The Day of the Duchess

There’s sometimes an issue with regency romances that stay too true to the time period- which typically include blurred lines at best and lack of consent at worst and general misogyny. This book is set in the 1800s but the modern female characters takes on gender inequality. This is such a fresh, modern and feminist regency and maybe my favorite regency romance to date?! After hardship, Sera basically hosts The Bachelor of the 1800s for her husband to find a replacement for her only for them to rekindle their marriage and start anew!

This is the most feminist regency romance I’ve ever read and definitely makes me excited to read more of Sarah MacLean.

One of my favorite quotes from when Malcolm was talking to his suitesses Lilith and Felicity and they were being direct:

“I’ve never in my life met women so willing to speak the truth.” Lilith smirked. “Perhaps you should meet more women. We are not so very uncommon.”

I loved the camaraderie of all the women in this book. At no point do any of them fight over Malcolm and the other women step aside amicably when they see that Malcolm still wants Sera.

I want to make sure to share there are tough topics in this book: miscarriage, stillborn birth, and infidelity.

While these are tough topics, they are common and Malcom and Sera deal with all of them. I’ve always hated the platitude “sometimes love isn’t enough” because love is the point of going through the tough times with someone. Just admiring isn’t enough. Love may not be enough if you’re not mature enough to go through tough times together; but then again if you’re not mature enough to do that then you probably don’t love them.

Sera and Malcolm had many traumas and hardships and handled them immaturely, which led to further issues but they always loved each other. They each had to grieve in their own ways and couldn’t really come together until they had grieved and were ready to commit to communicating with each other. I normally hate infidelity in stories but this is one of the few where I understood why it happened and while I still don’t like it, it didn’t take away from the book for me because the main issues were miscommunications and grief.

I do wish there wasn’t an epilogue because I loved the way the story ended without it, which was without children. There are a lot of people who struggle with infertility and it would’ve been nice to have a story out there where the couple decide having each other is enough and there’s no miracle baby. I would’ve loved it if it ended with Sera and Malcolm’s conversation on the last page before the epilogue:

“You will not have an heir”

“ but I will have you”

The epilogue was cute and there are people out there who are told they can’t conceive but then do despite being told they can’t but I would’ve loved this story even more if it ended with them being content with just having each other and not building a traditional family.

This book has so much heart. From Sera and Malcom’s chemistry to the loyalty of Sera’s sisters! I want to read all of the books about them and their happy endings. Bombshell is about Caleb and Sesily’s story so I plan on reading that next.