I thought it was going to be something else. The romance aspect was very slow and unbelievable. I thought we were going to see more of the maidens of mayhem, but no. I don't know. It was slow and kind of boring for me.

I received a copy of this as an ARC from NetGalley. This fun and adventurous historical romance is the first in a new series. There is love, lust and intrigue and the main characters have an abundance of chemistry. Can’t wait to read the next book in the series!

DNF at 25%

The premise of this sounded great but unfortunately it's not really working for me. Duchess If You Dare is supposed to be a fun historical romance about dangerous ladies fighting for social justice. But so far a lot of it is just the main characters moralizing about the supposed horrors of prostitution in a pretty condescending way that lacks nuance.

There's talk of "it's not their fault that they have to do this to survive" which might seem fine at first glance, but there is no distinction between women who are forced into it by necessity and women who might choose this profession for other reasons. And there's the main character who "would NEVER!" *gasp* sell her body, and the hero who wonders why she's in this brothel because she has modest clothes with nice fabric. I just found it all immensely irritating. If you're going to lead into a plot about sex trafficking (which is absolutely horrific) and the potential dangers to women engaged in sex work, then approach it in a way that offers nuance. Don't make all the women involved either victims or villains. Some might be victims, some might be villains, but making it so black and white for every character is disempowering and promotes a problematic savior complex. I find this kind of plot really frustrating because it CAN be done well, and I've seen romance authors tackle this difficult subject with grace and respect. This just isn't it.

Additionally, the hero and heroine so far are a bit bland and lack chemistry. So yeah. Not the book for me. We need to do better in how we portray sex workers. I received an advance copy of this book for review via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

A good read with adventure, mystery, thrill and heat Regency style.

Scarlett is very willful and brave. No gentleman can stop her from her task. Ambrose is a man that goes by the rules - until Scarlett gets in his way and now he needs to fix things and protect her...

This book was pretty mediocre. I honestly don't have much to say about it. I started it interested, and got just enough into the plot before realizing I was bored. I skim read the second half of the book. I think the resolution of the book was satisfying enough, but I was not particularly drawn to the characters.

SERIES: The Maidens of Mayhem #1
GENRE: historical romance
TROPES: duke/commoner, mystery-solving
CLIFFHANGER: no
RATING: 4⭐

There is something to be said and loved about a woman who makes the best out of the hand she is dealt with. She is also fierce, loyal, and realistic. Scarlett is a heroine I adore to read about. Her impact is even higher as she is a heroine of a historical fiction novel.

The storyline revolves around the mysterious disappearance of Scarlett's acquaintance. She is trying to look for clues that will help her to find her. And all clues lead to a brothel. There is meets duke of Aylesford, who is once again cleaning his brother's mess. It turns out they are looking for the same person. So they join forces. The new partnership leads to new enemies but also to a romance.
There are a couple of twists and turns, heartfelt conversations, and some steamy moments.

I'm interested in reading more books in this series!

If you enjoy the real-life issues addressed, mystery plotline, strong heroine in your historical novel then this is a book for you.

Thank you #NetGalley for the ARC of Duchess if you Dare by Anabelle Bryant. I have mixed feelings about this book as it was a good premise, but overall it didn’t really engage me. I found most of the plot predictable, but not in an enjoyable forgiving way - the plot fell flat for me and didn’t match what the story was sold as. I thought it would be a female Robin Hood type of story but I couldn’t really find any connections. I think that more romance, character development, chaos, mayhem and conflict could have made a world of a difference to the story.

I have a lot to say about this book and it’s late so my thoughts might be everywhere. First, everyone likes different books- I did not love it.
First positive- I loved has strong Scarlett is. I love that she is protective and won’t accept her fate. She fights for what is right no matter the cost.
Negative- Ambrose (love the name) is so wishy-washy! Sometimes he is willing to fight for her and sometimes not. I could not fall in love with him and he just felt bland to me. It was at the very end when I felt like he went into good protective mode. Sometimes he says he will let Scarlett have free will and other times he tells her what she can and can’t do.
Another thing is that the climax never really rose. There was no dramatic scene- did Scarlett even find out Linie helped kidnap the girls?
I do love the historical fiction.

This really is a 2.5. I enjoyed parts of it and I found myself laughing out loud (especially at Martin, I hope he gets his own book), but nothing about this really stood out to me.

Duchess If You Dare is about Scarlett investigating her missing seamstress, while Ambrose investigates his brothers’ worries about the well being of the women who work at a brothel he frequents. They cross paths and eventually begin working together. Ambrose is a Duke and Scarlett is a commoner (I’m not sure what non-members of the ton are actually called?), and the difference in their stations is a main source of conflict.

I love historical romance and I especially love when they involve mysteries so I thought this would be perfect for me, but it ended up falling short. It could have focused more on the romance or more on the mystery and it would have been great, but it tried to cover them equally and that’s where it lost me. Scarlett and Ambrose don’t start spending significant amounts of time together until chapter 10, and that’s longer than I want to wait in a romance. Once they did start spending time together, they went from being acquaintances to being in love very quickly, which I found a bit jarring. I also didn’t feel very much chemistry between them, and I blame Ambrose entirely. Normally I love a Duke, but he just didn’t interest me. He went around being like ‘I’m a Duke, I can do what I want’ but he almost never did? He was aware of his privilege but unwilling to question it, and I found myself skimming his parts because I couldn’t bring myself to care about how hard it is to be a Duke.

Scarlett was a lot of fun, and I really liked her. I didn’t quite understand her finances and I would have liked to spend more time with her vigilante friends, but I really enjoyed her independence. I also don’t blame her for being so concerned about Linie going missing - with the number of skirts that Scarlett abandons in favour of pants while running around London at night, it doesn’t surprise me at all that she needs a good tailor.

I think the mystery had a lot of potential, but it almost came together too neatly. I don’t find myself saying this very often, but I wouldn’t have minded a few red herrings thrown in there, just to keep me on my toes a bit more.

Altogether, this wasn’t bad - definitely 2.5/5, which is a solid read for me.

As soon as I saw this cover, I knew I wanted this book. It was gorgeous, and the title made this look like it would be a fun read. Sadly, it's one of the books that you read and then immediately forget, there's nothing special about it.

Considering one of our main characters is a Maiden of Mayhem, I expected there to be mayhem. I wanted to see her disturbing things, to cause problems. Instead, she was pretty stationary. The few scenes we got with the Maidens of Mayhem were rushed, and very little happened. This was super disappointing, because I was totally down for a book about women owning it and solving mysteries.

I also just found our main character bland. I kept waiting for her background to be revealed, as most of the novel I'd spent referencing how traumatic and terrible it was. I wanted to know what happened to her mother, and what pushed her to be so passionate about defending women. She didn't have much else, so I wanted to at least know something about her.

Even though the mystery was pretty disappointing, I was hoping that we'd get a romance I could root for. That wasn't the case here. We got terrible insta-love, an instant connection, and lukewarm chemistry. We're constantly told how attracted to each other these characters are, but I couldn't feel it. I just didn't care about either of them.

Although I didn't enjoy this book, I think there's definite potential in this series! The setting was fun, but the execution could've been better...

Thanks to Anabelle Bryant and Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review

The only reason I finished reading this book is because the story was interesting (at least for the first half). By the middle of the book, things became really predictable, and also annoying. It was clear who the villains were, but the story dragged on.
For a large part of the book, I was very miffed with the protagonists. Let's say it was the latter half that didn't live up to expectations:

Honestly, they're both idiots and I dislike their general stupidity. If they both think the other is so smart, why not mention all the suspicious people each has come across and actually compare notes, instead of sharing the bare minimum. I liked that she saved him a few times, but then he saved her too. So it felt less interesting.

Scarlett also really lacked perspective, and I was disappointed with the bonding of the Maidens of Mayhem.

I loved this book! It was very Eniola Holmes-ish set in regency era London. Scarlett and the Maidens of Mayhem fight for justice for the women and children who don’t have voices / aren’t heard in this time period. Scarlett’s good dress maker friend often provides her with everything she needs for fighting crime comfortably: female trousers, comfortable front fastening corsets and adaptations to clothes for carrying hidden weapons. Until, one day, she goes missing and Scarlett wonders if her disappearance has anything to do with the women disappearing from their evening jobs in brothels.

Scarlett is incredibly likeable as a character. I would love to read about the other Maidens of Mayhem and will definitely read more books by Anabelle Bryant! This was just the type of book that I needed after binging on Bridgerton. Scarlett isn’t one of the Ton, but she certainly plays the part well when she needs to uncover information about the disappearances.

The book also discusses part of England’s past that isn’t often discussed - that often, prostitution in that era was an economic necessity for some families. Scarlett may persuade her new love interest, Lord Aylesford, to bring about some changes in the House of Lords / Parliament to protect the rights of these women and bring about the much needed changes to some of the darker boroughs of London. But first, they must work together to find her friend...

The description and cover of this book totally reeled me in, but I found it a bit slow. I did find the groundwork interesting and important to the story however. It just felt like we were getting a lot of B roll in the beginning. Scarlett and Ambrose were great characters, and I am very interested to learn more about the Maidens of Mayhem, which I felt like could have been focused on a bit more in this book.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The blurb was intriguing (as is the cover), but this didn't live up to the promise of the premise for me. "Maidens of Mayhem"/Robin Hood type vibes sounds great, but there's no mayhem and we don't even see much of a Robin Hood premise either. I guess they're subversive, but we don't get a lot of time with the maidens to understand how they were formed, what they do, and what their overall mission is. And sure, Scarlett can fight and use knives, but what else does she do with her day? Her hero isn't terribly exciting--he's a duke who talks all the time about his power to do things because he's a duke, but he also thinks that he can't marry Scarlett because she's a commoner and it's not done (but it's totally fine to sleep with her and ask her to be his mistress). Neither of them felt fully formed, and as a result, their chemistry is lacking.

The story itself is a blend of mystery and romance, but they aren't intertwined properly so it feels disjoined. Also, the mystery feels incomplete--there are certainly more people involved, but once the main baddies are dealt with, that was good enough for Scarlett and Ambrose. And Scarlett seems to forget all about Linie, who started the whole thing? I just couldn't get on board with this one.

This was a cute, but forgettable historical romance. The Maidens of Mayhem are a wonderful idea, but the main characters constant need to place herself in dangerous situations felt like a willful DID staging every time.

In a time when regency reads and strong women are colliding in a big way in order for a book to stand out it needs strong characters, a fast moving and fun plot, and generally a good sense of humor. Unfortunately, Duchess if you Dare missed the mark on all accounts.

We certainly had our strong female lead, which is becoming its own trope in the romance readers world, but this felt disingenuous. I find that in regency-times, what makes a strong female lead even stronger is a strong male lead silently plodding along beside her and our Duke was a bit lacking.

Try as I might this rests on my ever increasing pile of DNF’s.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

It was okay but i am not really into historical romance however i do really love the setting and the dialogue even tho it is clunky sometimes but yeah whatevs

This story of Scarlett and Ambrose has a slow start, but eventually builds into an intriguing mystery and tantalizing romance between a most unlikely pair. Scarlett, as a member of the Maidens of Mayhem, is used to getting into and out of trouble for the sake of others. For Ambrose, this is a completely new experience, both getting into trouble and realizing he needs a woman's help to remain safe and solve the problem at hand. He is willing to embrace the opportunity, however, for a chance to spend more time with Scarlett. And so begins their unusual partnership as they try to determine what has been happening to women who have disappeared from one of London's brothels.

Scarlett and Ambrose are exceedingly likable once you get past the early pages. I found Scarlett's constant insistence that her value be reaffirmed and her ongoing lamentations about the role of women in society to be a bit tedious. I understand it was central to the theme, but it was still overdone in my opinion. I prefer to read a story, not a feminist treatise. But the book does come with a wonderful HEA that is worth getting to and the solution to the mystery was not quite what I expected, which is always a good thing.

All in all, it's an enjoyable read.

Duchess if You Dare was 90% romance and 10% mystery. The storyline needed a more of a balance. The reason Ambrose gets involved in the mystery is laughable at best. Scarlett doesn’t do much detective work into finding the missing seamstress. The climax was rushed and tiresome. This just wasn’t the book for me.

Duchess If You Dare by Anabelle Bryant is a historical romance, the first in a new series titled The Maidens of Mayhem.

Our main heroine, Scarlett, is a commoner and street wise young woman who is one fourth of a team of women leading the cause of protecting the innocent and demanding justice for those who can't demand it themselves. Scarlett is the bastard of a kept woman who was murdered when Scarlett was just a child. She has grown up protecting herself and fighting for protection of others. When a seamstress she is acquainted with goes missing Scarlett takes it upon herself to find out what happened leading her to dive down a rabbit's hole of mystery and danger.

Ambrose, Duke of Aylesbury has always done what's right and expected of the title. He's very of the mindset that he's the duke and he can do whatever he pleases and states it several times in fact. His brother, Martin, often drags him into trouble with countless debts and shenanigans that Ambrose must get him out of. It's one of these encounters that brings Ambrose to meet Scarlett and the two team up to solve a mystery.

I thought the overall plot of the book was great one I haven't seen before in a historical romance. The characters were great and I thought Martin was hilarious...he was probably my favorite character in fact. Ambrose and Scarlett's romance was believable and I thought they had great chemistry even with them constantly being stubborn thinking they couldn't love one another. One last thing that I really liked was the mystery, it kept me reading so much later than anticipated just to find out who the villain was.

As I said before the plot was really unique and I did like it but I did find it a little far fetched. I don't think people of the ton would bother themselves at all with missing girls. At points it felt the story was stalling and slow but towards the last 40% or so it picked up and things were moving fast. One thing I really did not care for happens at the very end involving the Maidens of Mayhem and seemed so out of character for Scarlett.

Overall I would say this is a quick read and it will satisfy a historical romance itch in a pinch but I probably will not continue the series.

Thank you so much to Kensington Books Zebra for sending me a copy via Netgalley to review in exchange for an honest review.