I love the premise: disabled heroine who has secretly been half in love with the hero for years. He kind of randomly comes around to noticing her, they squabble, there are dashes of angst, but it was all just too verbose for me. I found myself skimming the inner monologues when they became repetitive and went on for pages, which led to me missing out on some plot points, but I just couldn’t bring myself to be patient enough to read the dozens of paragraphs of the hero’s thoughts that could have been summed up in a couple of sentences. Towards the end, the dialogue got wordy too, with the protagonists repeating themselves and going in circles, so I rushed through the last several pages. The mystery plot is nominally interesting but not enough for me to read the rest of the trilogy, even if I am bit interested in seeing the Earl and Persephone lock horns. But the heroine of the third book is very unappealing to me. Still, I really liked the frenemies-to-lovers storyline, and the self-deprecating heroine, so it ends up just shy of three stars (2.5 stars) ( )

A satisfying romance, nothing exceptional.

This time it's the overlooked neighbor girl who marries the Duke. Everyone except the Duke realizes that she'd be perfect as his duchess but he's always seen her as part of his childhood, always conveniently near.

Short,fast read. ( )