Heiress for Hire

Heiress for Hire (A Duke's Heiress Book 1)- Madeline Hunter
Zebra Books
Release Date: April 28, 2020

Rating:
📚📚📚📚

Synopsis:  Minerva Hepplewhite has learned the hard way how to take care of herself. When an intruder breaks into her home, she doesn’t swoon or simper. Instead she wallops the rogue over the head and ties him up—only to realize he is Chase Radnor, a gentleman and grandson of a lord, and a man who makes it his business to investigate suspicious matters. Now he’s insisting that Minerva has inherited a fortune from his uncle, a wealthy duke. Only one thing could surprise her more: her sudden attraction to this exasperating man . . .

  Chase can’t decide whether Minerva is a wronged woman or a femme fatale. Either way, he’s intrigued. Maddeningly, with her unexpected inheritance, she has set up a discreet detective business to rival Chase’s own. She may be the perfect person to help him uncover the truth about his uncle’s demise. But as proximity gives way to mutual seduction, Chase realizes he craves a much deeper alliance . . .

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Heiress for Hire starts a new series where three unconnected women receive generous legacies from a duke they never met.  It's Chase Radnor's job to find them and get the inheritances started. But Chase, as both a family member and an inquiry agent for the army and Home Office, wants to know who these women are, why they received inheritances, and if they could have murdered the old duke.  Because Chase believes his uncle was murdered- and much better the villain be a stranger than a family member!

Minerva Heppelwhite has been struggling to survive for years- first with an abusive husband, and after his death, as a woman with little money.  The inheritance would allow her to live comfortably and to establish her dream: an investigation business.  And it makes sense to her that her first official investigation be into the possible murder of the man who left her the money to make it all possible.  She and Chase clash from the beginning- he doesn't want her investigating and thinks she might have done it, she has no intention of being blamed for something she didn't do.  Eventually they have to work together and grow closer as a result.

Heiress for Hire is a bit odd because the theoretical point of the book- discovering a murderer- becomes secondary to the characters.  The end result is officially calling it an accident, and the reader is left to assume that the mystery will in fact be solved only by the end of the last book in the series.  But the character development and growth of both Chase and Minerva are satisfying to watch, and the extended Radnor family is both amusing and opportunistically awful enough to mean lots of fun encounters.  Not quite Knives Out in their reactions when they end up without the expected inheritances, but there are moments!

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