I think we all know by now that I’m a big Eloisa James fangirl. I finished Four Nights with the Duke in a single sitting, and while it’s not her best book, it enjoyed it immensely.

The thing I really loved about this book is that it’s happening in layers. The heroine writes over-the-top gothic romance under a pen name, and so this book is a romance novel that tackles the stigma on romance novels. It’s very meta. It’s also very clever. The beginning of each chapter contains the heroine’s notes on the novel she’s working on, which are a reflection of the relationship she’s currently navigating.

The plot is a little over-the-top, which I think was intentional (again a call-back to those gothic romances). It’s like a romance trope drinking game. Mia Carrington needs to get married. She is the guardian of her young nephew, Charlie, a Tiny-Tim like angel with a twisted foot and a crutch (tragic orphan-take a drink). According her late brother’s will, if she is not married by a certain time, she’ll lose custody of Charlie to his villianious Uncle Richard (crazy will–take a drink). And Uncle Richard is villianous. He plans to have an “accident” befall Charlie so he can inherit the estate and he has a VanDyke beard (villian with a shitty billy goat beard–take a drink).

Mia was engaged but her fiance left her at the altar so now time is running out (jilted bride–take a drink). She decides her only course of action is to blackmail Evander Septimus Brody, Duke of Pindar, into marriage with her (blackmail–you know the drill). Mia knows Vander because their late parents had a long affair. Vander’s mother was a duchess, but her husband was insane and confined to an asylum. It’s apparent that their parents were genuinely in love, but Vander was tormented by his peers for having a mother who was an adultress, and he blames Mia’s father for corrupting his mother. When Mia shows up to blackmail him with a letter that proves his father was a traitor to the crown as well as being mad, he assumes the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Mia isn’t crazy about Vander either. When she was a teenager she fell madly in love with him, and wrote him an awful love poem which wound up in his hands. She overheard Vander and his friends cruelly making fun of her and it broke her young heart.

For Mia this is purely a temporary measure–she plans to never consummate the marriage and thus get an annulment in six months. Vander thinks the marriage of convenience (take a drink) may as well stand. He needs a wife and an heir anyway. Still absolutely full of himself, he assumes Mia’s blackmail plan is all about still being in love with him, and so he tells her, pompously, that he’ll only sleep with her four nights a year and only if she begs. The fact that Vander thinks that’s plenty of sex for baby-making proves no one gave him the birds and the bees talk in detail. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but dude.

Also Vander’s drunk Uncle Chuffy lives with them. And he’s a huge fan of Mia’s books. Quite honestly, the book is worth reading for drunk Uncle Chuffy alone:

The vicar was clearly unhappy, likely for a number of reasons. “Who stands up for this woman?” he demanded.

Vander was proud to see that Mia didn’t flinch. She regarded the vicar steadily, folded her hands, and said, “My closest living relative is eight years old.”

Chuffy tottered forward. “She has me. I’m it. I mean, I’ll be her kinsman and walk her where she has to go. Up the aisle, is it?”

The vicar regarded him with distaste. “Sir Cuthbert, how come you with this lethargy so early in the day?”

“Is it early?” Chuffy asked, with perfect surprise.

A little later:

Chuffy started down the aisle with his arm through Mia’s. He was stepping high, apparently aiming for a ceremonial effect. Halfway up the aisle he missed his step and lurched sideways, pulling Mia with him.

India gasped. Luckily Chuffy managed to catch himself on a pew and proceed.

“By God and all the saints at the back door of Purgatory, there was a moment when I thought I might shipwreck us both,” he said cheefully when they arrived at the chancel railing and he handed Mia over to Vander. “Losing my balance as I grow older.”

As Mia and Vander spend time together mutual lust turns into mutual affection. Also this book is about a family coming together, and the relationships between Mia and Chuffy, and Vander and Charlie, were truly charming to watch unfold.

I really enjoyed the romance-within-a-romance aspect of this book. Mia’s heroines are all uncompromisingly sweet and good-natured, waifish and innocent. They are all also beset by Tragic Circumstances and near starvation (one of her heroines falls into a raging river but the air in her belly keeps her afloat). Mia is of a more robust figure, something that bothers her but Vander loves. She’s also good-natured, generally, but has a spine of steel. Unlike her heroines, she’s not waiting for rescue.

Vander didn’t work for me as well. He suffers from a serious case of verbal diarrhea and some of the things he says to Mia made me want to smack him upside the head. It wasn’t that he was malicious, just tone-deaf. After the SECOND EVER time they have sex Vander tells Mia she’s “greedy” for him. When asks for clarification he responds:

“Some women are greedy for a cock, and men love that,” he said, stepping back and rearranging his breeches because commanding his tool to go down wasn’t working.”It was a compliment.”

Let’s slow clap it out for Vander fucking  up that situation. Also “commanding his tool”–take another drink. Basically between the “compliments” and the fact that Vander knows she was over the moon about him as a teen, Mia is convinced he thinks she’s some kind of slut, lacking morals the way her father supposedly did.

In addition to all of that, there’s a lot going on in this book. There’s a vicious Arabian horse that only Mia can tame (just like a Disney princess, take a drink) who really just has a sad. There’s a fat horse named Lancelot who resembles a sofa with horse-legs. There’s Uncle Richard’s Villianous Beard. There’s the absent fiance. A lot happens in this book, I thought, so much that it detracted a little from the main conflict, but it was crazysauce-filled throwback fun, so I didn’t mind it terribly.

If Four Nights with a Duke is one thing, it’s fun. The hero wasn’t my favorite, but drunk uncle Chuffy and Mia’s romance-writing notes were so enjoyable. While I enjoyed all the crazysauce–the lonely horse, the adulterous parents, the absent fiance, Vander coming to terms with his father’s madness–they did detract from the overall conflict. I thought more time could have been spent sorting out Mia and Vander’s complicated history. The youthful jilting and mixed feelings about their parents was meaty enough for the whole book without the extra side portions.

If you played along with the drinking game, and like Chuffy are now half in the bag, my sister recommends one aspirin, two ibuprofen, a Prilosec and a big glass of water before bed. She says you’ll be fine in the morning. But you probably shouldn’t take medical advice from a romance novel review website. Maybe stick to tea while you read this one.