Her Duchess to Desire is a queer historical romance by Jane Walsh. Letty, an unmarried working woman has been given the chance to design the London home of the Duchess of Hawthorne, who has decided to renovate her house to keep her estranged husband away from his ducal duties. While Letty wants to show off her skill, the duchess, Anne, has been slowing her progress and the two embark on an affair.

My favourite aspect of this book was the sense of queer chosen family which I was not expecting. Letty and Anne’s friends around them are a huge support as they both navigate the relationship they find themselves in.

The romance itself felt rushed and there was a portion in the middle of the book that felt slow and lost pace with the rest of the story. However, I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would from the description, there is definitely more to the story than the blurb mentions. I don’t think there is a lot of sapphic historical fiction out there and I’m glad to see another added to the genre!

When her husband and his male lover return to London after a decade on the continent, duchess Anne has no interest in sharing a home with them. To keep them at bay, she hires a designer to remodel the house. Letitia is unconventional but has a unique gift for designing spaces to match the personality of her clients. She and Anne soon start an affair. But when the duke moves into the house despite the chaos, can Anne and Letty keep their budding relationship alive?

This is an intriguing story with fascinating, likable characters. Anne and Letty's affair is intense, but their social positions work against them. I enjoyed seeing how they worked through their issues to win their HEA.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

This book is everything I expected it to be! I really enjoyed it! It was the first historical romance I have read (one not actually written in that period) and I have to say I will definitely come back for more from this author.

This is beautiful sapphic historical romance. I thought the characters were strong and well developed. Overall, it was quite engaging. Anne the Dutchess aka the Ice Queen and Letty the dashing designer were quite lovable and were an amazing match. I recommend 4 stars.


Thank you NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I had a lot of fun reading Jane Walsh’s newest Regency romance, Her Duchess to Desire. Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres, and it’s been a while since I actually picked up a Regency romance, especially one with Sapphic characters. I’m very glad I was able to read this one.

This is the story of Anne, the Duchess of Hawthorne and Letitia (Letty) Barrow who is trying to build her own interior design business which is made harder as she is a woman as well as an unmarried mother. When Anne decides to renovate Hawthorne House in London (mainly to keep her philandering husband from coming home) she hires Letty. The longer they are together though, the more Anne’s icy heart melts.
Ms. Walsh did a good job making the setting fit the time, right down to using some of the words and phrases common to the period. The characters are likeable and well-developed. Letty does seem a bit unrealistic to me. In reality, a woman of her standing, especially an unmarried mother and a fairly out lesbian, would have never been allowed near folks such as the Duke and Duchess, but this is fiction so I just went with the flow and enjoyed the story. It is a nice tale, low angst, and definitely romantic.

If you love historical fiction like I do, especially Regency romances, then try this novel.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for an honest review.

A fun, engaging sapphic romance which was quick to read. Anna and Letty were great characters with distinct personalities which complimented each other quite well. Both the characters had clear motivations and reasons for their actions. I especially loved the meetings of the queer friendship group at the tavern - for both the humour and emotional impact. The discussion of the treatment of queer people in those times and their reputations was also an aspect of the book I really liked - although it could have been more in depth. Overall, this was a strong character led book, but slightly lacking depth in certain areas.

It's not often that I read historical romance but this one was actually kinda good. However, portraying the duchess as the ice queen of London society didn't really match to how she acted around Letitia. Anne was a bit cold-hearted to Letty at first but gradually warmed up to her due to their mutual attraction to each other. I would say she's more like an ice princess that gradually thawed after meeting her love interest.

The writing and the dialogue matched with the era the characters were in and it was great. But overall, I think this book was average at its best. I didn't feel that wow factor, especially with how things came to a resolution. However, I still liked this and would recommend it for people who are in search of regency romances.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
Her Duchess to Desire is Jane Walsh’s third sapphic Regency. While it is a stand-alone, and billed as such, there are overlapping characters with her two prior books. One of Walsh’s strongest points is her ability to build a strong, positive queer community in a time period that is known to have sometimes been hostile to them.
I love an Ice Queen heroine who melts in the hands of the right person, and Anne is a great personification of that. She is largely estranged from her husband, and prefers it that way, but is also longing for companionship…from a woman. Despite having her walls up, she has this lovely softness and vulnerability to her.
Letty is also a cool character, and I love that she has her own interior design business. She’s also much more open about who she is, which is a very daring thing, considering the time period, but also exactly what Anne needs to come out of her shell. Seeing the romance blossom between them, even with Anne’s reticence, was beautiful.
I also like how the depiction of the marriage between the Duke and Duchess ultimately wasn’t treated as an obstacle to be gotten rid of, given there were reasons for queer people to enter into heterosexual marriages, and both had similar reasons for wanting to enter and continue in the marriage, which don’t radically change by the end. The way this is balanced with the HEA between the central couple is well-done, even if not every reader will be into it, because of their rigid definitions of what’s considered “cheating.”
I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a slightly unconventional sapphic historical romance.

I want everyone to read queer historical romance. I want to fill the whole world with queer historical romance. I want to stand on the roof of every independent bookstore in the world and scream at customers as they walk by that that they have to walk into this building and buy queer historical romance. I want to throw queer historical romance like confetti at every Pride parade, book fair, and wedding I ever go to and I want it to be THIS queer historical romance.

I WANT EVERYONE TO READ THIS QUEER HISTORICAL ROMANCE MASTERPIECE.

Over the span of 3 queer historical romance novels, Jane Walsh has stolen my heart and taken control of my brain. This series is everything I have ever wanted in a sapphic historical romance - again, and again, and again. The prose is witty and light and the romance is heart aching and beautiful. It is a regency romance about queer liberation and profound safety. About being unabashedly yourself and about using the privilege you have to care for the community around you.

This book is a sapphic romance between an ice princess duchess who hates the cold in a lavender marriage with a gay duke and a curvy butch single mother who builds safer worlds for herself and her community as an interior designer. This romance is raw and mature and emotional and community building and self affirming. There are big flowy dresses and broody dukes and loving dandies and social scandal and DID I MENTION A CURVY HISTORICAL BUTCH??

I loved this book just as much as the last one and you cannot make me choose a favorite.

The books in this series - and this one in particular - feel like the purest distillation of my love for regency romance and my authentic queer self. This book so fully embodies what reading romance can be like for me as a queer woman, and I would like 7 billion copies so that I can stand on the rooftops and throw them at every single person in this world.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bold Strokes for this absolute perfection in ARC form.

This is a regency romance with a twist - both the Duke and Duchess of Hawthorne are gay. In a time where that is still punishable by prison time.

Anne, Duchess of Hawthorne, is furious that her husband has returned to England from Paris, where he has lived fairly openly as a gay man, ruining his reputation in the process. She has done the opposite, known as a cold, discerning, by-the-book Duchess. The Duke's return, with his lover, seems to set something loose in Anne- and she hires Letty to redesign the house, with the intent of keeping the Duke from returning to it and resuming the powers and positions that she has been filling since his departure. Letty's and Anne's romance seems romance novel-worthy, filled with misunderstandings, longing, hot interludes, and eventual love, with a twist.

This is worth a read if you like Regency romance.

What a perfectly delightful romance! Letty and Anne are such vivid characters with deep passions and ideas. Together they are electric. This is the first time I’ve read this author but it won’t be my last. Excellent read

Anne, the Duchess of Hawthorne, is tired of her reputation as the Ice Queen of London society. She resolves to leave behind her cold-hearted marriage to the duke—and to find a woman to keep her warm at night. Perhaps the dashing designer she hires to transform her Mayfair estate can also help her to transform her life.
Letitia Barrow has big dreams of running her own interior design business. The opportunity to reinvent the Hawthorne estate is the job that will finally establish her as a leading designer among the ton. The duchess might make her weak in the knees, but giving in to temptation could risk everything she’s working so hard to build.
The designer and the duchess embark on an affair, with renovations to the house in full swing—and the renovations in their hearts well underway. Then, unexpectedly, the duke returns home and their feelings are tested. Can London’s hottest new designer melt the Ice Queen forever?
This is a pretty good book which is a lot of different things that have been able to make it all for the story to read.
The Duke is gay and the Duchess is too.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher and NetGalley. This in no way affects my opinion of this book which I read and reviewed voluntarily.

Beautiful!

Anne, Duchess of Hawthorne hires Letitia Barrow to redesign their Mayfair estate in the hope it is going transform her life. Letitia just wants to be a success so she can fulfil her dreams to run her own interior design business and Anne’s job is going to be the one to help her do that. The last thing she expected was to be tempted by wayward thoughts about Anne and when they embark on an affair, only fate can decide what will happen to them both.

What a fantastic story, not like anything I have read before so it was exciting an new and captured my imagination right from the start. Everything is so regal, from the characters, to the lifestyle, to the exquisite designs that Letitia draws up and produces. I just closed my eyes and could picture it all perfectly.

It was the element of forbidden romance between Anne and Letitia that had me hooked because it was delicious, came with risks, and none of us knew what the consequences would be. As Anne and Letitia explored things between them, it was fun, flirty, and sneaky but it was genuine and together they just brought out the best in each other. Anne had a reputation as an Ice Queen but it was clear that was reserved for her status and power, it didn’t extend to Letitia and so it was nice to get to know her so intimately.

There was one wonderful scene, which promptly leant itself to another equally wonderful scene in the book and those were the ones where I just knew Anne and Letitia were just wonderful women. Those scenes were inspired and made me admire all the sacrifices they were potentially going to have to make to actually be together. There was a lot at stake, but their matters of the heart proved that status and getting your dreams might not outweigh the powerful feelings and love you can share with another.

I really enjoyed the story and actually look forward to reading more of Jane’s books, especially those that are historical romance like Her Duchess To Desire as it was just something regal that I loved.

This was a fun Sapphic regency romance filled with great characters.

I loved Letty and her determination to make a life and a career for herself, whilst also refusing to hide the parts of her deemed 'shameful' (being a single mother and being relatively open about her queerness for the time.)

Meanwhile, the Duchess, Anna, is a great ice-queen characters who is, of course, a little bit of a softie underneath. Both came alive on the page and the connection between the two is great and develops in a believable way. There's some truly lovely scenes between them; I think my favs are the ice skating and when Anna is at Letty's house after the Duke arrives homes.

The SCs were also great. There's the Duke & Sir Phin, who are set up as sort of protagonists to Anna to begin with. Her desire to stop them moving in drives a lot of her actions for the first half of the book, but once she is willing to see more to them, we, too, see more to them. (Though, it slightly irritates me the Duke wasn't just honest from the start, but then there wouldn't be a book, so I won't complain too much.)

There's also Letty's son, Robert, who is frustrating, and I did occasionally want to shake him, because that young man has one hell of a chip on his shoulder, but I can understand how it got there.

Then there's Letty's queer friends, who are always great whenever they appear on page. The scenes at the oyster tavern were both a lot of fun and then heartwrenching once things took a turn. (Side note: I would like to add when Anna goes there with Letty to my list of their favourite scenes.)

As hinted at by the heart-wrenching scenes mentioned above, this story touches upon the issues of the era, in particular it's treatment of queer people. It could, however, have gone further in this exploration of the underbelly of the era, especially in regards to the Duke and Duchess' position in the aristocracy and their wealth and privilege.

Overall though, this was a great read and anyone looking for a Sapphic regency romance will most likely enjoy it!

I received a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for a honest review.

The cover is beautiful and caught my eye. Any Regency historical romance by Jane Walsh is a must read for me. Anne, the Duchess of Hawthorne is known for her propriety. When her husband the Duke to returns from France where he has lived for the last decade she is a bit lost. She lives for her purpose in running the Dukedom and now with his return everything is changing. To keep him from moving into their London Estate she decides to renovate and hires Letitia Barrow as the interior designer. Letitia wants to grow her business away from merchant class of her neighborhood. At first she doesn't understand her task isn't really to succeed but to keep the Duke out.

These characters are wonderful. People you think are villains really aren't (okay maybe I still dislike Robert). Letitia being able to run a business with a child out of wedlock and living openly queer to her neighborhood probably couldn't really happen. But I still enjoyed the story and can compare to modern day, choosing to live for yourself or follow social norms. And the author is mindful of the real consequences of the laws in the time period. I enjoyed little touches like the ice skating scene or dinner among friends. And I like that something like indoor plumbing as a novelty is included which was just beginning in the time period. I read this all in one sitting and can't recommend it enough if you enjoy sapphic historical fiction. Thank you to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. (4.5 stars)

Perhaps it was due to my lack of sufficient knowledge of English, it is already a bit difficult for me to understand some current vocabulary, so finding so many archaic and disused words has caused some trouble for my complete understanding of history. So surely some things have been lost to me along the way, so I apologize.

But I think that more or less the intention has been understood, although that does not mean that what has happened makes a lot of sense to me, but who knows, things may have happened that way which would have been really interesting and a lot of fun , actually.

Without going into too many details, a woman like Letty doesn't seem logical that she would have been very successful in her days, both professionally and resisting gossip and surely outright rejection. And the Duchess, not even with all the power that the nobility gives, does it seem probable that she could have also escaped scorn and slight.

But wouldn't that have been wonderful?

I appreciated the complicity of this romance, Anne and her husband had a marriage that is beneficial to them both. He's however left her to deal with the backlash. Over the years she's turned into a new person to deal with the situation. In comes Letty a free spirit who doesn't want to hide her true self. I truly enjoyed Anne's evolution and Letty's discoveries. Both women grow together and apart. A lovely story.
I am not sure if all the external things were historically actuated but the real stories of Annie, her husband and Letty was spectacular

Okay, I have always loved historical romances and they are even better when they are queer. Jane Walsh does an amazing job of creating lovable characters that grow and change and work on their flaws as the story progresses.

Having a single mother who wants to be an architect and exclusively sleeps with women with zero shame? What could be better. An ice queen duchess who wants her home completely redesigned so she can scheme against her husband in peace? Love it, fabulous. Letitia and Anne are the definition of a match made in heaven. The book (like their relationship) is fairly fast paced, I read it in an afternoon because I just couldn't put it down!

If you are a stickler for historical accuracy you probably would have a hard time, what with all the openly queer characters in 1800s England with almost no repercussions, but I overlooked it because part of fiction is setting down preconceived notions and letting their world draw you in.

I am always excited for more queer mass-market paperback romances and this did not disappoint. I loved how the relationship between Anne and Lettie developed and I especially liked how healthy the communication was between them and how well they negotiated boundaries. However, I didn't like some of the dialogue, every sentence Robert said didn't feel like things a real person would say, and the second to last chapter where Anne and Lettie were talking about their life of rebuilding and growing their hearts felt cheesy and weird. Other than that I thought this book was great.

I absolutely adored this! Jane Walsh’s previous book, Her Countess to Cherish, was one of my favourite books of last year so I was so excited to see that she had a new release. This book follows Anne, the Duchess of Hawthorne who is known for being a stickler for the rules and an upstanding member of society, despite the less than stellar reputation of her Husband. She is in need of redecorating her house (maybe as a way of preventing her husband from moving back in), and is given the name of Letitia Barrow to do the job. After spending so much time together, the chemistry between the pair cannot be ignored, regardless of what society might dictate.

Jane Walsh has a fantastic ability to draw the reader into her stories and her characters lives. From start to finish, I was fully captivated by the story and the characters, and honestly couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. There were so many sweet moments, some subtle flirting and steam at just the right moments. Both the characters were completely loveable but flawed, and the side characters were well-developed. In fact I think a lot of the side characters, some of them old and some of them new, brought so much heart and charisma to the story.

Readers that love ‘ice queen’ characters will also adore the development of Anne’s character, and her journey to letting go and greater acceptance of herself. While the book may take some historical liberties in this plot (although I’m not an expert on the matter and cannot say for sure), it doesn’t take you out of the story at all. In fact, the lgbt+ advocacy and community plots in the book brought me so much joy. Overall, the romance was wonderful, the plots were engaging and the characters were loveable.