Title: The Wallflower Wager (Girl Meets Duke #3)
Author: Tessa Dare
Genre: Historical Romance
My rating: 5 of 5 Stars

Le sigh.

Tessa Dare is my ultimate book girlfriend. I met her once at an author and reader event and made a real dork of myself fangirling about her books as if she had never read them. I’m reasonably sure I didn’t have to supply the full name to my favorite hero of hers, Colin Sandhurst, but just in case. And now I have another book babe to gush and embarrass myself over should I ever reencounter Miss Dare, Mr. Gabriel Duke; the prickly industrialist who ruins the aristocracy just for the mighty pound sterling.

If you have encountered Tessa Dare in the past, you will know that she loves strong, sassy female characters who have keen minds and unique skills and talents. Penny is only a member of the ton the way a platypus is a duck, by some silly word association and familial rumor. Penny is far more likely to be seen with a platypus than she is in a ballroom.

Even in the regency, flipping houses is an easy way to make money, and Gabriel Duke is using Lady Penelope as a feature to sell his newest Mayfair Mansion. Who wouldn’t want to live next to an Earl’s daughter? –The answer is soon apparent, anyone who opposes living next to a city farm.

Penny is living with a menagerie that Gabe must unload before he can unload his house. Still, while trying to rehome wayward, unwanted, and abandoned animals, he loses his head, his heart, and his desire to leave the company of Lady Penelope Campion.

This book is charming and hilarious. You will laugh out loud at the antics of Tessa Dare’s characters. Rosamund and Daisy are back for another book, and Daisy is still obsessed with all things diseased and dying, and her visits to Penny are some of the highlights of the book. Too bad that they are outside the era Tessa Dare writes in because I would love to see the girls get their own HEAs.

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Title: The Wallflower Wager (Girl Meets Duke #3)
Author: Tessa Dare
Genre: Historical Romance
Release Date: 13 August 2019

Summary:

New York Times and USA Today Bestseller

They call him the Duke of Ruin.

To an undaunted wallflower, he’s just the beast next door.

Wealthy and ruthless, Gabriel Duke clawed his way from the lowliest slums to the pinnacle of high society—and now he wants to get even.

Loyal and passionate, Lady Penelope Campion never met a lost or wounded creature she wouldn’t take into her home and her heart.

When her imposing—and attractive—new neighbor demands she clear out the rescued animals, Penny sets him a challenge. She will part with her precious charges, if he can find them loving homes.

Done, Gabriel says. How hard can it be to find homes for a few kittens?

And a two-legged dog.

And a foul-mouthed parrot.

And a goat, an otter, a hedgehog . . .

Easier said than done, for a cold-blooded bastard who wouldn’t know a loving home from a workhouse. Soon he’s covered in cat hair, knee-deep in adorable, and bewitched by a shyly pretty spinster who defies his every attempt to resist. Now she’s set her mind and heart on saving him.

Not if he ruins her first.

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