Review: Taming a Duke's Wild Rose

Taming a Duke's Wild Rose by Tammy Andresen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Taming a Duke’s Wild Rose is the second book in the Taming the Heart series, although it works perfectly fine as a standalone novel. Such is how I read the story, and there was nothing that caused me confusion. I am now interested in reading the prior book in the series, as I’m curious as to how the story played out, but it isn’t a necessity for me to understand the other books in the series.

As a whole, it was a very enjoyable read. It was an extremely quick read, meaning the events hit you one after the other. Such a thing is wonderful: when a read is this of this length, you need it to be short and snappy, the action and romance hitting you with every turn of the page. This is exactly what happens with this one: from the very first page the romance is evident, and shortly after the action starts and refuses to let up until the story is over.

I’ll admit I’s not quite a full four star rating, but it was so close I had to round it up. It seemed unfair to round it down, especially when I take into consideration how addicted to the story I was. Putting it down was impossible, every time I reached the end of a chapter I told myself I would read ‘just one more’ and before I knew what was happening it was four in the morning and I’d finished reading (although, this just works to highlight how I really need to start books at a more appropriate time and maybe then I’ll have a normal sleeping pattern).

What stopped me from truly enjoying it was the speed at which the romance developed. I know in short stories the romance happens very quickly: however, it felt far too much like instalove for me. They see each other and their views change: suddenly they’ve found their missing half. Whilst there was a lot of development and explanation for how the two felt, whilst we were shown examples of how they did come to love each other, I felt as though the story occurred over too few days for this to truly be the case. I know it all links in with how the story progressed, but it did feel a little bit too quick for me. I’m a lover of slow burning romances, and this wasn’t quite the speed I like. Yes, I had fun with it; however, I would have liked their romance to burn more than it did.

Overall, though, it was a thoroughly addictive read.

As a final note, I would like to thank Aurora Publicity for allowing me to read this in exchange for a review: I had a lot of fun with this one, and will certainly be interested in reading more of the author’s work in the future.

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