The Hazards of Hunting a Duke

Desperate Debutantes, Book 1

The young ladies of the Fairchild family have just learned that their stepfather has absconded with their late mother's fortune. Ava, the eldest, decides to take matters into her own hands and hunts down the notoriously wealthy rakehell Jared Broderick, the Marquis of Middleton and heir to a dukedom.

Much to her shock and delight, the marquis sweeps her into a whirlwind romance and proposes marriage. But after their passionate wedding night, Ava discovers Jared has ulterior motives of his own. Not only does he expect her to deliver an heir while he continues to enjoy a rogue's life, but Ava also suspects she is a pawn in her husband's quest for revenge.

Marriages of convenience might work for some, but for Ava, a loveless bond won't do. So she devises a bold plan to confront her husband's demons so that he will be free to give her his heart for the right reason: because she is the only woman he will ever truly desire.

Contains mature themes.

©2006 Dinah Dinwiddie (P)2024 Tantor Media

Made me teary eyed

Jared was definitely a flawed MMC but his redemption was well executed. FMC was lovely as well. Exquisitely written and Jessica Bright is a gifted narrator.

The hazards of hunting a duke.

Well, I’m looking forward to listening to the whole series. I like that the author written about strong characters woman…

Narration hazards

I have listened to my first Julia London series and liked it, so I wanted to listen to this. I can't enjoy the story as the narrator is terrible. The hero sounds sarcastic and condescending, not romantic at all. All voices are over blown and ridiculous, the emotion of the story is lost in all this blustering making everything sound haughty and disapproving.

Fun Story

I did think, on the critical side, that the Hero was made to sound super creepy & skin-crawl-y rather than romantic or flirty. And also, the only other unbelievable thing was that it was hard to believe he was worth fighting for. Truly, he was just not worth it. He needed to suffer much more & to atone severely for the humiliations she was exposed to by him.
Hero was truly terrible. And heroine's constant capitulations until the last 10% of book, along with her idiotic self-blame (rather than his blame) in the last 10% was very door-mattish despite her heroic character. But the rest of the conversations, characters, & story were believably enjoyable.

From Hazards To More Hazards

The moral of this story is how stupid and absurd can the hero and heroine be! They understand the limits the society has set, yet the hero kept disrespecting the heroine and acting like he could not control himself and she acted like she wanted his kisses more than she wanted to protect her reputation. In fact they both acted like they were trying to be caught in compromising situations... The author did not give these two people enough common sense and maturity for their age. Therefore the story reads like a teen wrote it! This story is disappointing...