My first Courtney Milan book was her recent "Trade Me", which opened my eyes to the potential that romance novels can cover. I guess it maybe gave me too high expectations for this author's other books because this one...while it definitely heads and tails over most of the romances I've attempted to read, falls short of my hopes/dreams/expectations. 
 The ways it fails for me are: 
 1) I thought the way the emotions and needs of the characters in "Trade Me" were portrayed in an emotive and compelling way that really demonstrated how desperate the characters were. As it turns out, it's identical to the way the characters express their needs in this book. Both the words used, the way the sentences are written.......yes, it's the same author so there should be no surprise there. But I've read multiple books by one author before, and usually it took many more books for me to become inured to their writing style and get tired of their particular writing mannerisms. In this case, it was the 2nd book where I'm getting deja vu, wondering why I already read this before. 
 2) Speaking about bedroom fantasies out loud. Vocabulary used for modern romances seem to be pretty upfront now, and while I can get through it when the scene/situation is just being described, I can't get over it when the character actually says it out loud. My inner voice trips up, I get thrown out of the story, and then I'm just turned off. 
 3) The courtroom drama over the handbills felt rather contrived. (view spoiler)[I mean, were the courts silly enough to believe that just because someone once read an obscure chess book that the person must therefore be guilty of writing a radical handout that quotes the book??? Granted, the whole point was that the charge was spurious, but even this sounded too far fetched. Shouldn't a proper lawyer/barrister/equivalent defense attorney have ripped the case apart instead of the Duke having to stand up there as a witness and confess? Heck, I don't see why he couldn't just straight out say, "I read that book on a lark! So what if it's well known that I don't play chess?" I saw no reason why he had to reveal that he got the sentence from Minerva. (hide spoiler)] Maybe British law was practiced differently back then; all I know comes from watching Garrow's Law (which predates the period of this book and per the show, there was no such thing as a defense attorney back then), but without an explanation of how British law worked, I just get really annoyed at all this drama being enacted over something that feels ridiculous. 
 4) I'm not entirely sure the banter and handling of some of the situations are quite as clever or intelligent as they are meant to be. Not sure how to say it...I feel that these people have a pretty normal IQ/EQ, not amazing ones where they bowl me over with their finesse and stratagems. The characters aren't smart enough! lol, but it's a minor nitpick because these are definitely smarter romance characters compared to many others I've read. 
 The good: 
 1) Despite repeating the structure and style of conveying the characters' emotional needs, the situations and personal backstories that prompted such familiar longings are unique and arresting. There's one scene where the hero tries to tell the heroine a funny story from his past while they are feeding ducks on their honeymoon. It turns out that story is not at all funny, but seriously messed up, and the heroine recognizes that the hero so desperately needs to believe the story is funny because otherwise the only alternative is to spend all his days crying. Gaaahh, it was heart-rending. 
 2) Unusual and interesting hero - he's not a jerk! He's a genuinely good person who bends over backwards trying to atone for the sins of his father and his class! His tragic back-story did not feel overly contrived and seemed to work really well in the constructs of that time period. He's not some Don Juan who has rocketed through the beds of thousands of wimmins with the magic of the Kama Sutra oozing from his every pore. He tells really bad puns! His friends are just as oddball and down-to-earth. And he loves people, his friends, and those he considers his family so much without seeming like a total sap or Gary Stu. It's so refreshing! 
 All in all, I still would recommend this author's books even though my list of faults overshadow my list of good. Having a good hero you can root for is super important, and hey, it's not like I'm reading these things to better my mind. I just want to escape without feeling stupid, and this does it better than many romances out there.