Review: Forever Her Marquess (Dukes Most Wanted #2) by Scarlett Scott

       

Print Length:  198 pages

Publisher: Happily Ever After Books, LLC (January 25, 2024)

From Goodreads.com: Lady Clementine Hammond may be polite society’s most notorious matchmaker, but she’s perfectly happy remaining unattached herself. A series of unfortunate missteps at a country house party, however, leaves her with no choice but to feign an engagement to the last man in all England she’d ever want to marry—the annoyingly handsome Marquess of Dorset.

Dorset needs a wife with a sizeable dowry to save his estate, but thanks to Lady Clementine’s machinations, the woman he intended to wed became someone else’s wife. Much to his dismay, when fate inconveniently throws Lady Clementine into his arms, he’s forced to claim she’s his future bride.

The bitter enemies strike a reluctant understanding. One fortnight of false smiles and pretending to be head over heels for each other, followed by a return to London and the quiet ending of their betrothal. It should be quite simple.

Except, the more time Clementine and Dorset spend together, the more real their engagement feels. And when their mutual enmity heats into a surprising passion, Clementine is shocked to realize she wants far more from Dorset than two weeks. She wants his forever.

                                                                           *******************

My Rating: 3 stars out of 5

When I say there was nothing remarkable about this story, I mean it. In fact, after reading the first chapter, in which Clementine accidentally finds herself in Ambrose's bedchamber thinking it was her friends and wishing to play a prank on said friend, I was certain I had read it before. However, a quick search of my reviews showed that I had not (not even under its original title of The Matchmaker and the Marquess). Considering the opening few lines were about the fact that these two absolutely loathed one another (for their own reasons), I was surprised to see how quickly that dislike turned to kisses, and those kisses to lust. Even at the end of the story, I never saw anything about their relationship that made me think they had fallen love.

I think part of the problem with this novel is that they spend way too much of it going over the same tired lines without actually listening to each other until much later. Clementine loathes rakes because she allowed herself to be taken in by one a few years prior, while Ambrose resents the fact not only that Clementine inserts herself in other people's lives as a "matchmaker", but also interfered in his which meant that the woman he had hoped to marry ended up marrying another. 

Eventually, we are told that they start to realize there is more to the other than they originally thought, although from what I saw every time they took one step forward, they took two or more back. However, they do manage to finally admit their so-called feelings for one another after a minor disagreement that could have been avoided entirely had they just been honest with one another, and decide that their sham of a betrothal should become real. 

Fast-forward to the epilogue where we see our newly married couple happily settled. Again, nothing remarkable, but not a horrible read either. I like that these are quick stories that can be read within a day, and I am just curious enough about Miss Edith and the situation she found herself in that I will probably continue on with this series just to see how the other house guests make out and with whom they end up.