Book Review

How the Dukes Stole Christmas by Tessa Dare, Sarah MacLean, Sophie Jordan and Joanna Shupe

I am not in the mood for Christmas yet. Generally speaking, I’m not in the mood for Christmas on December 23rd even, but mid-fall is WAY too early. That said, my brain has been pretty tired lately and some Regency novellas sounded like the perfect way to unwind without investing in a full length novel. Since How the Duke Stole Christmas includes novellas by some of my favorite authors, I was willing to set aside my Grinch-iness and dive in.

The first two novellas by Tessa Dare and Sarah MacLean worked really well for me, but the last two by Sophie Jordan and Joanna Shupe had some problems I couldn’t overcome. As a result, I really enjoyed the first half of the book, but that enjoyment fizzled out and left me feeling dissatisfied with the end.

The first novella, Meet Me in Mayfair by Tessa Dare, was my favorite story in the book, and I gave it an A.

Louisa Ward’s father owed money to the Duke of Thorndale, but the duke never collected. Now that he’s passed away, his heir, James, the new Duke of Thorndale, is demanding payment, which will result in the Wards losing their home. Louisa is hoping for a Christmas miracle–that she can attract a wealthy husband in record time and save her family.

When the story opens she’s attending a holiday ball at a friend’s home, and who does she happen to meet? James, of course. James doesn’t recognize Louisa or make any connection with her name. He’s handling the business of his estate in a matter-of-fact manner, trying to correct the lax practices of the previous duke and protect his tenants. He has no idea that by demanding Louisa’s father pay his debt, he’s making them homeless.

What James does know is that Louisa is the first woman he’s met who isn’t impressed with him, his title, or making a move to entice him into marriage. In fact, she clearly doesn’t like him at all, a fact that intrigues him greatly. Add to that some spilled wine, a mishap with a carriage, and suddenly James is walking Louisa home thought a quiet and snowy London night.

Most of the story takes place over the course of a single evening, a pretty compressed time frame, but I completely believed that in that evening Louisa and James fell in love despite their differences. Louisa never tells James that he’s bankrupting her family. Initially she wants nothing to do with him, but accepts his company on her way home as a matter of safety. As the evening wears on, and she and James take a few detours, she realizes that he’s not the monster she imagined.

Louisa had hoped for a love match, for a man that appreciated the fact that she was outspoken and had opinions of her own. Her family’s financial issues made her believe that wasn’t possible, but James tells her that’s exactly what he likes most about her. He’s found himself thrust into a world of sycophants and he finds her honesty refreshing. He also listens to her values her thoughts and ideas, which makes him incredibly attractive to her.

The setting of a quiet, snow-swept night where most everyone else is indoors gave a sense of intimacy to the story as well. It felt like James and Louisa were in a private bubble in time and space where they could get to know each other without worrying about the conventions of society they’d normally be subject to.

The black moment, where James learns who Louisa is and fears she’s manufactured the whole evening to get her family’s house back, and Louisa realizes she’s accidentally fallen for James, had me legitimately wondering how everything would be resolved in a satisfactory manner. Happily for me, and the characters, it was.

Meet Me in Mayfair was basically the perfect novella. I completely bought the love story despite the condensed time frame, the conflict was believable and yet it was solved quickly in a way that made sense and worked for me. I adored the story, but I also admired the skill that was required to pull all these elements together so flawlessly.

The Duke of Christmas Present by Sarah MacLean came with a healthy dose of angst and sexual tension, and I gave it a B+.

Eben, Duke of Allyrd, doesn’t celebrate the holidays. He’s a curmudgeon who is entirely all business and totally hiding his broken heart. Christmas Eve is the one night of the year when he allows himself to drink, to get shitfaced really, and he’s already pretty toasted when he finds Lady Jaqueline Mosby in his kitchen.

Twelve years ago Eben was engaged to Jack, but she left him and has spent most of the last decade traveling the world with her aunt. Eben and Jack grew up as neighbors, and after finding a secret door that connected their houses, they would sneak away at night as children to meet up with each other. As they grew older, their clandestine meetings developed into a romance.

Both Eben and Jack have their share of childhood trauma; Eben’s father was a cruel alcoholic who tormented his son. Jack’s parents died in an accident, and she misses them terribly. As children they sought comfort from each other during their darkest moments. For example, Jack’s parents died in a storm, and Eben would do whatever he could to make his way to her side during thunderstorms.

When Eben’s father dies, he throws himself into repairing the estates that his father let go to seed. Eben becomes obsessed with the idea of rebuilding his family’s wealth, and he refuses to marry Jack until he feels he has achieved the prosperity she deserves, but in doing so, he unintentionally pushes Jack away. When he forgets about her one Christmas, she realizes their relationship isn’t working, and leaves him.

Now twelve years later we have two people who still haven’t gotten over each other at all, have major pants feelings for each other, and are both nursing broken hearts. Jack tells Eben that she’ll be leaving for Scotland soon to be with her new fiance, and Eben realizes that he has the holiday to convince her that he’s changed and win her back. There’s some delicious grovel in this book.

Sarah MacLean does angst really well, and this book hurts so good. There’s so much yearning between Jack and Eben, and such a need for healing, that it felt so satisfying when they finally came together.

My only issue with the story is that I felt that if Jack had talked to Eben twelve years ago, really talked to him, they could have avoided splitting up. Eben was caught in a frantic cycle of trying to prove he wasn’t his father, but I think that if she’d been more open with him about how he was hurting her, he was capable of change at that time.

That said, they were both pretty young and the second-chance theme of this romance was so delightful. Even if the initial breakup didn’t make total sense to me, I enjoyed the reconciliation immensely.

Heiress Alone by Sophie Jordan is a regency re-telling of the movie Home Alone, and I gave it a D.

Annis Ballister is a wealthy heiress with a large, loud, not terribly well-mannered family. Her sisters are a constant source of embarrassment (think all Lydias from Pride and Prejudice), her mother is more interested in the latest society scandal than, you know, parenting, and her dad is more invested in work than his kids. That’s why Annis has decided to become a nun. She longs for structure, quiet and a place where she can read and contemplate in peace.

Annis hasn’t taken her vows yet, though and she vacations with her family in Scotland over the holidays. In one incredibly embarrassing episode they go to visit their neighbor, Calder, the Duke of Sinclair, with her sisters hoping he’ll fall in love with one of them. Instead he kicks them off his property.

Then one morning Annis wakes up and discovers her family returned home…without her. Everyone scrambled to leave before a snow storm left them stranded and in the process, they forgot Annis. Ooops. Now Annis is stuck with the two elderly caretakers of the house until the snow clears…which might be March. Meanwhile Calder has returned, after learning that bandits are robbing are empty houses. He was concerned about the safety of Fenella and Angus, the property’s caretakers, but when he learns Annis was left behind, he realizes he will have to take her back to his castle as well.

What transpires is a forced-proximity, snowed-in romance during which Annis realizes she has very un-nun-like feelings toward Calder. Calder realizes Annis isn’t like her horrible sisters. Add in some convenient hypothermia and “we have to sleep naked together to warm up,” and a matchmaking Fenella, and suddenly Calder and Annis are falling in love.

The external conflict involves the aforementioned bandits. The internal conflict involves Annis still wanting to hide away from Society and Calder trying to convince her not to. My issue was that Calder behaved in a way I found predatory and upsetting. At one point Annis questions his decency when he walks in on her bathing:

Damnation…Perhaps he wasn’t decent. After all, he’d brought this lass here. He’d put a soon-to-be-nun in his bed and done things to her no one should ever do to a virtuous woman with such holy aspirations. She was right. He was not a decent man because he wanted to continue right where they’d left off this morning and corrupt the hell out of her.

Staring at her like this, he didn’t want to be decent–and that lead him to several uncomfortable realities. Yes. He would make her his and even marry her. Because right now she was the epicenter of his universe. She and his raging, pulsing cock.

He advanced.

Her expression tightened as he neared her and she started to back away. Something sparked in him, a long-buried urge to hunt and claim. To prove to this sharp-tongued lass that she didn’t want a life of abstinence. She wanted him.

“Perhaps you’re right and I’m no’ good. Perhaps the true reason you haven’t left my room is because you want tae be here. With me. Now. Again.”

She shook her head, damp tendrils of hair skimming smooth shoulders. “No.”

“You wanted me tae return.” He gestured at the bath. “Perhaps you staged this entire enticing scene.”

This scene was enough for me to give up on the hero and the story entirely. I’d enjoyed it up until this point, but Calder’s behavior in the scene above is repulsive. First of all, Annis is clearly upset he’s in the room while she’s naked and when he says she wants him there, she clearly says she doesn’t. He needs to leave. Right then. Instead he accuses of her setting up a scene to entice him, which is rapist talk. Annis is taking a bath. She is not trying to seduce him. He’s justifying his own inappropriate and predatory behavior in a way that implies she’s at fault for his actions.

Also I’d be happy to tell him where he can put his “pulsing cock” and “long-buried urges.” His penis is not autonomous. He has control of his actions. All of this is justification for him behaving in a fashion that reads like assault.

After this scene I finished the story, but I couldn’t find myself caring about Calder at all.

The final story in the book Christmas in Central Park by Joanna Shupe doesn’t feature an actual duke, but a hero named Duke. I gave it a C-.

Journalist Rose Walker writes a popular weekly advice column as “Mrs. Walker.” In reality she is not at all domestically inclined, but instead relies on her mother, who works in service, and her friends to help her answer questions about removing stains or making the perfect dessert. She’s cultivated a character who loves baking, gardening, and is the ideal wife to her loving, upper-class husband.

When Rose’s editor is fired during a scandal at the paper, she finds herself meeting with Duke Havemeyer, the paper’s owner. Duke has no idea that Mrs. Walker is a fiction, and assumes Rose is the Ina-Garten-Meets-Martha-Stewart character she created. His board of directors is skittish after the scandal, and so in order to distract them he wants Rose to prepare a holiday dinner for them. She’s the paper’s most popular columnist and he thinks a dinner party with the famous Mrs. Walker will remind them of the paper’s stability.

Desperate not to lose her job, Rose and her friends quickly scramble to fake a dinner at a mansion she doesn’t own with a husband she doesn’t have. Said fake husband leads Duke to think he and Rose have an “understanding” or open relationship, and during the dinner Duke realizes he’s falling for Rose.

While I believed the hero and heroine were able to fall in love in a single night in Meet Me in Mayfair, I struggled to buy it in Christmas in Central Park. I think a big part of that was the fact that Duke was falling for Rose while believing she was some kind of domestic goddess, which made me question if he would love the real her. His interest in her seems to be made up of sexual attraction and a fascination with the fictional character that she’s created.

Rose also has to spend some time educating Duke, a rich dude, on the fact that he has no idea what life for an average person is like. She explains to him how physically demanding domestic service is when he comments that people should appreciate working in a nice house. She chastises him for firing her former editor. The editor had nothing to do with the scandal, but Duke rationalizes that it happened “under his watch.” She points out that as the owner of the paper, it happened under Duke’s watch too.

The thing is, I have zero patience for the education of entitled, oblivious rich dudes. I don’t want it to be my responsibility, via the heroine, for some wealthy asshole to achieve some basic enlightenment. Duke initially lacks empathy or any consideration for anyone outside of his economic sphere, and while he gets better at the end I wanted him to come out the gate a considerate human being, not one needing to be reformed.

Add that to my questioning the validity of Duke’s feelings for Rose, and I was pretty meh on the novella.

So while I really liked the first two novellas, the second two fell flat for me. Combining the grades, I’d give the overall book a C, but caution readers that I found the balance of the novellas extremely uneven.

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How the Dukes Stole Christmas by Tessa Dare

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  1. Jazzlet says:

    The Amazon link doesn’t work for me.

    While I’m on the topic of things tht don’t work I’ve clicked something in Firefox that means I’m not seeing the covers, does anyone know what I might have done? I miss the covers and can’t work out what I’ve clicked that means I don’t see them. *sniff*

  2. Adele Buck says:

    The logical fallacy in the last novella made me DNF. He thinks she’s wealthy and doesn’t need the job, yet he uses the threat of her losing the job to make her do the dinner party. It isn’t addressed ever!

  3. SB Sarah says:

    @Jazzlet: I’m not sure about the covers – I’m sorry about that! Is SBTB the only place you’re experiencing this? Also, thank you for the heads up about the link!

  4. Lisa F says:

    I’ll never understand why publishers start putting out Christmas romances in September, but always, without fail, that’s when “My Holiday Cowboy” and the like start hitting shelves.

    Sophie Jordan has really and truly sunk down the well writingwise. Her last historical I’d give a flat F to; it’s horrendous, but not rapey like this one. Does it at least include Home Alone/Scooby Doo style traps?

    This just makes me wish I could buy single stories instead of whole honking novels filled with novellas. The other three sound pretty okay.

  5. LauraD says:

    I thought these novellas sounded familiar and a wick visit to Tessa Dare’s site confirms this is a re-release.

  6. Chris says:

    I considered buying this last year for the Tessa Dare but didn’t. I like that the lie only lasts one night, I hate when these things drag out. I still want that one but not sure about the others.

    A Home Alone retelling with snowed in sounds so good to me – but really??! “Right now” she is his epicenter? Guess when his cock calms down that epicenter could change.

    The last one – I don’t understand the whole plot/hook. You worry that he thinks she is a domestic goddess, but how long has the heroine pretended expertise and not learned anything? Her family and friends show her and then she writes about it in a way that readers are supposed to learn from, why didn’t she learn from it? Also, an “upper class” wife in Gilded Age NYC would be having domestic staff deal with stains and baking for a crowd anyway so her fake identity makes no sense. Why would he want or be fascinated by a domestic goddess – what he needs is someone to know enough about households to manage those super-grateful servants. Which she should have learned writing these articles, unless she is really bad at her job. From the summary I am more concerned that Duke was falling for a married woman – so he wanted a mistress? It’s okay though – in polite conversation with someone he just met it somehow came up that she could sleep around with her husband’s blessing. So he can totally fall for her now.

  7. Cris S. says:

    The last story sounds, in a superficial plot way, very similar to Christmas in Connecticut, the 1945 movie with Barbara Stanwyck. It’s been years since I’ve seen it, but I remember it being a lot of fun. Probably archaic in some of its approach to gender roles, but fun none the less.

  8. denise says:

    This is a reprint from last year, now it’s available in paperback.

    I bought it at an author signing a week ago, but I still need to read it.

  9. Jennifer O. says:

    I read these a while ago and the first two are really good. The last two not so much. I’m not sure I even finished the last one.

  10. Miranda J. says:

    That last novella sounds like a direct knockoff of the movie Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck. The only difference is she gets her recipes etc. from a restauranteur she’d helped get on his feet, the editor doesn’t get fired, the “husband” is a boyfriend with a mansion who’s more interested in his architect career than her, and the love interest is a wounded soldier who spends Christmas with them. The whole thing is just as convoluted but much more enjoyable.

  11. Karen H near Tampa says:

    Jazzlet and SB Sarah: I also haven’t been able to see the covers that link to Amazon in a couple of weeks. I use Google Chrome. I thought perhaps I had suddenly (and totally accidentally) turned on an Ad blocker but cannot find a setting for that so don’t know what’s going on. I do see “regular” pictures that are included in some of the posts.

  12. Chris says:

    I can see the last one’s hook working well with a 1940s housewife and as a romantic comedy or screwball comedy where the hero and/or heroine are supposed to be a little foolish or do silly things. I’m going to keep an eye out for that movie. It doesn’t sound like it worked in the Gilded Age or with that hero and heroine.

    I wish the Home Alone one had worked too. Depending on my saturation of Christmas themed romances this year, I may still pick it up for the Tessa Dare one. If I end up enjoying the Sarah Maclean one too then it’ll be a bonus.

  13. Ren Benton says:

    Per Sarah MacLean, all the stories are homages: “Tessa’s take on Meet Me in St. Louis, Sophie’s Home Alone romance, Joanna’s gilded age Christmas in Connecticut & my version of Scrooged!”

    Source: https://twitter.com/sarahmaclean/status/1176533669806321664

  14. KB says:

    I read this last year and felt similarly–the first two were good, the third was OK but the hero was too caveman for me, and the last I just skimmed by the end because it wasn’t working for me. But I will say, I heard the authors interviewed on a podcast and they were all delightful. They talked about how they had each based their story on one of their favorite Christmas movies, and I think hearing that and trying to spot the movie tie-ins made the stories more enjoyable for me.

  15. BellaInAus says:

    When I read a problematic plot line I feel like I need to rewrite it in my head. So, after the end of the quote from Heiress Alone, she goes for his raging, pulsing cock with the poker, or possibly a bedpan, while telling him exactly what an arrogant asshat he is. The housekeeper walks in and uses the privilege of having watched him grow up to explain to him that he’s a grown man, not a teenager and he’s the boss of his boner. In fact, she basically quotes Elyse.

    He’s still an asshat, though. I’m not sure that a novella would have enough room for sufficient grovelling.

  16. LauraL says:

    I also read this anthology last year and really enjoyed the throwbacks to Christmas movies. Each of the novellas packs a lot into a short read. The part where Annis finds out she was left behind in Heiress Alone was memorable. Joanna Shupe’s heroines often school the overbearing Duke-like, entitled hero, but it didn’t work as well in Christmas in Central Park.

  17. “all Lydias” made me think of Oops! All Berries cereal

    Oops! All Lydias

  18. Jazzlet says:

    Sarah SB I haven’t noticed the problem anywhere else that I recall, but honestly that doesn’t mean anything as I’ve been going through a bad patch with the old chronic pain so I’ve been doped up at times and barely remembering what day it is.

  19. Mega says:

    Sarah MacLean has said multiple times that they each took a classic Christmas movie and gave it romantic spin for the respective novellas.
    Tessa Dare – Meet Me in St. Louis
    Sarah MacLean – Scrooged
    Sophie Jordan – Home Alone
    Johanna Shupe – Christmas in Connecticut

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