Review: The Viscount's Christmas Temptation (The Dukes of War 0.5) by Erica Ridley

Print Length: 148 pages

Publisher: Intrepid Reads (October 21, 2014)

From Goodreads.com: 

Certain individuals might consider Lady Amelia Pembroke a managing sort of female, but truly, most people would be lost without her help. Why, the latest on-dit is that rakish Viscount Sheffield is canceling the fête of the year because he hasn't time for silly soirees. He doesn't need time—he needs her! 

When a flash of lightning destroys the venue for his family's annual Christmas ball, Lord Benedict Sheffield intends to enjoy a relaxing holiday for once. But after twelve days of beguiling Lady Amelia's guerrilla tactics, he's up to his cravat with tinsel . . . and tumbling head over heels in love.

                              

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My Rating: 3 stars out of 5

This was a cute read for the most part, although there are some things that I wish had been done differently. 

To begin with the rather abrupt ending was kind of disappointing as I would have loved to have spent more time with these characters to see how their story really ended (their wedding, their children, etc). As this is a precursor to the series it is my hope that their story is continued (or at least they are mentioned in such a way that we are able to know what happened) in the other novels. 

Then we move onto the characters themselves. Amelia was not one of my favorite female leads. She drives Benedict to hosting his annual ball, not so much it seemed to keep with tradition, but more-so in the hopes that she would land herself a husband (a task she seemingly out of the blue decided she needed to do). In fact, she manipulates him from the beginning in such a way that things would ultimately end up exactly how she had planned (for the ball anyway) instead of just being honest and upfront with him to begin with. Benedict, while seemingly in need of someone like Lady Amelia (she distracts him when he didn't know he needed a distraction), he seemed to fall in love with her rather quickly when I wish there had been more of a build up to it. 

Those things aside, this was a very sweet and cute read filled with tons of witty banter between the two leads that I think will appeal to a lot of people. 

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The Viscount's Christmas Temptation (The Dukes of War 0.5) is available (for free at the time of posting) from Amazon.com