The side story with his cousin didn’t fully come to fruition also which was annoying, it looks like this is a loose end for the next book to resolve, so I’m not subtracting any points for it even though I hate cliffys. He was scarred, but one in three duke books contain a scarred duke, so ho-hum. The duke was much like so many dukes I’ve read. Placing this type of character amidst the extremely rigid social restrictions for women in this society was very interesting. Her struggles were real and her backstory heartbreaking.

Kudos to this author for doing a really great job of sensitively and empathetically representing all three. All three traits are extremely rare for female characters in romance of any kind. She was neurodivergent, gender queer (you can debate me on this one), and very tall. Hyacinth, the female lead, was an amazing and original character. However the bones of the story were still quite good. So for all the heightened sex in this book, it underdelivered for me, both in sex and in story. Additionally, I found all the constant horniness of the characters and the sexually suggestive subtext to be very distracting from the story. Though we are promised freaky stuff, the sex scenes that weren’t ftb were missionary and vanilla. It alludes to birching clubs, brothels that cater to more extreme desires and lots of sexual deviance but frankly, it doesn’t really deliver. This book teases and hints at ‘perversions’ on the part of both MCs A LOT. That being said, I’ve never been one to balk at sex, kink etc in a novel, but for this book, the inclusion of kinky sex didn’t work for me. Either way, I don’t like it to dominate the narrative. I haven’t determined why yet, perhaps it’s conditioning, as HR has traditionally been more euphemistic or florid when it comes to sex scenes so it could just be what I’m used to. This book has taught me something about myself though I like to read smut, I prefer not to have too much explicit sex in my historical romance.

Hyacinth by Minerva Spencer