Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

  • Home
  • About
    • About CBR
    • Getting Started
    • FAQ
    • #CannonBookClub
    • Fan Mail
    • AlabamaPink
    • Book Bingo Reading Challenge
  • Team
    • The CBR Team
    • Leaderboard
    • Recent Comments
    • CBR Interviews
    • Our Volunteers
    • Meet MsWas
  • Genres
    • Review Genres
    • Tags
  • Fight Cancer
    • How We Fight Cancer
    • How You Can Donate
    • CBR Merchandise
    • Supporters and Friends of CBR
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Newsletter Archive
    • Follow Us

One dance is all it takes

One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1) by Tessa Dare

March 19, 2015 by alwaysanswerb 2 Comments

I had so many competing feelings reading One Dance with a Duke. At so many points, many of them mere pages apart, I alternated between wanting to strangle and smooch both of the main characters. I’ll grab the summary quickly from Goodreads here and then move onward into my disorganized thoughts:

“A handsome and reclusive horse breeder, Spencer Dumarque, the fourth Duke of Morland, is a member of the exclusive Stud Club, an organization so select it has only ten members–yet membership is attainable to anyone with luck. And Spencer has plenty of it, along with an obsession with a prize horse, a dark secret, and, now, a reputation as the dashing “Duke of Midnight.” Each evening he selects one lady for a breathtaking midnight waltz. But none of the women catch his interest, and nobody ever bests the duke–until Lady Amelia d’Orsay tries her luck.
In a moment of desperation, the unconventional beauty claims the duke’s dance and unwittingly steals his heart. When Amelia demands that Spencer forgive her scapegrace brother’s debts, she never imagines that her game of wits and words will lead to breathless passion and a steamy proposal. Still, Spencer is a man of mystery, perhaps connected to the shocking murder of the Stud Club’s founder. Will Amelia lose her heart in this reckless wager or win everlasting love?”

Spoiler alert: everlasting love. Ahem. Anyway…

  • Amelia d’Orsay is, in many ways, an excessively normal heroine and person, but it’s that fact that made her, for me, an unusual heroine in the context of all of the romance I’ve read. It seems to be a common occurrence in these books to make the women somehow “more than,” and as much as the wide variety of personality types and uniquely nuanced characterizations among these books speak to the desire of authors to respect women as individuals, it’s still a tendency for the male heroes to see their beloveds as “Not Like All the Other Girls.” The reader, and indeed, Spencer himself, would be hard-pressed to say that about Amelia, because there is so much normal-ness, so much reality in her, but that’s what makes her lovely. She aspires to marry, of course, partly for love, but also because she wants to be a wife. She wants to manage a household, and create menus, and throw parties. When she marries the Duke, she isn’t all discombobulated with worries of “Oh I would never know how to be a proper Duchess!” She’s thrilled to be in the position and looks forward to the spending money and being able to consider herself the Lady of six estates. Where it lately seems in fashion for upper class heroes and heroines to blur class lines and critique the privileges of their positions, Amelia immediately takes to her new status and interacts with the serving staff accordingly (not treating them poorly, of course, but she just immediately steps into a role of giving directions.) And while, as I mentioned, I’m not used to a heroine who so eagerly assumes the trappings of the status quo, because Amelia is an unfailingly kind and empathetic person as well, none of it comes across as unbecoming.
  • She’s also just like us! Not the prettiest girl in the room, Amelia has very, very familiar insecurities about why the Duke picked her, and why he loves her, when it could have been anyone? (Which he doesn’t necessarily assuage, very well, in the beginning, but I’ll get to that.)
  • But GIRL. Your savior complex when it comes to your brother is OUT OF CONTROL. I mean, I get it — Jack is her family, and family means everything to her, and she’s already lost one brother. But Jack is a danger to himself and has no compunction about leaving Amelia high and dry. He’s good at play-acting remorse, but his unwillingness to change and his continual repetition of the same mistakes speak to a guy who just doesn’t care about his sister’s many, many attempts to bail him out. That Amelia continually defends him and enables him AND that her desire to do so leads her into more than one devastating argument with her husband is endlessly frustrating.
  • Spencer is a tough nut, too. He’s got a social anxiety disorder and makes very little effort to connect with people in general, even in small groups or on an individual level. He is SIMPLY AWFUL for some time at telling Amelia his true feelings about her, and between that and his idea that every argument can and should be solved with sexual healing, he leaves Amelia under the impression that he cares less for her than for his horses, except for her breeding potential. Which really isn’t a wild accusation, because he treats his horses extremely well, but can’t communicate anything properly to Amelia if his boner isn’t involved, so he doesn’t appear very considerate of her feelings. It’s his POV chapters that redeem him and prove that his continually saying the wrong thing isn’t out of cruelty, it’s out of cluelessness.
  • When they work together and are on the same page, they’re a great team. When Spencer gives Amelia an inch, she can deduce a mile, so it makes it easier for him to open up to her when she’s already so empathetic and clever. Likewise, Spencer seems to understand what Amelia wants, even if his attempt to deliver on those desires are occasionally clumsy.
  • Their worst arguments are over Jack, the fault for which I have to lay at Amelia’s feet. Still, though, Spencer doesn’t make them any easier by being a closed book, because in doing so it leads Amelia to the least charitable reasons why he might object to her point of view. This is truly a couple that could benefit from a communications seminar, if she could only get Spencer in that crowded room for long enough to absorb it.
  • All together, this strikes me as a relatively believeable couple of the time. Spencer’s proposal to Amelia is based on attraction, but also the knowledge that she’s of a well-bred family that produces a lot of sons, so he feels that the prospects of getting a male heir from her are good. Amelia is also attracted to Spencer, and despite objections over his personality, she understands the match to be advantageous as well. I liked the dynamic that this was a marriage that needed to grow into itself, and that these were two people who had potential together but whose partnership would really only start to come together after the marriage.

This trilogy of books (Stud Club) has a ridiculous double-entendre title which is explained immediately but still doesn’t cease to provide amusement for either the reader or the actual characters in the books. I call this another win for Tessa Dare, even though it’s decidedly less fantastical than any of her books that I’ve previously read.

Filed Under: Fiction, Romance Tagged With: historical romance, Regency Romance, Tessa Dare

Share the post "One dance is all it takes"

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • E-mail
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit
3/19/2015 | Post by alwaysanswerb
Rating:
| Tags: historical romance, Regency Romance, Tessa Dare | Category: Fiction, Romance | 2 Comments

alwaysanswerb

Blessed are the cheesemakers

CBR11 participantCBR11 LevelsCBR10 participantCBR  9CBR 8CBR 7CBR 6CBR 5CBR 4

Recent Reviews:

  • Books about murders that aren’t about murders at all
  • It’s kind of a lot (but that’s ok)
  • (bad “Electric Feel” joke)
  • View all reviews by alwaysanswerb»

Comments

  1. Mrs. Julien says

    March 19, 2015 at 8:17 pm

    What a fantastic review. I *really* like this book for all the reasons you outlined, plus the exceptional smolder, but I also find the structure a bit boggy at points and have to overlook it when re-reading.

    I didn’t enjoy the next book in this series, but the final one (One Night with a Scoundrel?) is a delight and feel like it was when she really hit her stride. The hero is a delight, even if he has slept his way through the ton.

    Reply
  2. Beth Ellen says

    March 20, 2015 at 6:57 am

    I just downloaded this one a few minutes before your review! You’ve made me look forward to it more, despite what I’m sure will be a few annoyances.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.



Cannonball Read is an annual, memorial book challenge to read and review 52 books in a year. Or 26. Or 13. Choose your level and read to meet your goal all while fundraising for the American Cancer Society in the memory of AlabamaPink. Registration Now Open!

Recent Comments

  • Ale on Holiday Book Exchange, thanks Ale!Yay! So glad you love them! Happy Reading!
  • Zirza on Books about murders that aren’t about murders at allI really like these books too, but never quite as much as I think. Still, they're very good reads.
  • emmalita on The Candice Millard CollectionI listened to River of Doubt a few years ago, maybe the first year I participated in Cannonball Read. It was horrific and I definitely...
  • narfna on Thanks, teresaelectro!Thanks! So I'm moving in a month and taking the opportunity to reorganize all of my bookshelves. It's going to be a PROJECT. I think...
  • teresaelectro on Thanks, teresaelectro!Yay! They look good on your shelf!
See More Recent Comments »

Follow Us

CBR Facebook Page. Follow us on Twitter. Follow us on Instagram. CBR on Goodreads CBR on Pinterest.

Support CBR

Give Today. Cannonball Read donates all profits from the site to the American Cancer Society. Help us fight cancer!
Donate Today »

Review Genres

  • Biography/Memoir
  • Book Club
  • Children's
  • Comedy/Humor
  • Cooking/Food
  • Fantasy
  • Fiction
  • Graphic Novel/Comic
  • Health
  • History
  • Horror
  • Mystery
  • News from MsWas
  • Non-Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Religion
  • Romance
  • Science Fiction
  • Short Stories
  • Speculative Fiction
  • Sports
  • Suspense
  • Uncategorized
  • Western
  • Young Adult
  • Z-ADMIN-ONLY-FAQ-BASICS
  • Z-ADMIN-ONLY-FAQ-BOOKS

Book Ratings


a favorite


a great book


a good book


an ok book


a book
you didn't like

Need Help?

Visit our FAQs to find out how to add stars, select genres, and more. Drop us a line if you can't find your answer.

Shop on Amazon and Support CBR

One of CBR11's #CannonBookClubs will be about Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett to coincide with the BBC Miniseries.
Buy it on Amazon today, get a head start, and help us stick it to cancer, one book at a time!

Shop on Amazon and Support CBR

Buy Original Cannonballer Prisco's book and help CBR!

Ad Partner

© 2019 Cannonball Read | Log in