20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Weakest of the Trilogy -- but still recommended, January 16, 2010
This review is from: At the Duke's Pleasure (Byrons of Braebourne) (Kindle Edition)
I was really looking forward to this book given that I loved
Seduced By His Touch and liked
Tempted By His Kiss. I read the first 2 out of of order but that wasn't a big problem.
This book definitely builds on the first 2 books and carries along some of the characters and plot lines so in the case of this book -- particularly from "Tempted By His Kiss". If you haven't read the other 2, the author does still give enough of a back story to where you are not completely in the dark. However, you will definitely have a better appreciation of this book if you know what happened before it.
In terms of the main characters, I really like Edward (Ned -- the Duke). However, I really found Claire to be annoying and her antics got tiresome very quickly. If she did the type of stuff in modern day, most people would (rightly) conclude that she was bat-____ crazy. However, doing so in the Regency era is supposed to be considered spunky? In the other books, the author spent a fair amount of time probing both the male and female characters' psyche. Here we see relatively little of Edward and his developing feeling but are treated to hundreds of pages of Claire's endless manipulation and self-destructive behavior all in the name of "if I can't have EVERYTHING, then I want NOTHING even if it kills me!"
Where the first two books had a reasonable amount of humor and romance, this book didn't really get going with any real romance until nearly halfway through. The humor (at least in my opinion) never really got off the ground. However, as I said, I found Claire's behavior annoying, manipulative, and needlessly self-destructive rather than "spunky" or "endearing".
To the credit of this book -- there was more "plot" to this book than many romance novels and that is what I enjoyed. Also the "romance scenes" were very well written and the author clearly has a knack for that.
I would still recommend it -- particularly if you read the first two novels. And if she comes out with a fourth (goodness knows there are still plenty of siblings left to be married off -- will Mallory be next?) I will probably read those. I just hope the author starts to make her characters quite so "extreme" and one-dimensional to the point of being a cliche.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
3 stars for the Byron family, 0 star for the heroine., January 20, 2010
I've been a fan (with some reservations) of Tracy Anne Warren since THE HUSBAND TRAP and THE WIFE TRAP. She usually gets the chemistry right between hero and heroine and the stories are relatively interesting. And her first two Byron family stories, about Cade and Jack Byron, were pretty good. I especially liked the romance between Jack and his love. Now, as for this story: Edward, the Duke of Clybourne (Cade and Jack's older brother) should be nominated for sainthood for putting up with the antics of Lady Claire, with whom he manages to fall in love during the course of this novel for reasons mysterious to me. She should have been shown the door one third into this romance. So Claire doesn't want to marry Edward, to whom she has been betrothed since infancy, because she loves him (and, why? She has been in his company only three times since her birth.) but he does not love her. So instead of trying to see if romance can bloom between them, she decides to act like a perfect idiot, indulging in scandalous behaviour so HE will cry off. Apparently, the scandalous behaviour and her subsequent ruin seem more sensible to her than just getting her mother and father to allow her to break the engagement. It seemed to me that angering her father would be a better way to go than to ruin herself in society but then we wouldn't have a story, would we?
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Claire the Dare" drags the story down...., January 17, 2010
Claire and Edward had been engaged since she was an infant, she had been ignored by him until he felt the time was right. At 22 Claire was devastated and understandably wanted more from marriage. This had the makings of another fine romance yet the heroine's thoughts and actions through the story just didn't align. It wasn't until page 277 that the romance became interesting. Finally, Claire was able to communicate her warranted devastation and fear about marrying Edward without his declaration of feelings-- Before that, the majority of the book was her reaction to the disappointment by trying to get him to dissolve the betrothal by a series of possibly self destructive actions (especially the last one). Antics are one thing, but Clair came off slightly immature and impulsive.
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