The Duke's Wager

This book has been in my TBR pile for a while. I dug it out after getting a recommendation from the romance forum. I am so glad I did. I Loved this book. It is so different from the standard fair. The duke really was bad, but this was a wonderful book, none the less. A warning for those who like liberal doses of sex in your reading: there is none here. Just plain good writer superb character development, plotting and good old fashioned romance. Great find.

I loved this book - great story and amazing dialogue. I could not put it down until I had finished it. "The Dukes Wager" ranks right up there with Georgette Heyer's "These Old Shades" and "The Devil's Cub"!! This was the first Edith Layton book I had read and I am now in the process of trying to find all of her earlier works to read. A great read and definitely a "keeper"!!

You can get the plot pretty much anywhere, and at first glance, the Duke's Wager, seemingly, is very formulaic. Young innocent bookish virgin heroine + titled promiscuous handsome rake. In this case, two of them: the younger and less dissipated Marquis of Bessacarr, and the truly legendary Duke of Torquay. However, while the secondary characters are not very well developed, it is understandable when you see how powerful the characters of Regina and the hero (yes, he is still a hero) are. It leaves little room to flesh out extraneous characters, and maybe that's why the book is so compelling: it propels along by the force of one man alone; I knew who I wanted Regina to be with even before she appeared on the scene. Written in the 80s, it dates itself a little in that the characters have semi-soliliquies a la Woodiwiss, but with infinite times the intelligence and a fraction of the mind-numbing dullness. All the characters say "for" when they mean "because" and there are several typos, but this remains, undisputedly, Layton's best work, if not the top 10 romances I've ever read.

I still have my original 1983 edition of this book, because I couldn't bear to part with it. It has neat characters (who can resist a blonde, gorgeous Duke with ulterior motives) and keeps you guessing. A great read, lets hope it's reprinted soon!