Scarlett Peckham

Archer, Duke of Westmead, needs an heir. Poppy is a neighbor and a botanist. Archer's sister Charlotte hires Poppy to decorate for a ball to find her brother's bride. Poppy and Archer are discovered in a compromising situation and are forced to marry: Poppy for a greenhouse and Archer for his heir. Meanwhile, they both have secrets that complicate the situation.
While I enjoyed this story, a lot is going on. The two main characters are fine, though I would have liked to see more about Archer's secret and how Poppy handles it; I felt the discovery was rather abrupt and since it's so unusual to find this (no spoilers) in historical romances, I would have liked more about it, but it just pops up towards the end of the book. Charlotte, Archer's sister, is great and adds lots of fun to the story. All in all, an interesting book.… (meer)

The central characters of The Duke I Tempted, a botanist who chafes against the limited prospects of an unmarried woman in business and a duke suffering from a hidden pain, are both interesting in themselves. The differences between the leads' understandings of what marriage and family mean and what they're getting from their relationship are central to the novel, and Peckham does a good job of illustrating the sources of conflict between them. The author skirts and undermines a lot of the sexist conventions common in historical romance--patronizing, controlling male leads exercising their lordly privileges without criticism, silly submissive heroines, sex shaming--while still paying close attention to the effects of gender and class on characters' relationships and understanding of their own power.
The biggest problem with this novel is that it desperately needs a B-plot. Lacking one, it's twice as long as it needs to be and struggles to maintain a sense of conflict in its focus on the romantic arc. The main characters fight a lot and apologize to one another a lot, and it often seems like their fights are rehashing the same themes over and over again, resulting in the apologies feeling less impactful and the whole book blurring together in my memory. Although I found their conflict and romance interesting, their relationship is not complex enough to be the sole focus of the novel, and my interest in it only waned as the book stretched onwards.… (meer)