SPORTOCHICK’S MUSINGS: You need to read this book! It’s exciting, multi-faceted and memorable.

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Not the Duke’s Darling (Book 1 of 3)
by Elizabeth Hoyt

Pub Date Dec 18 2018
Forever (Grand Central Publishing)

DESCRIPTION

New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Hoyt brings us the first book in her sexy and sensual Greycourt Series!

Freya de Moray is many things: a member of the secret order of Wise Women, the daughter of disgraced nobility, and a chaperone living under an assumed name. What she is not is forgiving. So when the Duke of Harlowe, the man who destroyed her brother and led to the downfall of her family, appears at the country house party she’s attending, she does what any Wise Woman would do: she starts planning her revenge.

Christopher Renshaw, the Duke of Harlowe, is being blackmailed. Intent on keeping his secrets safe, he agrees to attend a house party where he will put an end to this coercion once and for all. Until he recognizes Freya, masquerading among the party revelers, and realizes his troubles have just begun. Freya knows all about his sins-sins he’d much rather forget. But she’s also fiery, bold, and sensuous-a temptation he can’t resist. When it becomes clear Freya is in grave danger, he’ll risk everything to keep her safe. But first, he will have to earn Freya’s trust…by whatever means necessary.

REVIEW

The first chapter is very fast paced, and the two main characters are introduced with a bang. It starts many years after the Greycourt tragedy that occurred when Freya Stewert de Moray was twelve years old. Freya is now twenty-seven, using Stewart as her last name and working as a companion to a wealthy family in London.

Christopher Renshaw who is now the Duke of Harlow was her oldest brother Ran’s friend. His change in personality from youth to man was dramatic making him a male character that was hard to love. He came across as having no heart.

As the storyline unfolds, and the layers are peeled away the reader will learn the sequence of this tragedy from both Freya and Christophers point of view. The author does a remarkable job in showing the reader the pain, sorrow, and anger suffered on all levels for the people who were impacted by that tragedy. The interweaving of the current day troubles with the past keeps the reader glued to the pages.

One thing that the reader will have to decide is can one forgive someone that one loved and trusted as a child many years later when you are both adults. For me the author’s telling of the story made it a clear choice.

You need to read this book! It’s exciting, multi-faceted and memorable.

I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

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