Dancing with the Duke by Suzanna Medeiros

⭐⭐⭐💫

The last prompt I had to fill for the first board of the Winter's Kiss reading challenge board 1 was a book with cursive writing on the cover. I didn't have too much time, so I went through the novellas I had on my kindle and stumbled across Dancing with the Duke by Suzanna Medeiros. This is the prequel novella (0.5) in her Landing a Lord series.

Alex, the Duke of Clarington, is tasked with dancing with his younger sister's  best friend during her debut at Almack's. Since Charlotte is debuting at an older age of 22, they are hoping that dancing with him as her first foray will help garner interest from other members of the ton. It's been several years since Alex has seen Charlotte and is surprised at how much she's grown. When the dance works and Charlotte garners a lot of attention from eligible men around town, he starts getting jealous. When Charlotte's father heads back to the country and Charlotte moves into the Clarington house, they start to run into each other a lot more often.

This was a simple, cute and straightforward novella. I haven't read Suzanna Medeiros before and thought that the writing style was fine. I know that it's hard to really develop a fleshed out story when it comes to short novellas like this, but it did feel a little too rushed. That said I am intrigued to try a full length novel by Suzanna. While rushed, I thought it was well written and I liked how quickly established the characters felt. I don't really have much to say about this. It's a sweet, quick, tropey read. I'm not sure how it leads into the series as a whole since we really only see Alex's sister, but from what I could tell the first book isn't about her.

I enjoyed my time, it just didn't completely blow me away. I feel like that's harder to do with novellas like this that lead into a series. Like I mentioned before, I would try another of Suzanna's full length novels to see what she does with more pages. If you are looking for a quick historical novella that gives you exactly what it is, then pick this up. The only really bad thing I want to mention, the cover is spicier than the novella; just a little bit of false advertisement.

Have you read Dancing with the Duke?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Dancing with the Duke, Suzanna Medeiros, 3.5-stars, 0 days, eBook, 110 pages, published in 2012, indie published