This book was like a warm hug. The characters were people I would love to know in real life, the relationships (romantic and otherwise) were tender, and gentle emotional healing was a major theme. In other words, my crops are watered, my skin is clear, my checkbook is balanced, etc., etc., etc.

Let us start with our protagonists, Verity and Ash, who felt very real and immediate. Verity is clever, ambitious, and practical, and these are some of the traits that make her desirable and appealing to Ash. He describes her early on in the book:

“She bore more in common with a hawk picking the meat from its prey’s bones than with a songbird collecting twigs and leaves.”

(#Goals). This sounds almost like the way a stereotypical sexist old guard fantasy author would describe a malevolent witch villain, but from Ash, it is clear that this comparison comes from a place of tenderness and admiration.

I find that often when a heroine has a certain ruthlessness about her, much of the romantic arc is about her becoming “softer.” Refreshingly, Verity’s character arc does not require her to become soft to become open to love. Instead, Verity’s journey towards love is about her overcoming her belief that she’s not suited for lasting romantic attachment, rather than a need for her to transmute her hardness into something more acceptably, normatively feminine. She needs to learn that she can still be her whole crusty self and be in a loving romantic relationship. (As a hard-shelled Cancer, I relate strongly to this.)

For his part, Ash is a bit of a gentle sadboy. This is not a criticism; he is basically the toxic masculinity antitoxin. He has a lot of softness and vulnerability in a very sexy way. He and Verity have incredible, wry, funny, warm, sexy dialogue. I laughed aloud at several points. One example:

“You ought to consider what conditions you’re subjecting your hairpins to if they’d rather plummet to their death than work for you.”

I also enjoyed that both Verity and Ash had professions that they were good at. Verity runs a publishing house and does some writing, and Ash is an artist and engraver. Definite historical competence porn. The descriptions of Ash’s engravings made me wish I could see them! For example:

“This one depicted Catherine leaning against a wall, one leg wrapped around Perkin Warbeck’s waist. Their robes were a tangle of light and shadow, doing more to emphasize their undress rather than to obscure it.”

(*fans self*)

The main thrust (hehe) of the romantic plot is essentially a friends to lovers story set amidst a lot of other threads, including the perils of printing seditious materials and Ash’s hidden birthright. Friends to lovers is actually not a trope I am usually very interested in because I often find that there is either a) not enough tension or b) the tension feels artificial. However, I LOVED it in this case.

I think what made it work for me was that no one was secretly completely in love with anyone at the outset of the book. Instead, they had a strong, fond friendship with an undercurrent of sexual and romantic tension that both people were aware of but were deliberately not acting on for various reasons that were legible in the context of the story and characters. (Certainly, one side of the duo seemed more aware that it could become romantic love than the other. But I would argue that no one started there.) Ash describes their initial state as a “game of feigned mutual indifference” which I found delicious. The tension is quite intense but understated, more of a softly vibrating string than a snapping rubber band. Various changes in circumstance (growing political tensions, Ash’s parental figure being away in Italy to recover from illness, having to take Drastic Steps to prevent a brother from going to prison, the need to publish an erotic novel for money…) make the tension boil over, and then the friendship and the sex kind of cross-pollinate into love in a very satisfying manner.

Both Verity and Ash have some deep emotional wounds. Verity feels the stress of being constantly on the brink of poverty and of her fractious (though loving) relationship with her reckless, revolutionary brother, Nate, and she quite reasonably fears the loss of independence that comes with marriage. Ash was abandoned as a child and passed around between foster homes due to his epilepsy, and, though he seems to have a certain amount of contentment with the life he has now, he still feels some intense grief. A lot of this book is centered on healing these wounds through not just romantic love, but friendship and family. There are some dark themes (political violence, domestic terrorism) but the overall arc tends towards optimism and love in a way that feels downright…wholesome. This book would go great with a hot cup of tea and some nice scones or shortbread.

There were also awesome secondary characters, although I mostly wanted to throttle and/or slap some sense into Nate, Verity’s brother. Portia Allenby (those who read the first book in the series, Unmasked by the Marquess, will remember Portia as the mistress of Alistair’s deceased father) continues to be excellent. We see her in a new light as Verity’s friend and former lover. I would love a book about her, although I suspect the next book in the series will be about her daughter, Amelia. Another excellent character is Lady Caroline Talbot, a noblewoman who hires Ash to make some botanical drawings. She seems fragile and delicate at first, but clearly has an iron will and, again, a level of ruthlessness I deeply appreciate.

The only thing keeping me from giving a straight A was that the pacing of the last 10% or so of the book, when the major non-romantic conflict is resolved, felt quite rushed in a way that left me feeling just slightly unsatisfied. A lot happened and yet it was strangely anticlimactic. I will also say that Ash and Verity working together on illustrating and printing the sexy novel ended up being less of the plot than I anticipated from the blurb, but that’s not really a criticism of the book, just more of an expectation management note.

Of course, since this is a Cat Sebastian book, there’s a healthy heaping dose of revolutionary politics, musings on duty and what makes a good person in the world, strong queer rep, and feminism. If I had to sum up A Duke in Disguise, I would say that it’s indulgent and deeply nourishing at the same time. (Also, I might be hung up on the food metaphor because descriptions of delicious food are another feature of this book. Cheese is practically a secondary character.) In sum, I have a hard time imagining any romance novel reader who wouldn’t appreciate and enjoy this book for one or more or many reasons.