Well, I wish I could have loved this novel as much as the other Elosia James books I've read. I sadly didn't become intrigued with it until page 190, which was when I didn't have to force myself to continue reading anymore. The first half of the novel revolves more around Roberta's distant cousin, The Duchess of Beaumont. I found myself more interested in her character than the main heroine, Roberta. However, it was very difficult for me to read and want to continue reading the book for those fi More...

This is my first Eloisa James' novel. Did I start with the right one? Probably not. Her writing is witty enough although sometimes it's cringeworthy (but aren't they all?) but you can see that she's taken the time to get the historic detail correct. However, my main annoyance is really that her supporting characters are so much more interesting than the main ones. This wouldn't have been the case if she'd focussed more on a single plot rather than having 3 or 4 things going on at once; even if t More...

Bacanya Guling-Guling dan lompat-Lompat Hanya tertarik di bagian Romancenya yang lumayan mengobati salah membeli buku

Saya tidak akan beli lanjutanya!!!! More...

Ok, so I thought this book dragged a bit. A lot of the characters were very frustrating as well, namely the heroine, Roberta. I just thought she was stupid and too gullible. She's in love with a man she had one conversation with. That was it. After that, she spends three years pining for him and then comes to the resolution that she will marry him and no one else. She doesn't even seem to consider that there might be other men out there. Also, this man, the Duke of Villiers, she's in love with i More...

I love Eloisa. I truly do. However, the ending of this book leaves much to be desired. I loved the theme of 'chess' and playing one's opponent on and off the board. I loved Damon from the get go, and couldn't imagine Roberta with any other Rake. However, I have a few issues with this book.

1. We never learn who Teddy's mommy is! I can't deal with not knowing. So, if someone out there knows, please help a girl out.

2. Does the story of Gemma and her hubby continue in the other Duchessess books?

3. W More...

I found it extremely hard to believe that Roberta would fall so madly in love with the Duke of Villiers that she would leave home and travel to London to find and pursue him. After all, she had spoken a few sentences at the most with him at a party they had both attended. He, thinking she was a nobody, tried to bed her within moments of meeting her. (Nice guy)
Roberta was lucky enough that when she arrived at her very distant, never seen before cousin Jemma's door, that she was not turned away. More...

Lady Roberta Gilbert has never been in love. Until she sees the Duke of Villiers across a crowded ballroom. Then she knows he is the man she must marry. But the duke is fashionable. Painfully so and he is not interested in Roberta, except as a cousin to Jemma, the Duchess of Beaumont. Jemma has been separated from her husband for years but he is now interested in an heir, even if it's with his ridiculously scandalous wife, so Jemma's back in England and Villiers wants to have an affair with her. More...

Desperate Duchesses ของเอลอยซ่า เจมส์

หนังสือเล่มนี้เป็นเล่มแรกในชุด Desperate Duchesses (หลายคนคงจะเข้าใจแล้วนะคะว่า ทำไมชุดนี้ถึงได้ชื่อนี้) แต่ในฐานะที่เป็นเล่มแรกของชุด เล่มนี้สอบตกอย่างแรง เพราะแม็กซ์ต้องใช้ความพยายามนานมากกว่าจะอ่านให้จบ ส่วนหนึ่งคงเพราะมันเป็นเล่มแรกในชุด จึงมีการแนะนำตัวละครมากมาย มากจนกระทั่งบดบังตัวพระเอกและนางเอกของเรื่อง

และแม้จะมีชื่อเรื่องว่า Desperate Duchesses แต่นางเอกของเราไม่ใช่ดัชเชส หรือจะได้เป็นดัชเชสเลยค่ะ เธอชื่อโรเบอร์ต้า เซ็นต์ไจล์ เป็นบุตรสาวของมาร์ควิสท More...

I read this out of order and was glad I did. As the first book in a series it was cute but as I read about characters whose history I already knew, it wasn't the same as that first thrill of learning what characters are like.
Parents who mortify their children by doing embarrassing actions can cause a daughter to rebel. A parent who gushes poetry and publicly lives with a fallen women, causes Roberta to leave her father's protection and practically beg to live with a distant relative. Roberta ha More...

I wish I could give this two and a half stars, but alas, it is not to be, so I'm going to go with ok instead of like. Lady Roberta falls in love with the worst possible person for her, so she hies herself off to London to impose herself on a distant relative so she can be introduced into society and marry him by hook or by crook. Will she manage to get her man, or will another win her heart? Well, it's a romance novel, so need I say more?

(view spoiler)[What a dull novel. Lady Roberta has GOT to be one of the m (hide spoiler)] More...

Oh goodness, I really didn't want to read this book. I really didn't it isn't my usual genre but it was for a book club so I sucked it up and read it anyway. At first, I thought, OH MY GOSH! THIS IS SOOO BORING! Then it picked up when Roberta moved to London. This book was picked for the month because of the "bodice ripping" good times and yes there are some sexy scenes, but they are at the end. So, it wasn't exactly what I was expecting with the description the book club ladies gave. The charac More...

There was a lot about this book that I enjoyed, like the swirl of couples that always seemed to be in flux for me. I didn't know if Roberta was going to end up with Villiers or Damon, I wasn't sure if Jemma was going to succumb to her attraction to Villiers or stay faithful to Beaumont or if Beaumont himself was going to pick up another mistress. Teddy was super cute, gross like little kids can be. What I didn't like was that this felt like a contemporary romance with just the trappings of Regen More...

just about 3 stars. There were a lot of things I liked about this book, but it was kind of a mess. First of all (and I don't usually complain about this but it was too much to ignore), the typist and proofreader must have been either high or hungover when they went over the book. In general I think that Avon Romance don't really give a fuck when they are publishing books and their covers, but this was ridiculously sloppy. Just annoying.
About the story- I actually thought it was genuinely funny a More...

I've wanted to read a book by Eloisa James for a long time and finally have had the opportunity - and I LOVED IT! I can't believe how much I loved it. This book has something very special to me in it and wins my two favorite tags - world's greatest father and world's greatest husband - which, let's face it, some men can only be one or the other, and often neither. This is a story which sets things up for the six books in the series. That's a tough job because it has to lay the groundwork and More...

Overall I really liked this book. The humor was great and it was a light easy read. I loved so many of the characters. This wasn't a typical romance as it is more a story of a group of people and includes them all throughout the entire book. But there is only one romance working out in each book. In the beginning I really did enjoy Roberta, but as the book progressed I found myself annoyed with her "love" of Villiers. For someone so intelligent she seemed rather stupid at times. I loved Damon an More...

I finished this in one day, largely because it's an e-book from the library that's due back in two days, and I have to work both those days, so I devoted my Sunday to devouring it.

This is an outstanding historical romance. Georgian, so there are powdered wigs and panniers under wide skirts, corsets and beauty patches. The background is fantastic - the period detail, the social structure, the haut ton stuff. Interestingly, there is also a lot of description of clothing and finery, and against al More...

Summary: A marquess's sheltered only daughter, Lady Roberta St. Giles falls in love with a man she glimpses across a crowded ballroom: a duke, a chess player of consummate skill, a notorious rake who shows no interest in marriage -- until he lays eyes on Roberta. Yet the Earl of Gryffyn knows too well that the price required to gain a coronet is often too high. Damon Reeve, the earl, is determined to protect the exquisite Roberta from chasing after the wrong destiny. Can Damon entice her into a More...

I know the author is somewhat of a celebrity and is a professor literature.
But I found this book annoying.
It's not that I was seeking smut or whatever.
But about halfway through I was thinking of stabbing myself in the face with forks.
And other spiked implements.

It felt like being whacked in the face with a copy of vogue every page.
And a book on chess for good measure.
I didn't care what trimming her petticoat has.
I didn't care about some ribbon some dude has in his hair.
I know that chess is an in More...

Mungkin aku gila...tapi aku menyukai buku ini hihiihihihiii... Bagi yang tidak menyukai perselingkuhan di awal cerita, lebih baik tidak usah membaca buku ini.

Menurutku, dari segi tema dan jalan cerita cukup unik dan strateginya menarik seperti permainan catur antara Jemma, Duchess Beaumont dan Duke Villiers. Mungkin ini juga yang bikin pusing sebagian pembaca yang tidak suka alur berbelit. Digambarkan pada awalnya, Roberta, tokoh heroine di novel ini, ini jatuh cinta banget-banget pada Duke Vill More...

I picked up this book because it is the July book for the Vaginal Fantasy book club lead by Felicia Day. I like historical romance/fiction in general so thought I'd give it a try.

I immensely enjoyed the character Damon. I loved that he was so light hearted and was a tease. I definitely was rooting for him. He was my favorite, and really, the only one worth mentioning. Don't get me wrong, the other characters were very interesting in their own right, but in comparison to Damon...just not worth me More...

Vaginal Fantasy Hangout pick July '12.

Meh...didn't really grab me, I'm afraid, I'll stick with Georgette Heyer for my historical romances. It's well-written, as you'd expect from a professor of Shakespere; the Regency period is reasonably nicely detailed (I did like the attention to costume particularly), but it just lacked...dimension in the characters. I wanted to slap most of them for being so shallow. We don't really get a sense of what drives them, what they're like, other than Jemma. Frank More...

Eloisa James is well written, so much so, that I'd be willing to try another of her novels. Her humor was spot on, but this book, I HATED it. Though it did have the best smut chapter I have ever had the pleasure to read. Such a shame it was wasted on this.

All plot elements introduced were forgotten at the end of the book. Once the smut started, any trying for a plot just ended at that point. that's about half way through the book. It was kind of interesting the whole revenge plot, love, and betr More...

Ah, Ms. James.. you certainly know how to make a girl want to stay up all night reading your entire series! As the first installment in Ms. James' "Desperate Duchesses" series, Desperate Duchesses managed to introduce most of the characters we will be seeing in the coming books, and still have time to fully develop a romance that was so sweet I will be grinning about it for days.

Roberta is, to be honest, a bit of a brat. She feels that her father is unfair to her and that because of him she will More...

Eh, I wasn't too impressed by this book. I used to read a lot of romance novels when I was a teenager and this one felt really "Meh" to me.

The main character (what was her name?) was so incredibly bland and boring compared to her cousin Jemma, who actually had a plot driving her actions. The way the MC fell in and out of love with Viller's seemed too fake me, and that fact than Damion fell in "love" with her right after she set her cap on Viller's was just so tropey I literally rolled my eyes. More...

Dear Vaginal Fantasy Book Club,

I feel betrayed and would like several hours of my life back.

I thought we had a good thing going when I read Kushiel's Dart, another Vaginal Fantasy pick I loved. Perhaps I should not be surprised that this level of excellence did not extend to the next Vaginal Fantasy book, Desperate Duchesses. Okay, so I'm not surprised but I hoped it wouldn't suck quite so hard.

To be clear, I did not finish Desperate Duchesses but I got about halfway though and I probably wouldn More...

This is the first book in the Desperate Duchesses sextuplet. As far as first books go, I was a little disappointed. The characters, especially Roberta and Damon, didn't feel as fleshed out as some of James' other heroines and heroes.

Roberta was a strange mix of innocence and worldliness that almost worked. Maybe if more time had been spent inside her head rather than Jemma's (her distant cousin, Damon's brother). I realize that this book was kicking off a new series, one that James likened to D More...

I enjoyed this book. That about sums it up! It wasn't knock-me-down-amazing and it wasn't horrible at all. It was just fine. I think that you could tell that this was the first book in a series; the author had to introduce so many characters here in the first book that it was maybe a little confusing at first. Maybe that's the difference between a good writer and a not-so-good writer? In just a short time, I knew who was who and how they related to everyone else...for the most part. My only majo More...

This should really be more like 3.5 stars. The first half of this book was slow and I didn't feel attached or connected to the characters until after about 100 pages. If this had not been my book clubs main book for the month I probably would have given up on finishing it. I only rolled it up to four stars because by the end the book had actually (and finally) captured my interest (though it was never one of those books I just couldn't put down). I have heard so many amazing things about Eloisa More...

I have been looking forward to reading this book series for months now. Finally got my paws on it, and I wasn't disappointed. I haven't read much in the world of Georgian romances, and Eloisa James is insanely knowledgeable.
Well written, sucked me in, I happily stayed up until 1 am reading. that's a great book! I really can't wait to get the next in the series.
I could really sympathize with Roberta's instant and total crush on Villars. I think every teen girl has been there, you see him, you kn More...