I'm having rotten luck with historical romances, that even my tried-and-tested authors have failed.The two protagonists in A Duke in Shining Armor are too busy being glib and wittily sarcastic to notice each other and properly fall in love. This book comes across as a road-trip chicklit romance - the kind of behaviour the heroine gets away with is horrifying. Plus , I never really got why the hero fell in love with her , other than the oft-mentioned state of his 'breeding organs' whenever she dr...

So-so first half. Super second half. My initial reaction is that I couldn't love this quite as much as I wanted to. However, it is Loretta Chase, and that's never a bad thing. I'll want to think about this for a while.Also, she has set this up so that the two remaining dukes' stories should be very interesting.

Runaway bride alert!Olivia, a bookish Regency lady who wears spectacles, gets a surprise proposal from the handsome Duke of Ashmont and agrees to marry him. Everyone is thrilled ... except Olivia. She's sure Ashmont doesn't really care about her. The morning of her wedding, her courage bolstered by some alcohol, she climbs out of a window before the ceremony and takes off for ... who knows where? Not Olivia, that's for sure.Ashmont's close friend, the Duke of Ripley, sees her and takes off after...

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.Olympia is dangerously close to being on the shelf but when she serendipitously catches the attention of a duke, she has a chance to help her large family from financial ruin.The Duke of Ripley is doing all he can to help his bestfriend not flub up his wedding but he should have been paying attention to the bride. When he sees her make a run for it, he chases he...

This was 2.5 stars because, well, Loretta Chase. And she can write, no doubt about that.But I was a bit underwhelmed by this story. I have a number of gripes, but probably my biggest was the incredible immaturity and downright shallow idiocy of the three dukes in it, and I am including our purported hero. They have lived (and one of them was still living) a life of empty drunkenness, debauchery and high school pranks. I don't really care if they had a miserable childhood. They were powerful, wea...

..This historical romance features three rowdy Dukes. At age 30, one of these carousers had finally come to the alter. However, the bride-to-be experienced cold feet and narrowly escaped. Twists and turns changed the circumstances completely leaving the groom to be completely perplexed. Book blurb: Hugh Philemon Ancaster, seventh Duke of Ripley, will never win prizes for virtue. But even he draws the line at running off with his best friend's bride. He's only trying to recapture the inebriated L...

Thoroughly enjoyed this one! Runaway bride falls for the groom's best man! Priceless!!

huh this was very boring certainly not what I was expecting from this author and blurb... and what a beautiful cover...2,5⭐

Oh, no. Sad. If there's one HR author I count on to give me a reliably good read, it's Loretta Chase. Well, there's also Meredith Duran (at least I hope she'll write again), Cecilia Grant (where in the world is she anyway?), Jayne Fresina, Sherry Thomas, and possibly Courtney Milan, but we're talking Chase right now, author of LORD OF SCOUNDRELS, THE HELLION, and many more HRs that I find immensely readable.So, anyway, this new book is first in a series about three badly-behaved young and handso...

3.5 stars, rounding to four for the narration by Kate Reading, who never disappoints.This book was weird. There are things I liked, things I disliked and things about it that I cannot make up my mind. What stands out to me is the story telling. It was unique, very in the moment, and it sometimes felt like a stream of consciousness. I thought that was interesting, but it didn’t help me connect to the characters.

loretta, i love you but this is so fcking boring. dnf @ 60%

I've given this an A at AAR.A new book from Loretta Chase is always cause for celebration, and her latest, A Duke in Shining Armor, gets her new  Difficult Dukes  trilogy off to a start worthy of much festivity.  On the face of it, it’s the very simple story of two people falling in love with the ‘wrong’ (right) person and having to decide what they are willing to risk to be together; but this is Loretta Chase and in her hands, ‘simple’ encompasses fully-rounded characters with real emotional

3.5 starsA Duke of Shining Armor is a book that has me in a knot, and I curse GR for not giving us the option of rating with half stars. I am still undecided whilst writing this review. We’ll see.Olympia has to marry the Duke of Ashmont. Her family is not facing imminent financial ruin but it’s just a matter of time. She does have six brothers after all. On the day of her wedding, she finds herself nervous; gloomily expecting a rather unhappy future and with the help of strong spirits, the decis...

2/5; 2 stars; CI liked many aspects of this books but not enough to wipe away the vague sense of disappointment that an experienced author could be satisfied to allow this to go to print in this condition. I just had the feeling that I was looking at a jigsaw puzzle that has quite a few of the pieces jammed in crooked because someone was in a hurry. The general picture is there but there are a lot of ragged edges.I liked Olympia’s escape, her humor, her lack of missishness. I did not like repeat...

I really liked this one, but not quite as much as I did the 2nd book in the series Ten Things I Hate About the Duke, which I actually read 1st. Because I'm badass like that and don't bother with pesky things like the correct order. And since this is a romance, you can get away with that and not affect the enjoyment level of the individual stories much, if any at all. Ok. So Olympia gets pressured by her well-meaning (but broke) family into accepting the offer of marriage from Ashmont, a Duke wit...

2.5 stars. I really enjoyed the beginning of this one with the whole runaway bride plot going on, but then it quickly fell downhill for me. The middle and end just seemed to drag and not a whole lot really happened for a book that is almost 400 pages long. I also think the beginning was where it started to drag because I was 30% into the book and it was still the same day. I just wanted more from this and found it hard to believe that they fell in love in such a short amount of time. Maybe it wa...

2.5 to 3 stars. Not Ms Chase's best IMO. Although there were some enjoyable aspects to the book, I just couldn't get over the fact that I didn't 'buy' the basic premise.I liked: The h. Olympia is a lone girl raised in a house with 6 rambunctious brothers. I could relate to that, having lived for years as the only female in a house full of men and boys (my husband and sons). I also liked that Olympia was a bit of a book nerd. But she didn't really know herself. Her real personality was overshadow...

DNF... sorry... :((((

A Duke in Shining Armor, the first book in Loretta Chase’s new Difficult Dukes series, is simply delightful and filled with all the elements I love so much about her books – an entertaining story, sparkling wit and a captivating romance. The series features the Dukes of Ripley, Blackwood and Ashmont, commonly referred to as ‘Their Dis-Graces’ because of their notorious, rakish behaviour. All three had suffered miserable childhoods but formed an enduring friendship whilst at Eton and the three...