Erstwhile Husbands
While the husbands are away, the wives come out to... scheme
This is one of those round ups that emerges from me suddenly realizing a unique connection. All three of these ladies have husbands that, for one reason or another, they haven’t seen in years. One’s even presumed dead! And each of them is motivated either to reconcile or, at least, get something out of their less than ideal marriages.
The Courtesan Duchess by Joanna Shupe. Ok first of all, Goodreads reviews of this book are hilarious. Everyone’s mad the hero is a jerk. Silly, that’s what makes him DELICIOUS! I liked this book a lot, but everyone being like “I can’t BELIEVE this HISTORICAL HERO who was FORCED into MARRIAGE with a TEEN has spent the last eight years CHEATING ON HIS WIFE” makes me want to reread this book, so I’ve placed a new hold on Libby. Spare me the outrage at what amounts to a fairly benign level of bad romance hero behavior and go read an Aydra Richards book if you REALLY want to feel morally superior to a fictional man!
After a quick and dirty marriage that Nick was blackmailed into by his awful father to a sixteen year old heiress, he promptly fucked off to Europe. But eight years of hedonism later, Julia, his bride, has Had Enough. Her in-laws are awful, she’s nearly destitute from their meddling, and the only way she can ensure her own safety and security is to have an heir that they’re honor-bound to support. But she can’t just have an affair, since her husband hasn’t been in England since they got married and everyone would know she cuckolded him, which would just make things worse. And since she’s, of course, a virgin, she doesn’t know the first thing about getting an heir from her erstwhile husband.
So she enlists a famous courtesan to teach her the art of seduction and she leaves for Venice under an assumed name to seduce her husband, get an heir, and live in [relative] peace! And the first two parts work, and they’re very nearly in love with one another, albeit in disguise as courtesan and married heir to a duke and not man and wife! But then he finds out her identity and because of his own TORTURED PAST he’s pissed and assumes she’s trying to cover up having already gotten pregnant by seducing him. The hypocrite.
Joanna Shupe knows what the fuck she’s about, and she isn’t afraid to let things get complicated.
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥
When The Duke Returns by Eloisa James. So this series was one I struggled with at first- I DNF’d the first book because I was overwhelmed by all the different POVs and everyone was behaving so poorly and I couldn’t get into the ostensible first couple. But I picked up book 2 because I do generally like Eloisa James, and I’m glad I did, because the rest of this series was challenging in a GOOD way (or the next 5 books, as I’ve still got a couple to finish it for good).
This book in particular was a long time coming, because Lady Isidore has been around the other books as a duchess just like her friends, except that she was married by proxy as a child and hasn’t seen her husband… ever. But she’s sick and tired of waiting around as half a duchess, so she makes a big stink in pretending to have another lover to lure him back to England, and it WORKS. Except once Simeon’s back, he’s put out because he thought the duchess he’d have waiting for him would be a sweet docile thing like his mother’s been writing him about all these years. And Isidore is… not that.
Unwilling to give him or her title as duchess up, she must seduce him so their marriage can’t be annulled! And he must learn once and for all that he would hate having a docile wife! Truly one of my favorite micro tropes: a man who thinks all he wants is a quiet little wife who instead gets a loud firebrand of a lady and is actually obsessed.
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
Charlotte and the Seductive Spymaster by Grace Callaway. The final book in the Society of Angels series finally sees our secret girl gang/private detective leader getting her happy ending. Charlotte is a wealthy widow who has used her anger at men from her short-lived marriage to fuel a revolution, but her world is rocked when it turns out that her late husband isn’t late as in dead but late as in… coming home to her.
Yep, this erstwhile husband didn’t just leave after an inconvenient arranged marriage. He FAKED HIS OWN DEATH! Because of a CONSPIRACY etc etc. Listen. Do you need more plot than this? No, you do not. It’s a great ending to a really fun series, there’s lots of pining and resentment and action, what more could you want?
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Next week, I’ll be recommending books where a single father falls in love with his kids’ governess! And in fact, none of the kids in question are the biological offspring of the single father, a secondary commonality because I like when things fall neatly into place.
What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!
Follow me on social: Twitter | Instagram | Bluesky
Available now: my debut marriage of convenience romance Rehabbing the Billionaire! Buy your copy on Amazon, or snag it on Kindle Unlimited! Then, rate it on Goodreads to help more people discover it!