions based on what will get him the least harangued.  It became more of a surprise that Suzanna wanted to marry for love at all, since the only reason her father allowed her mother to be so controlling was that he loved her- and was willing to sacrifice both his happiness and his daughter's for his beloved wife's.  

The idea of wagering on whether Giles would marrying her- and she'd fall in love with him- seemed to me pretty pointless.  Both are competitive, but the real competition should have been whether they could work together to change Mrs. Blake's mind.  Then right when Suzanna thinks she's figured out how to work around her mother, Giles misinterprets something and, instead of fighting for this incredible love he claims he feels, he turns and runs.  I thought Suzanna let him off the hook far more easily than she should have, but eventually there's a happy ending and a pretty clear set-up for the next book.  A lot of Wagering felt more like it was a bridge book to get you to the next in the series- presumably Hawk's book- without emotionally investing me in the characters enough that I'd go out of my way to look for the next one when it comes out.  

Wagering for Miss Blake is a quick read, with shallow characters and an equally shallow plot line- entertaining enough to pass the time, but not so interesting a book, writing, or characters that I find myself wanting to read more in the series. 

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review