Booklog 29/2018 - Maggie Fenton: The Duke's Holiday - Regency Romp Trilogy #1

I'm not quite sure why this popped up in my Amazon library, but I got suckered into reading it on my Kindle app.

Montford, a stuffy self-righteous prig of a duke, who is undoubtedly OCD, discovers that a longstanding thorn in his side, Honeywell, has died. Not only that, but he died a year ago and yet the estate that he managed (belonging to Montford) has continued to function and send in accounts. Anxious to find out what's happening he takes himself off to Yorkshire to find the castle and the brewery being managed by Honeywell's daughter, Astrid, oldest of four sisters.

Somewhat unconventional, Astrid drives him nuts, but this is a romance, so the ultimate destination isn't in doubt, it's just the journey that amuses us along the way. And it is amusing. Astrid is ridiculously harebrained. The Duke is unbearably inflexible. but she gradually breaks down his defences (and he hers) and they both begin to thaw out.

There's a pig (male) called Petunia, a foot-and-ale race, a kidnapping, a bucketful of sexual tension, and a whole cast of characters, none of which seems entirely sane. The villain of the piece doesn't get the comeuppance he deserves, which ia a bit of a loose end, but everything else wraps up more-or-less neatly.

The Duke's two friends Sherbook and Marlowe are each the subject of the other two books in the trilogy.