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

Denying the Duke

Denying the Duke- Callie Hutton
Scandalous: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Release Date: July 10, 2017

Rating (out of 5)
📚📚

Synopsis: Four years ago, Alex, a second son, had planned a life together with Lady Patience. However, when Patience was betrothed to his brother, the heir, Alex left his family's estate and joined the military.

Alex returns to assume the title Duke of Bedford when his brother unexpectedly dies. He is unprepared for both his new responsibilities and the reunion with Patience. The horrors of war are a heavy burden, and when he learns that Patience never married his brother, he is stunned.

Patience withstood the bullying of her fiancé and her father for four long years. She refuses to marry Alex just because he's the duke, especially if he no longer loves her. How would that be better than what she has already endured? Promises made in their youth are not enough to overcome the changes life has wrought for them but love can grow and transform, if only Patience could believe that.

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Four years ago Alex was a second son, ignored by his parents and bullied by his older brother.  Meeting the 16 year old Lady Patience, Alex feels seen for the first time.  Patience has seen how miserable her mother is in marriage and hopes for better things- things she thinks she has found in Alex.  But when their fathers announce her betrothal to Alex's elder brother Cyrus, their young plans fall apart.  Alex leaves home, joins the military, and doesn't come back until he is summoned four years later.  Both his father and brother are dead and he is now the Duke of Bedford.  To his surprise, Patience had not yet married Cyrus.  But four years can change people, and neither are who they once were,  Can they find their way back to love, or has their chance passed forever?

Although I'm not generally a fan of second-chance romance, the idea for this book really intrigued me.  What if the second chance was not because the two lovers messed up and drove each other apart, but because their parents did?  How could you overcome the obstacles caused by others to reach a happily-ever-after?  Unfortunately, Denying the Duke didn't deliver good answers for me. 

Most of my problem was with Alex.  The ignored second son who goes off to war and comes back a changed and hardened man.  So far so good, that's all believable and makes for good character building.  He's bitter towards his whole family, partly for how they always treated him and partly for engaging his older brother to the girl he's falling in love with.  I might point out that he could have tried to fight for her, but he was young, so I'm still ok with him.  Then he returns home and he loses me.  He ignores Patience at Cyrus' funeral, thinking she's his brother's widow, then finds out from friends that she hadn't married Cyrus.  Patience's title-hungry father immediately suggests Alex marry Patience.  Alex goes from complete refusal to thinking maybe it would be convenient to marry her so he doesn't have to search the Marriage Mart for a wife.  He's in lust with her but, rather like his behavior at the funeral, he rarely tries to see Patience or who she is now.  Until he completely messes up a 'proposal' and she refuses, then she's a challenge.  Even after they get married and start getting to know each other, he refuses to explain  himself, his actions, or share anything with her- while expecting her to do all of that with him.   

I liked Patience- she had a miserable home life with a bullying and abusive father (then add on a fiancé who was even worse) and spent most of her life not being consulted about any aspect of her life.  By the time she and Alex meet again she has managed to hold on to a kind and generous spirit, but she's also sick of being bullied by men and wants to have her own say in her life. She doesn't actually figure out how to do that until she's married to Alex. Then she decides she deserves courting and tells Alex she won't go to bed with him until he's wooed her and they are friends again.  Alex does agree she deserves some romance, but works to seduce her at the same time.

Just when you think there's a chance they can get things right, a traitor from the past starts stalking them.  Alex knows the villain will probably try to get to him through his wife, so he and his friends make sure she's never out of sight. The one thing they don't do to protect her is to tell Patience what's happening.  I was willing to look past Alex's past jerky behavior once he and Patience started finding their footing and it was clear he was somewhat willing to try and be a good husband, but this blew it for me. Patience figures out pretty fast that she's being watched every second and when Alex won't explain why what is she to think but that he doesn't trust her? 

There were plenty of things where a deeper exploration could have improved the plot and the characters. I would have loved to see more between Alex and his family.  Was Alex, the intelligent, serious, polite and kind son, very unlike his father and that was why they couldn't get along? The glimpses you get of Cyrus, even at a young age, certainly suggest he wasn't going to be a good duke- so why didn't their parents  train Alex to handle estate affairs for his brother?  Were his parents literally so stupid and shallow that they only preferred the older brother because he was the heir by accident of birth and ignored Alex until he was the Duke? Did his mother care for nothing but the title, not the man who held it, as Alex asks at one point? When we discover the blackmail Patience's father held over the old duke, there's plenty of room to find out more about the duke, as well as Patience's mother. But we only get glimpses.  We get glimpses of some of Alex's time at war that could help explain why he does some things, and it could have been expanded to better cover why he doesn't tell Patience about the danger she's in.  But we are left unsatisfied with what we get, and my impression of Alex suffers as a result. 

I think one of my big problems with Denying the Duke (besides a completely unlikable make lead) was that it tried to be too many things at once, and so things that could have been explored and made for deeper characters were dropped. Is this a second-chance romance, a marriage of convenience trope, the redemption of a man haunted by war, a woman finding herself, a spy thriller?  Most books can pull off two or even three of these in the same storyline.  A rare few can possibly put them all together into a compelling, deep, and enjoyable storyline, full of engaging characters you like or come to like and cheer towards a happy ending.  Denying the Duke manages to be none of the above, and a rather disappointing read.

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