Honestly, the Dark Olympus books just keep getting more and more fun. Really enjoyed this one!

First of all, I really appreciate the author’s note at the beginning that talks about Allison and her relationship to her body as a fat woman, etc. I think it’s really important in a book with a marginalized main character that will involve trauma involving that marginalization to add info to prepare the reader and I appreciate that the author did so here.

That said, this book was so much fun! I always love a second chance romance, but I do get nervous when the original romance had been toxic, which seemed to be the case with our two main characters here. I think it’s really easy for characters to fall back into that toxicity and it not to be addressed as a problem by the author. SO MANY ROMANCES come across as super toxic from an outside perspective, and I was really worried that was going to happen here. However, Lowe did a great job of towing the line in a way that acknowledged when something was bad so that it could get fixed. There was also a lot of time spent away from the romance between Allison and Colin, so the reader got to experience Allison’s life outside of just that one person. From her complicated relationship with her best friend and her parents to her trying to establish a place in her grad program and cohort, Allison felt like a well-rounded character. The competition aspect between her and Colin had a good balance of being fun to read while also making me nervous as to how it’d impact their relationship with one another. I laughed, I cried, and at the end I was so glad that I had the chance to read it!

Always Be My Duchess is about a duke who runs into a beautiful dancer and decides to hire her to pretend to be his fiancée so that he can try and secure a business deal. Of course, he never planned to fall head over heals for the woman, Geneviéve Valery, and he has to deal with the fact that he can't control his feelings around her the way that he's been used to doing for his entire adult life.

Lysander (our duke) is the victim of emotional abuse from his father. The man was set on making sure the young man understood that emotions didn't have a place in a duke's life. He took away any chance of happiness when he was a young boy, and continued to try and ruin any of Lysander's plans up until the day of his death. This sets up a big challenge for Lysander, now the Duke of Montcroix, to ever seek joy. Even when he meets Geneviève, it requires multiple instances of his emotions seeping through before he ever starts to accept his feelings for the woman. Despite the fact that the book follows the fake dating trope, the main obstacle in this book is the trauma that Lysander has to overcome so that he can be honest about his feelings for the woman he falls in love with.

The characterization of both Lysander and Néve is so well-written! I love that Lysander is a neurodivergent hero, and the pasts that bring these two together really make the relationship work in a beautiful, unlikely way. The chemistry between them from the jump is OFF THE CHARTS. Sometimes the idea of the hero of a romance constantly being turned on around a woman feels like a little much, but I think that Howard made it work in a way that was believable (primarily because he didn't, erm, take care of himself in private and just continued to let things build up) so that when they end up together, the reader is almost as excited as the characters who are actually getting some, haha.

I also loved the side characters. From the servants to the antagonists (Charlotte and Treadway are THE WORST!!!) to both Lysander and Nève's friends, nobody felt entirely two-dimensional and I wouldn't be surprised at all if I found out that Howard did a lot of character work with all of these side characters. I also adore the Hell Kitties Club and cannot wait to read future books in this series starring these wonderful ladies!

Look, this is not a good book, but it's FUN AS HELL and I will absolutely be reading the sequel.

Prefacing this with: from the contents of the book, I think the main character is actually larger than the cover suggests. I was super hesitant to read this book because even though it was a Fat Girls In Fiction book club choice, the cover made it seem like that wasn't the case. Also, Crystal seems to utilize "curvy" more than "fat", so if that's something you prefer to avoid, just know that it abounds throughout this book.

ALL THAT SAID, Set on You was SO MUCH FUN. I love a rivals-to-lovers situation, and Scott and Crystal's chemistry was off the charts from the moment they seemed to despise one another. I didn't know what to expect from this book, and overall Amy Lea delivered on a really fun story about supporting one another, accepting help from the people around you, and falling in love when you least expect it. I'm really looking forward to the next book in this series!