Book Review

All I Want for Christmas is a Duke by Valerie Bowman, Tiffany Clare, Vivienne Lorret, Ashlyn MacNamara

Normally I’m pretty cynical about Christmas. I’m not a practicing Christian, and I’ve worked in either retail or logistics long enough that the commercialism and chaos that precedes the holiday season exhausts me (I once worked till 2 a.m. so a shipment of children’s bedsheets that were on sale would hit the store in time for Black Friday–then slept for four hours and went back into work).

This year, though, I’m clinging to anything happy and festive, desperate to feel good about something. I put my tree up before Thanksgiving (I didn’t put one up at all last year). I’ve been Googling recipes for eggnog and Glugg, and I’ve been reading Christmas romance like whoa.

All I Want for Christmas is a Duke is a collection of four Regency novellas by Valerie Bowman, Tiffany Clare, Vivienne Lorret, and Ashlyn MacNamara. I was especially intrigued because  the characters in the Lorret novella were referenced in When a Marquess Loves a Woman and the hero is a scientist.

The first story by Valerie Bowman, “The Duke and Duchess Trap,” really didn’t work for me–it’s an homage to The Parent Trap, a movie that’s cute when you’re a kid, but deeply fucked up when you think about it as an adult. When the Duke of Hollingsworth, Nathan, and his wife Elizabeth find that they don’t suit, they decide to live separately. They split up their infant twin daughters as well because they are awful people. Evangeline stays with her mother in Kent, Genevieve goes to London with her father. The girls do not know about each other or see each other.

This is where I’d like to point out that “not getting along” is not adequate justification for splitting up your children and depriving them of a relationship with each other, or with the other parent. They are human beings, not a fucking DVD collection. And even if you WERE splitting up a DVD collection you keep the fucking box sets together because OBVIOUSLY. Unless it’s Battlestar Galactica in which case you can give away the last season.

So anyway, when they are twelve, Gena and Evie meet in school (artfully arranged by their grandmother) and pull the switcheroo over Christmas break. Their parents figure out what’s up and Nathan returns Evie to Kent, where everyone gets snowed in together. Evie and Gena bond, and Elizabeth and Nathan awkward around a lot.

I didn’t care for this novella because I couldn’t get over how incredibly selfish Elizabeth and Nathan were–not that they decided to live apart, but that they decided to deprive their daughters of any relationship with each other. It’s a super fucked-up arrangement. Also we never really understand why Elizabeth and Nathan didn’t get along–other than she was raised in a restrictive household and it took her awhile to find herself–and so the conflict wasn’t great.

“Sophie and the Duke” by Tiffany Clare is a short, sweet Cinderella story, but is missing any conflict. Sophie Kinsley sneaks off to the masquerade Christmas ball of the Duke of Helmsworth against her stepmother’s wishes.

DUKE OF HELMSWORTH?

Oh. Wait. That’s Hemsworth.

Anyway, she sneaks off the ball. Thanks to a Romance Novel Will, the duke, Adrian, must select his bride by midnight on the night of the ball or forfeit his inheritance. He’s immediately taken with Sophie and dances with her. Sophie and Adrian actually knew each other as children, but haven’t seen each other in years. Adrian doesn’t recognize Sophie behind her mask, but he finds himself infatuated with the woman who flirtatiously claims to know him.

There’s not much to this story: a meet cute, really no conflict, and a happy ending. I like the Cinderella fantasy, but without anything keeping Sophie and Adrian apart it wasn’t really satisfying. There’s no there there. I also wasn’t sure what the purpose of Sophie’s stepmother was. I thought she might…

Click for spoilers!
be the thing that’s supposed to keep Adrian and Sophie from finding Happily Ever After, but she’s really not a threat to them. Maybe an annoyance if anything.

“Sophie and the Duke” was cute, but not much else.

“The Duke’s Christmas Wish” by Vivienne Lorret was wonderful, though — so, so wonderful. It’s got a scientist hero and a house party and a heroine who has to pee really bad.

Ivy Sutherland is firmly on the shelf and doesn’t have much to recommend her for marriage. She has neither money nor title.  She’s attending a house party leading up to a Christmas ball at Castle Vale as a companion to her friend Lilah. Ivy knows that matrimony is not in her future, but she hopes to help Lilah find a husband.

Northcliff (for realsies), the Duke of Vale, is hosting the party to test out his Marriage Formula. North is a scientist who believes that though data and equations, he can arrange for perfect marriages among the upper class–successfully proving this formula will earn him acknowledgement from The Fellows of the Royal Society, something he badly wants.

So of course, North is looking for a wife and Ivy turns everything on its head by being the woman he can’t resist. She doesn’t fit into his formula, but he can’t keep his mind off of her. One thing I loved was that while portrayals of scientist heroes (or deeply intellectual heroes) are often weirdly sexless, there is nothing shy or virginal about North. It’s not that I don’t like a shy or virginal hero sometimes; I just don’t understand why that’s so often associated with an academic hero.

Anyway, this novella is pretty sexually charged.

Take this scene where North barely touches Ivy’s arm:

North, however, took a slight detour.

Unable to fight the urge, he walked in Miss Sutherland’s direction. At the same time calculated the nearest footman’s route. Just as he’d anticipated, both the footman and he arrived in the narrow path behind her in the same instant. Then, in the second that transpired, he graciously allowed the servant to pass, while he himself skirted within a hairsbreadth of Miss Sutherland, his front to her back.

There was no time for an exchange or even to make his presence known. There was only time for a breath–filled with the sweet scent of persimmons perfuming her simple coiffure–and a single touch.

The pad of his index finger grazed the warm, soft flesh of her arm and dipped, ever so slightly, beneath the cuff of her glove.

A hedonistic shudder wracked him in that briefest of moments. And he was already several steps away before he heard her gasp.

I’ve read full on erotic less sexy than this.

Erotic arm touches aside, the beauty of this book is that Ivy is essentially forbidden to North due to her lack of connections and wealth, and falling in love with her means disavowing everything he’s been working on for years. So of course Ivy and North can’t resist each other. She challenges him intellectually and the two engage in a flirtation that neither expects to go anywhere.

Plus when Ivy first meets North she has to pee really really bad. Like she’s doing the pee dance bad. I honestly don’t think I’ve read about a heroine needing to pee before, and it’s such a normal, everyday, humanizing thing–and such a funny scene. It’s even better when she gets to her room and discovers the duke has installed plunger toilets in his castle and she’s like “WTF is this? Where’s my chamber pot?”–which sent me down the Google rabbit hole of when toilets were invented.

Also the hero and heroine from When a Marquess Loves a Woman first appear here, so that made me happy too.

Overall “The Duke’s Christmas Wish” is quirky and sexy and funny, and the best novella of the book.

The final novella is “One Magic Season” by Ashlyn MacNamara, and I really liked it, too.

Patience Markham is on her way to her brother’s house for Christmas when the weather turns inclement and her small party comes across a carriage overturned in the road. The carriage belongs to the Duke of Kingsbury, and Patience offers to put him up in the Dowager House with her while they ride out the storm.

Patience and the duke, Nathaniel, have a shared history. During her Season, the two were smitten with each other, but Nathaniel’s family made it very clear that a duke was not going to marry the daughter of a country baron. Patience was humiliated by Nathaniel’s sister and felt like she was being led on. She wound up marrying a man thirty years her senior, and after he passed without an heir, she was packed away to the Dowager house.

Nathaniel is a widower as well; his wife (a marriage of convenience) died after birthing their twins. Now that he’s snowed in with Patience, he realizes that even though they haven’t seen each other in ten years, he’s still in love with her.

Most of the novella is Nathaniel proving to Patience that he doesn’t care about his shitty family, he loves her, and he won’t hurt her again. It’s Wooing + Grovel + Sexytimes. Patience doesn’t trust Nathaniel but she’s determined to at least enjoy herself sexually while they’re under the same roof and away from prying eyes.

The Wooing + Grovel + Sexytimes turns out to be a formula that equals Elyse Catnip, so really enjoyed this novella.

I would give the first two novellas in this anthology C’s–they were just sort of meh. I was swept away by the last two so I would give them A’s, meaning the anthology as a whole averages out to a B.

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All I Want for Christmas is a Duke by Vivienne Lorret

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  1. Amy says:

    Great review! I just read this one too. Hated the Parent Trap story, but really enjoyed the last 2 stories.

  2. cleo says:

    “They are human beings, not a fucking DVD collection. And even if you WERE splitting up a DVD collection you keep the fucking box sets together because OBVIOUSLY.”

    This is the kind of quality commentary that makes me laugh on a snowy Monday and keeps me coming back to SBTB.

  3. Meg says:

    I got this book a few weeks ago because I had wanted to read Ivy and North’s story, but I went ahead and skipped to it after this review.

    I usually loathe toilet humor or people utilizing those bodily functions in stories as a means of humiliation. But, you were absolutely right. This scene is very funny, not demeaning at all, and very humanizing. I probably need to spend my lunch break continuing this novella.

  4. Em says:

    I got this for Ivy and North’s story too, loved that one! I didn’t care at all for the other three, there really wasn’t any conflict and all of the characters were pretty flat. Plus the Regency Parent Trap basically copied scenes from the Lindsay Lohan one (I may or may not have that movie memorized completely…) which is a huge pet peeve!

  5. ReneeG says:

    I was wondering where Ivy’s story was (I’m reading Lilah’s book now). The price is good, too (‘Tis the season where I have to think of others so the bookbuying needs to be cut back).

  6. LauraL says:

    Thank you! I have no idea how I missed this one last year. I double-checked my Kindle and no Ivy and North!

  7. Ginger says:

    It’s also on Scribd if you’re subscribed!

  8. I’ve read some truly shit holiday romance anthologies so far this year. Two of them had Plot Moppets in EVERY SINGLE STORY (eight stories in all). I swear to dog above, I wanted to gouge my own eyes out. I ranted about it for a full 90-minute drive to a hiking destination on Black Friday. I figured if I had to suffer through it, my husband could suffer with me.

    “The Duke’s Christmas Wish” sounds promising, but I don’t think I could make it through the first two stories. I strongly dislike reading about children in romance, and I hate that the Christmas Miracle™ is such a prominent feature in holiday romances. I love Christmas as much as the next atheist, but the sappy “Wonder of Christmas” trope is turning me into the Grinch. If I could just have a romance set against the backdrop of festivity and winter weather without any of the accompanying cheese, I would be a happy goddamn camper hiker.

  9. JenC says:

    Your comment about splitting up Battlestar Galactica DVD sets made me laugh. I’m still mad about how they ended that series, and tell everyone to stop at the end of season 2.

  10. LZ says:

    I am newer to the genre and sooooo confused by holiday romance. Holidays are for overeating and apologizing to your parents for regressing as soon as you enter their house.

  11. LML says:

    “I love Christmas as much as the next atheist”

    Oh, so true, so perfectly stated.

  12. . says:

    Elyse’s opening point on the cyniciscm of Christmas compelled me to open this entry. Would otherwise passed on by, not only for the Christmas themes but also that words like Duke, Marquis, Earl, In the title are a automatic no-buy for me. There are simply not that many real-life dukes around, nor ones that are hot and unmarried (not bothering to do a count).

    So, for me, the title, “All I want for Christmas is a Duke ” is a cringewrothy double-whammy,

    Disclaimer: As per previous posters, I also love the holidays as much as the next atheist, just not the twee titles.

  13. Vasha says:

    I am so not interested in romances about billionaires, fed up to the ears with them… and dukes are the historical-romance equivalent. So yeah, some people like fantasizing about glitz, luxury, and nearly unlimited power, but not me.

  14. . kbrum says:

    yyy, billionaire romances are especially creepy, especially in the context of the recent elections. (can I say that?)

  15. Elyse says:

    @kbrum you can totally say that. I agree that the appeal of the powerful billionaire has diminished A LOT

  16. Neasa says:

    Definitely agree – I’m also sick of dukes and billionaires, but especially dukes. And bonus bad points for groups of dukes with a boyband name for how they’re a cool bunch of duke-bros who hate women and are never getting married. So much eyeroll. Like, there really aren’t that many dukes – the chances of 3 or 4 of them being the same age is a stretch, never mind identically tall, handsome and adorably contemptuous.

  17. . kbrum says:

    ok, thanke Elyse, heading for a roll…

    Books focussed on privileged dudes are very off-putting when there are such fine examples of these priveliged scions not only being evasive about their taxes, but groping/assualting and verbally insulting /abusing women. Do women really find this behaviour endearing? Isn’t this behaviour the total opposite of romantic? I am sort of interested about just how sales will change with billionaire romance titles ( or maybe not: the numbers might actually show we are heading back to the dwrk ages of old skool treat-em-like dirt-and- they-will-fall-in-love-with-you romancea.

    Titles like “All I want for Christmas is a Duke” imakes it seem (to me) like the heroine is simply going to pick out a duke like a chocolate from a box. Not goong to happen that easiliy. not just because their numbers are thin on the ground, but because of the class divide (which is not usually realistically covered in romance books). I have wondered it the authors of those duke titles realise just how pervasive the class system is in the UK today., let alone in earlier times. A duke plus lesser class woman may as well be a a romance about an alien getting off with a mud pie for the numbers of dukes actually marrying outside of their class 200-300 years ago.

    boyband groups of dukes- yeah, dom’t get me started on the bro-women-haterz with the mentaliy of toddlers. Surely they would would be really unpleasant people in today’s times?

  18. Elyse says:

    @kbrum I think the billionaire hero really hit its apex as a result of 50 Shades of Grey. It became the “in” thing for awhile just like paranormal heroes were several years ago. In some respects the wealthy hero fulfills a Cinderella fantasy.

    I think in light of recent events we’re going to see the billionaire hero diminish and be replaced by the outsider hero–more of the wandering loner, for example. The billionaire has always been a staple of the genre, though, and he’ll never go completely away.

    As for dukes, Amanda wrote a really cool piece on why the hell there are so many of them in regency romance: https://play.google.com/books/article/7e4eufdyae/put-em-up

  19. kbrum says:

    thanks for Amanda’s link just read it. Not sure if it had been linked to an earlier item in The Bitchery?

    I do agree with Amandas’s point that authors use dukes as short hand for a certain type of goodness, shaking off tradition in the name of love, but It , imho, is overused, . For me, this approach is lazy, backward-looking characterisation. As a reader, I would like to see more reasons, nuanced reasons, to cheer for the hero. Not just cookie cutter heroes, but ones who really have a lot more to loose in love than the pretty boy from a privileged background with little experiencw of hardship, such as starvation, Does the duke, when shucking tradition to marry the unlikely outsider, really know anything about financial insecurity? really? To the point of starvation or prostitution in the same way as we see women in romances?

    I recall a vaguely similar discussion a few years ago, perhaps on Dear Author, where some readers pointed out the lack of diversity in romance books. Perhaps a consequence of using lazy characerisation (ie, dukes et al to represent goodness) is that diversity was inherently constrained – so all we saw were privliged entitled white dudes as heroes.

    anyway, not trying to be a PITA and rain on people’s holiday catnip. Heading back to lurkdom for now.

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