The Duke Effect by Sophie Jordan

A female in a time when women aren't allowed to be doctors, Nora has taken on her deceased father's name in responding to correspondence about medical matters. But one specific set of letters comes back to bite her.
Formerly of the King's army, Colonel Constantine Sinclair's three male cousins have all died and he is now the direct heir to a duke so he's back in England to learn his new position. He is not happy to learn that the man whose letters he so looked forward to are from a twenty-year-old girl. But then she decides that she is going to insert herself into solving a family medical mystery and proving to Constantine that she really can do the things she promised.
I really struggled with the rating on this one because Jordan is an amazing writer but... I really disliked Nora. She was SO annoyingly headstrong, not listening to anyone else in the story. That can sometimes be overcome if a character's decisions make some sort of sense but Nora's aren't very logical to the context of the story. 

Two and a half stars

This book come out October 27th

Follows The Virgin and the Rogue

ARC kindly provided by HarpersCollins Publishers and NetGalley

Opinions are my own

The Virgin and the Rogue by Sophie Jordan

Heavy cramps aren't fun and Charlotte Langley sure knows that. Her sister, Nora, has potions that work but this month's potion tastes different. It turns out that Nora has been experimenting. And this experiment? It makes Charlotte horny. Which is a problem because the man she finds is not her fiance but the illegitimate stepbrother of her sister's husband.
Samuel Kingston is considered lucky by some because his father, though never married to his mother, has acknowledged him. And that has allowed him to participate in his father and stepmother's rather dissolute lifestyle . But since he has seen what that lifestyle did to his mother, he has rejected it. Even if he hasn't participated in that lifestyle for quite some time, that doesn't mean he's good enough for a woman like Charlotte. When she throws herself at him, he's shocked but not prepared to take of all that she's seeming to offer. However, that doesn't mean that he believes that her fiance is the right one for her either.
I wasn't going to read this book but then I heard Sophie Jordan talking about it on the Fated Mates podcast. Love potions? Phhttt. No interest. But then she talked about the issues surrounding have a character under the influence and how you build a love story around that and I reconsidered, "hm, this might not be what I thought."
Great character building; subtle building on a previous book (that I hadn't read) and following books; nice relationship growth. Still some cringe-y moments that prevented a five star book but was still three and a half stars for me.

Three and a half stars
This book came out April 28th, 2020

Followed by The Duke Effect
Borrowed this as an ebook from the library
Opinions are my own