Eight years ago, Sterling St. John, Duke of Morton, vanished a few hours after his wedding. Since then, Alaina faced the London gossip and society with her head high. She founded the progressive ladies’ reading Society and lived an independent life. When Sterling returned home, Alaina had no intention of accepting him back into her life. 

But Sterling has secrets of his own and is on a mission he cannot reveal. Protecting his wife means he has to keep her in the dark. However, even as they realize that they may still have something together, the secrets have to be exposed and the truth revealed. 

Will this bring them together or tear them apart? 

The story comes in Alaina and Sterling’s third-person POVs. 

Well, this was an interesting premise and had a solid start. Though the narration was a bit slow, the book began with a bang after the prologue. 

The initial bickering and conflict were interesting and gave us both sides of the story. The MMC made many mistakes, though he seemed to acknowledge them all and was determined to try and save his marriage. 

I could see the FMC’s side, of course. She had it worse in many ways, and it did make sense for her to hold on to her grudge. It was her armor and served her well so far, so why let it down without a fight? 

I appreciate that the spicy scenes started after 60%. That gave them enough time to get used to each other’s presence again. 

However, once the main reconciliation was done, we don’t ‘see’ them growing together. The story simply summarizes this. It rather dilutes the chemistry since the whole thing still feels more like lust than love or companionship. At least a couple of scenes with dinner or ball dances would have helped. Also, it needed less of an inner monologue and more of ‘showing’. 

Then came the unwanted third-act breakup. Honestly, we didn’t need that here. Instead, the whole thing should have been handled with a bit more maturity on both sides. For someone described as mature, the FMC doesn’t display it much when she could have. Yeah, she has a huge reason not to trust the MMC, but this section could have been better. 

There’s an epilogue, which gives us the required HEA. NGL, a couple of side characters were quite interesting. Maybe they are from another series? If so, I might check out their stories. 

To summarize, Courting the Duchess is the first book in the series and works as a standalone. It had its moments despite the flaws. I did partly binge on it, so there is enough entertainment if you can bear with some dramatics. 

I’m curious enough to want to read the next book. 

Thank you, NetGalley and Dragonblade Publishing, for the eARC. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. 

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