Olivia and the Masked Duke by Grace Callaway

🍎🍎🍎🍎

The fourth book I finished for the Historical Romance Readathon was Olivia and the Masked Duke by Grace Callaway. This is the first book in her Lady Charlotte's Society of Angels series. This was also chosen as the group book for the readathon! It covered the prompts wallflower, purple cover, Grace Callaway novel, indie published, clinch cover, duke in the title, part of a series, Scottish and spy! I was also able to apply this to the Summer of Swoon prompt BIPOC author on board 2.

Our main heroin is Olivia. She is in group of three friends that are known as the willflowers. She has had a crush on one of her dad's friends. When she was young he saved her from drowning and since then they have had a special connection. When she was in her late teens, but before coming out in society, she finds him in a tryst with a widow and from that moment on wants him as more than a friend. Our Duke of Hadleigh, Ben has always been there to look after and take care of Olivia. He's been through a lot in his time, including a marriage gone wrong and dealing with addiction. Of course with the age gap he tries to push against the relationship and feels too old for her.

This was really fun! It took me entirely too long to get the Charlie's Angels references though. Once it finally hit me though it was kind of obvious. Where this fell for me a little bit was in the age gap part of the romance and how much Ben pushed against the relationship and then put his wife's machinations on Olivia. I understood the trauma and grief that he was still dealing with from that time. It just felt like it happened more than I wanted it to. I mean Olivia saves his life and he pushes her away right after talking about how different she is. I wanted him to come to terms earlier and for the major conflict at the end to be more external than a mix.

I loved Olivia's friends and will definitely continue the series. I'm also hoping Charlotte gets a novella or an hea as well. Maybe woven into the other books in the background or something? This was a lot steamier than I was expecting and it was sweet to see how perfect their needs matched each other. Ben prefers a more dominant style in bed and Olivia is more than happy to submit to him in the bedroom. I also wished that they would've reconciled the work they were both doing earlier, but I understood why it was laid out the way it was. I just wanted them to work together to solved the case earlier than they did.

I'm happy to finally get to read a Grace Callaway book. She's been on my tbr forever and I'm so happy to not only finally try her out, but add another indie author to my list. She is an indie author and I'm always happy to find more historical indie authors. They're a lot harder to find than the other subgenres, but there are a lot more lately. The next book is set to release in September of this year and I can't wait! 

Have you read Olivia and the Masked Duke?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Olivia and the Masked Duke, Grace Callaway, 4-stars, 1 day, paperback, 368 pages, published in 2021