The Taming of the Duke

Eloisa James takes on alcoholism in this beautiful love story of Rafe and Imogen. Immogen, a widow now, finds a love that is shared by her duke as opposed to her marriage where her love was not returned. I loved the family theme in this novel with adults sharing their love with their children and not just shut up in the nursery

Eloisa James is one of my love/hate writers. I enjoyed this story. I liked Imogen. I especially loved Rafe. He was an interesting character and the star of the book. I previously read two books from this series and both were disappointments. This one was a winner.

I Struggle to fault Eloisa's work. Regency romance that will keep you entertained till the end. I have read most of her work ; while this is entertaining she has definitely produced better , more captivating reads

I picked up this book after having read Kiss Me, Annabel, and then Much Ado About You (yes, out of order). What initially struck me about Kiss Me, Annabel and prompted me to immediately buy volumes 1 and 3 of the series was Ms. James' heartwarming and genuinely charming portrait of the relationship between the sisters and their friends. Much Ado About You continued to charm me, since, being the first volume, the sisters are presented in full-force, before they are separated by their respective plotlines. In this volume, however, the eldest two sisters are barely present, having made their love matches and living out their happily ever afters, and Josie, the youngest, only show up for about half of the narrative. The circle of friends is also sadly scattered, Lucius having married Tess, and Mayne retreating to London to recuperate from the events of Kiss Me, Annabel. And even though Griselda is physically present for most of the story, she spends most of her time "off-camera," so to speak. Fortunately, Miss Gillian Pythian-Adams is summoned back to make a repeat appearance from Much Ado, and I'm very happy to see her get her own happily ever after, as I was quite fond of her; but sadly, her sub-plot felt rushed and honestly, rather contrived -- I would have liked to see her story get more loving treatment.What really separated this book from the last two is the relative dearth of interpersonal relationships. The only three that get any sort of attention are between Rafe and Imogen, Gabe and Gillian, and a minor thread following Rafe and Gabe. The set up of this story had a lot of potential. Not only was there a new character to develop in Gabe, there were many new relationships that could have been delved into (between Gillian and Imogen, between Gabe and Rafe) and major turning points for Rafe and Imogen as well. Sadly, most of those themes do not get the treatment they deserve, and come off as rushed and somewhat contrived, as the author seems to make an effort to focus on the romantic relationship between Rafe and Imogen. Rafe's battle with alcohol receives the best attention, and feels the most genuine; however, though there is one touching moment of resonance between Imogen and Rafe as he helps her deal with the final stages of her grief for Draven by sharing his own experiences with mourning his brother, Imogen's development felt rather neglected and disjoint. Lastly, the amount of time given to Gabe and Gillian was depressingly little, and the development of their relationship was given cursory attention, at best.I understand that many people did not appreciate the almost-sprawling scope of the narrative in the previous two novels in the series, and so perhaps Ms. James was trying to respond to those criticisms by narrowing the focus of the narrative and editing down the amount of prose given to aspects of the story that didn't relate directly to the main romance. Honestly, I feel that she did herself a great disservice, because the strength of her writing is not in creating romantic liaisons, but in creating engaging characters and how they interact with each other. Even with the brief time that Gabe received at the beginning of the book, I became fond of him and wished to know more about him, but sadly he fell by the wayside as more and more of the narrative was given over to Rafe and Imogen's trysts. Furthermore, I was looking forward to seeing more development of Mayne's character from the last book, but I suppose Ms. James wanted to save that for the last book.In short, if you read either of the first two volumes in this series and greatly enjoyed them, you will most likely be disappointed by this one, as it lacks a great deal of what I found most enjoyable from the first two. This is also perhaps not the best volume to read if you are not yet acquainted with Ms. James' style, as I feel this is a very poor representation of her ability.

I did not find this book romantic in the least bit. I believe James was so wrapped up in the plays from English literature that she forgot we wanted fiction. There is so much on Imogen acting like a shrew and a common prostitute and Rafe’s battle with alcoholism that I wanted to throw this book out. I was already invested in the characters from the first two books that I wanted Imogen to come to her senses as soon as she stopped grieving. For someone who was supposed to be so innocent, she sure knew a lot to engage in her sex scenes with Rafe. Don’t look for them until the end of the book. I didn’t mind the new characters. Without them I would have stopped reading the book early on. And if you decide to read the book cover to cover don’t read the epilogue which takes place 11 years from our story line. I hope book 4 is better. And Miss James leave all that English literature in the classroom! I gave it a star because I had to. I wish I would have read the reviews before I purchased and read this book.