First off, truly loathed the male audiobook narrator, and I was very sad the files I received to listen to I could not speed up. Nasally and snooty sounding.

Secondly, I get on the exterior this is a glossily packaged historical that seems fun, light, and frothy. The bickering and banter between the two love interests was catchy and spurred the story on, and Diana taking advantage of her widowed status to find a paramour on the surface seemed fun, but underneath was a thread of mean-spirited actions.

Both main characters, as the blurb says, are infamous for being flirts and for fighting with each other. Fine, do that. And sure, have Jeremy, Marquess of Willingham request his frenemy Lady Diana to help rate his performance in bed after he was told he wasn't good. But for a book with this premise, it was really slow-burn.

What lost me was the mean actions of Lady Diana towards a secondary character, Lady Helen, who she decides is insufferable and worth throwing at Jeremy and convincing that Jeremy wants to marry her, to win a wager Diana has with Jeremy about being wed by the end of the year. Yes, Lady Helen seems annoying, but no more so than Lady Diana and her gossiping friends. And when the reader discovers Lady Helen is sapphic, and Lady Diana outs her to her gossiping friends despite knowing how afraid Lady Helen is about being discovered, that's so awful.

Overall I found this contrived and tired, and it was a slog to listen to at normal speed. I would have DNF'ed but alas, it was assigned to me for LJ.