Not That Duke

Not That Duke (Would Be Wallflowers #3)- Eloisa James

HarperCollins/Avon Books

Release Date: July 25, 2023

Rating: 📚📚📚

Synopsis: Bespeckled and freckled, Lady Stella Corsham at least has a dowry that has attracted a crowd of fortune-hunting suitors--which definitely doesn't include the sinfully handsome Silvester Parnell, Duke of Huntington, who laughingly calls her "Specs" as he chases after elegant rivals.

And then--

The worst happens. Marriage.

To the duke. To a man marrying her for all the wrong reasons.

How can Silvester possibly convince Stella that he's fallen in love with the quirky woman he married? Especially after she laughingly announces that she's in love--but not with that duke.

Not with her husband.

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This was a book I definitely had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I loved Stella and felt for her throughout the entire book. Stella is short, plump, red-haired, freckled, wears glasses, doesn't hide that she's smart, and doesn't play the games the superficial women of Society play. She's no one's first choice and her aunt is always harping on about what she needs to do differently if she wants to get a man to propose to her. She has no friends, and is miserable all the time. Kind of like what I imagine I'd be like if I were dropped into a Regency ballroom. But she also doesn't let any of that affect how she treats other people. She's kind instead of cruel or bitter, even though privately Stella watches the beautiful people like Lady Yasmin and her ardent suitor the Duke of Huntington and wishes she was like them. Or that the Duke would look at her the way he looks at Yasmin. 

The Duke, Silvester, was harder to get my mind around and I'm still not actually sure if I liked him. He spends the first half of the book chasing Yasmin and when she marries Silvester's best friend, Silvester decides to marry Stella instead. Why? Maybe he realizes he never really had more than superficial feelings for Yasmin and at least is in serious lust for Stella. He does like the conversations they have when they play chess and that she actually challenges him and sees him as a person and not as a way to be a duchess. Are these reasons to basically blackmail her into marriage? No. Why doesn't he court her the way he did Yasmin? Show Stella that he actually cares for her? No idea. Since we see things mostly from Stella's point of view Silvester seems to go from tolerating her while he pursues Yasmin, to saying cruel things about her to make Yasmin laugh, to apologizing and treating her as if they are siblings, to kissing her, to running off with Yasmin, to coming back and proposing to her. Then he doesn't even have the decency to listen to her when she says no and work on courting her- he goes to her aunt, tells the aunt they've kissed and now must marry, running over Stella's feelings on the subject. Once and a while he seems to panic at the idea that he might be in love with Stella, though we never find out why, and he shoves the idea away and decides it must be lust instead. 

So there were lots of questions here and I felt like Stella kind of deserved more. But I was proud of her- she stands up to Silvester and tells him she deserves to be first for someone. That she won't settle for less than anyone else, no matter what she looks like. I also loved that it wasn't just Silvester and his rather obvious appreciation for Stella's body that made her feel more confident in herself but her friend Merry and Silvester's mother and their positive and obvious love for Stella as she is that helped her begin to feel confident in herself. 

On their own, there were pacing issues and Silvester issues that made this not my favorite of James' books. But in the end, it is Eloisa James' sparkling, witty writing that won the day and charmed me with this book.

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