Review: When the Duke Bought a Wife (Dukes and Secrets #0.5) by Mariah Stone
When Lady Emma Bardsley’s vile husband sells her at auction, she is purchased by the rakish duke of Loxchester. For Sebastian, buying a pig farmer’s wife is the perfect way to avoid an arranged engagement, no matter the scandal. But Emma has a secret—she’s a lady in disguise.
Emma hides her identity, hoping to run away. But she can’t hide her growing feelings for the amber-eyed rake who is showing her how much pleasure he can provide. Can she truly escape her terrible marriage for a passionate future with the duke who loves her?
I was first introduced to this author and this series with the first book, All Duke and Bothered, and I remember not being a huge fan, largely because of the insanely stupid decisions made by the female main character. But I thought hey, maybe it was just that particular character, so I decided to give this one a chance.
A regrettable decision as it turns out.
To begin with, the entire premise hinges on something that makes absolutely no sense. Polygamy is illegal, and always has been, so how exactly were these so-called “wife auctions” supposed to work in any realistic sense? The Duke knowingly purchases Emma, even believing she is already married to a pig farmer, with the intention of marrying her himself. How? Simply declaring them married to the ton doesn’t make it legally binding, and any children they might have had would have been illegitimate and he had to have known that.
Of course, the author provides a convenient solution. Emma reveals that her husband sold the lands that had been promised to her father before he signed the marriage contracts, which as Sebastian informed her meant that he had committed fraud and therefore she could seek an annulment. Fair enough. But what isn’t believable, is that Sebastian is somehow able to gather proof and secure the annulment process within a week simply because he’s a Duke and happens to know another Duke who knows a Bishop. That’s not how any of that worked.
But even that might have been easier to overlook had Emma herself not suffered from the same affliction as the previous book’s heroine: blatant and incurable stupidity.
From the moment Sebastian purchases her, she allows him to continue believing she’s merely a pig farmer’s wife. When the truth inevitably comes out, she flees, which, after some of the cruel things he says to her, is understandable. What isn’t understandable is her method of escape. She has no money, so she steals an entire jewelry box from Sebastian’s mother. Not a single piece of jewelry. The entire box. She doesn’t even bother opening it, which means she never realizes it contains nothing of value, only a personal letter. Predictably, she’s intercepted by ruffians sent by her husband, and the box is stolen from her.
Later, when Sebastian offers to help annul her marriage, he tells her they need a copy of her marriage contract and settlement agreements. By this point, they’ve already begun sleeping together extensively, which, in all honesty, made the book feel even longer than it was. Not because of its length, but because I found myself skimming through pages of repetitive intimate scenes. I’m not opposed to those scenes in principle, but I would much rather see the characters develop an emotional connection first. Here, it felt more like lust than love. There’s also confusion surrounding Emma’s past. At times, she behaves as though she’s completely inexperienced, only for it to be revealed later that she had in fact been intimate with her husband before cutting him off. The inconsistency made it difficult to understand her character and therefore her motivations at all.
When Emma tries to obtain her marriage settlement from her father, he refuses to mail it and instead contacts her husband, despite Emma clearly stating she would retrieve it herself. Naturally, this results in her husband intercepting her and attempting to blackmail her using a letter written years ago by Sebastian’s mother. He claims the scandal would call into question Sebastian’s legitimacy (and perhaps cause him to lose his title, lands and wealth), and if not that, it would at least ruin his mother’s standing within the ton. Except… Sebastian had already explained that everyone in the ton knew his parents not only despised each other, but that they both also took lovers meaning the threat was empty from the start.
Thankfully, at least one woman in this story possessed a functioning brain: the mother of Sebastian’s closest friend (and a Duchess in her own right). She steps in, takes control of the situation, and resolves everything with remarkable efficiency, paving the way for the inevitable happily-ever-after.
What continues to frustrate me most about this author’s writing is her tendency to create heroines who are difficult to respect, forgive characters far too easily, and rely on contrived plot devices to resolve conflicts. Emma’s sudden warm relationship with Sebastian’s mother for example, after all the horrible things that woman said and did, was just one more example of emotional development being rushed or glossed over.
At this point, I may eventually try something else by this author, perhaps from a different series, but it won’t be anytime soon. I need a break from characters whose poor decisions drive the plot more than anything else.
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