Her Night with the Duke is the first book I have read by Diana Quincy and I loved it! The story pulled me in instantly with great dialogue and steamy angst.

Elliot Townsend, Duke of Huntington, and Lady Delilah Chambers find themselves stranded at an Inn during a terrible rainstorm. They meet and instantly have a connection to each other. After a night of passion, reality sets in and it is revealed that Elliot is the man promised to wed Lady Delilah's step daughter. From there, plenty of obstacles ensue and the couple find themselves on a forbidden path to love.

Highly recommend this book! Thank you NetGalley for ARC! Can't wait to read more of Diana Quincy's books!

This is my first Diana Quincy and I will definitely be back for more! This is the first in a new series. She also has Accidental Peers (4 books) and Rebellious Brides (4 books) as series.

This premise totally sounded like a book I would not like. Leela is on the road heading to see her step daughter and meet her almost betrothed for a house party and due to the rain, shelters at an inn. She meets a stranger, Elliot Townsend, and they have a night of passion. As she continues on her journey the next day, she finds out that the man almost married to her own step daughter is the same man she just spent the night with. Wow. Talk about awkward. I was a bit anxious to read this hahaha. I am usually not a huge fan of early sex in books, and I also don't love when the hero/heroine is promised to another (like a love triangle) but I adored this book. I was really pulled in by Daina Quincy's writing.

Elliot, or Hunt, was a hero I liked, even though he comes off at first like a total scoundrel. But I felt like he did stand up for himself to Daina. He's usually a predictable man, someone who plans out the aspects of his life and follows them through. Staid. Steady. Completely unlike his retrobate dead brother. Rumors say there is a curse on his family where irresponsibility and scandal covers every other generation. He is from the scandal laden generation and must do what he can to avoid scandal and be an upstanding member of society. Yet from the moment he meets Leela, it's like he's lost his mind. He does things that are out of character for him. He has a hard time controlling himself. He wants to do what he can to make Leela happy and Leela insists it's to marry her step daughter and make her happy.

Leela in this book truly shines. I am usually all about the heroes, and while I did like Hunt, I LOVED Leela. She was so fun. She is super independent and while her pride went a liiiiiittle far for me in some parts, it was easy to forgive. She was wed to her step children's father at the age of 17. Her step daughter was 9 and her step son was 19. After being married for 9 years she found herself a widow. She's the daughter of the Mad Marquess. Mad because he dared marry and Arab woman, the daughter of a shopkeeper. With her low social status on her mother's side and her mixed heritage, she has never fully been accepted by the ton and has faced catty remarks her entire life. Even once she secured her husband, an Earl, it continues. As a dowager countess, she just wants the freedom to explore the world, learn her culture, and have financial independence from her step son.

Give this book a try if:
-you like a forbidden love trope. Stepdaughters betrothed? Pretty forbidden...
heroine with a diverse cultural background, she has an Arab mother and has traveled the world meeting some of her family members and learning their way of life
-a steamy read – plenty of partial scenes, full length scenes, fade to black scenes. Not erotica but it definitely doesn't shy away from the sex
-a bit of angst. There's no villain or mystery to solve here, but there's plenty of obstacles for the couple to overcome. Society, cultural, financial, family, I didn't know how they would make it work, but it does!
-I can't call this heroine older...she's only 26 (? I think) but she feels like the older woman here. She's similar age to Hunt and I love that he wanted her instead of the new debutante.
-An independent heroine! A secret writer heroine! A working heroine!
-Very light enemies to lovers. They have some animosity throughout the book and it leads to some great dialogue and steamy angst.

This story did have a few obstacles I wasn't a huge fan of. Also there was quite a bit of back and forth about why they couldn't be together. Some parts dragged a tiny bit, more of when Hunt was still engaged to her stepdaughter (but that could have been me just being really anxious over the situation). STILL. I LOVED parts of this book. There is a scene where she chases the duke down and chucks a golf ball at his head. I loved her then. I loved her before but she might be one of my favorite heroines at that point. And what follows is so steamy and good and then filled with angst and stomped on my heart and I'm pretty sure my eyes actually filled with tears. Me, who thought her emotions dead at this point.

Writing this review has filled me with so much emotion about the book I want to read it again. I think I'll go buy another by her. Can't wait to try her again. Thank you NetGalley for introducing me to a new forever author for me. All these opinions are my own gushing love for this novel.

What an exciting book! This was a very intricate story of a heroine from Arab-British aristocracy background meets a 'second son' duke. This tale starts out with a very erotic encounter (no sweet kiss story here) in an inn. The heroine is the step mother of the hero's soon-to-be betrothed. The heroine faces an evil step son, a judicial society and other negatives to find herself and her family. She travels to North Africa and becomes a word renown author. The hero is a duke whose older brother was a wastrel and he has spent the past four years "repaying, mending and unruffling". He is 30 years old and the heroine is 28 years old. I am in raptures because I like a good love story where the couple is close in age. The story us still very exciting from there and it kept my interest from first page to last. No chapter skipping here. What I liked best about this story were the characters. They both grew from the beginning and they didn't seem to have common interests, but they grew close with the travelling. The duke realized that he had to first be man and then a Duke. The heroine had to realize that she wasn't an oddity and she had merit of her own. The story was very well written with action and adventure, but the story was not dependent on anything but the romance. I felt the love the couple had for each other. I re commend this story with 5 stars.

So! Much! Drama! This historical romance is the perfect read for anyone who devours telenovella or soaps, and I was here for it! Recommended! 4.5 stars!

One Night with the Duke is a well written love story by Diana Quincy. The characters were well crafted and the prose exemplary. I particularly liked that the heroine wasn’t your average milk and water high society miss. That dash of spice from her heritage really gave the story some meat. Her social adversity really made the character realistic. I truly enjoyed the story from beginning to end.

My one issue was that the couple was very on again off again. I wish there had been a little more fluidity to their love timeline once his engagement was put to the side. It seemed like it was so rocky it was almost as if they were glutton for punishment in their relationship. Especially given how cruelly he acted towards her leaving her in a field on his estate.

I also felt that when he did leave her there it would have been a great opportunity for the plot for something more drastic to occur. I was feeling a storm and her getting caught in it and her becoming ill, or something along those lines. Even her just leaving right that moment and walking to the nearest village to catch a ride back to town. It really made me kind of sigh when she ended up just going back to the house and them reconciling so quickly.

Honestly, I wish they hadn’t embarked upon the affair and would have rather preferred her to make him work for it after leaving her like he did. Personally, I would have gone directly to her preparing to leave and him begging her forgiveness in town and their relationship developing that way instead of having an affair. I feel like that part was almost superfluous to the plot and instead made them both seem very wishy-washy in their emotions.

I am a bit of a sucker for a good murder plot in my romance, so I did miss that type of drama in this book. The suspense was lacking, but I feel the emotions made up for that piece of the plot.

I did really enjoy this book; I just wish the end had been a little smoother feeling. Overall though I think this is a winner. Between the characters and the plotline, I think it was well thought out and delivered well. I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of this book for free to review with my honest, unbiased opinion. I will now be scouring for more by this wonderful author.

Leela and Elliot have a night of passion and know they will never see each other again. But they do run into each other again and the heartache starts. You can't help but like Leela and hope she finds the love she deserves. But will she?

Lady Delilah Chambers and Elliot Townsend, Duke of Huntington, find themselves stranded at the same ramshackle inn during a horrible rainstorm. They are instantly attracted to each other and give in to one night of anonymous passion. But things turn sour when they meet again the next day and its revealed that Leela is actually the stepmother of Hunt’s prospective bride.

This appears to be the first book in a new series, and it’s my first time reading this author. The writing was enjoyable and I would try this author again, but this story felt like a track meet with SO many hurdles for the couple to overcome! Leela is Hunt’s would-be stepmother-in-law, she doesn’t want to hurt her beloved stepdaughter, her stepson both loathes and lusts after her, she’s “not accepted” because she’s half-Arab, and she’s also the secret author of travel journals. If that wasn’t enough, Hunt is driven by being respectable and scandal-free because his dead brother, the previous duke, was a spendthrift rake. For me, it was all a bit much.

* I received an ARC and this is my honest review. #HerNightWithTheDuke #NetGalley