I'm sorry but t I did not enjoy this story. I found the plot very silly and the characters poorly written.
I received an ARC copy of this book from netgalley.

The Duke needs a Wife. : The Rogues of Bath by Katy Walters
This book was previously entitled "The Countess Refuses." and has been updated with a new cover and rewrote some love scene. This is the story of Maximillian and Cassandra.
Cassie and her sisters have lived very poorly until one day they find out that Cassie has inherited a title and land. This comes just in time as a neighboring Barron has been trying to force a marriage on Cassie's sister. So Cassie up roots the family and take off for this new land and title.
There she meets Dowager Duchess of Taunton and Max. The Dowager feels Cassie would be a good wife for Max. But Max at first doesn't have any interest in marrying anyone. He seems to be happy with just his mistress. But things slowly start to change and they start growing feelings for each other.
"My honest review is for a special copy I voluntarily read."

I was unable to finish reading this book. The punctuation was so poor, I could not follow the plot line or even tell which character was speaking. The formatting in my e-book left sentences unfinished or separated by blank lines. Did an editor look at this before it was published?

I must admit that having read many historical romances that this novel was difficult to immerse myself in. The story follows Miss Cassandra Whitney, having been threated by Baron Scudder with eviction, refuses his offer of marriage to her sister Bella. Having inherited a title from her aunty, she manages to move her family to a castle and with their assistance, sets about its restoration. However, it is her actions that draws the attention of the Dowager Duchess of Taunton. The dowager seeks out a match with her son Maximillian the 6th Duke of Taunton, and it is here that the book does become somewhat interesting. However, the formatting and storyline had me at times confused. Whilst the pace was fast, the scenes were at times disjointed.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is Cassie and Max's story. She inherits a castle and an estate. Max's mother wants to be involved with the running of the castle. There is many twists and turns. There is a villain but Max saves the day. It was very fast moving. I truly enjoyed it.

Ms. Walters had done an excellent job with the story. Good plot and wonderful romance..

Trash! I do not recommend! Incredibly filthy language, that's in the first Chapter!

This is really clumsily written--the author has a couple of phrases, ape-leader, hair scraped back, butterball, retrousse nose, that she uses over and over. Also, making the Duchess/mother in law so nasty to servants, and yet, so warm and friendly, seems too much for the heroine to get over and accept.

I received an advance review copy of this book. Loved the story. Max and Cassie are determined they will not get married but in the end love wins out. There is danger, intrigue and rescue in this book. It is well written and keeps your attention. It is interesting and makes you want to finish the book. I would highly recommend this book.

Miss Cassandra Whitney endures abject poverty raising her siblings after her parents died. She faces further torment as her landlord, the odious Baron Scudder, threatens her with eviction, if she refuses to assent to his offer of marriage to her younger sister Belle. As Cassandra fights to save her family, she has a visit from a lawyer to say she’s inherited a titled estate and a ruin of a castle.
Cassie moves to the castle with her family & most of Baron Scudder’s tenants follow her to help restore the estate.
News of Casandra’s inheritance travels fast, reaching the highest circles in the ton. The Dowager Duchess of Taunton immediately sees her as a worthy match for her son Maximillian the 6th Duke of Taunton a renowned rakehell. So the Dowager & her son arrive unannounced for tea & end up staying months!
The dowager also plans to take control over the castle which would be a prestigious venue for her many balls and hunting weekends.
I really struggled with the book, I’m an avid reader of Regency novels & whilst I can overlook some inconsistencies with history afterall it is fiction but this book seemed a mix of eras, in many ways it seemed as if it was a mix of medieval & Regency. The plot was well paced but jumped from one event to another.
The characters are one dimensional & certainly need development, the dowager is particularly awful, her cries about ‘the peasants’ REALLY grated & I wanted to slap her. Why would an uninvited guest stay in basically a building site for months? Especially when she was so particular about cleanliness – it didn’t fit. Cassie inherited an Earldom after her aunt changed the entail, I’ve never heard of a widow being able to do this, whilst I suppose it could be possible, why do it when Cassie had younger brothers who would inherit & Cassie would be their guardian. Also Cassie & family ran from a lecherous Baron, so for her to allow liberties by a rakehell Duke defied belief.
There were many grammatical & punctuation errors, speech marks especially being missing.

Enjoyable book but hard to believe a man with 3 mistresses at one time will be committed in the long run. I did not get the feeling that his love was that deep although he protected her and helped her sister.I would have preferred a little more restraint on his side and more soul searching. Of course Cassie was a paragon and selfless. The love making parts were hard to interpret in how their bodies were positioned. Thanks for the fun story.

I’m sorry to say that this is just not a very good book. I received a free ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review so I can’t sugarcoat my opinion of the book.

The plot is just silly. The heroine, Cassandra, and her family have been living in abject poverty ever since their parents died. They’re being threatened by their repulsive landowner, the Baron Scudder, who lusts after Cassie’s lovely, younger sister. He is threatening them with eviction if the sister doesn’t marry him. Suddenly, Cassie learns that she has inherited a Medieval castle and the title of countess from an aunt. Supposedly, the aunt broke the entail to make the title heritable by a woman. While that may have been possible in 1819 in very unique incidents, it would have not have been possible for the widow of the noble to pull that off with just the help of a lawyer. And why would it have been necessary since Cassie has a younger brother who would have inherited without this magic plot device.

So Cassie packs up her family and then takes with her all the tenants from the evil Baron’s estate with her to the new estate. I doubt that that would have been possible due to ancient land contracts at the time, or that an entire estate’s tenants would have vanished so Callie can conveniently move in with her friends from the old estate. Mobility just wasn’t that easy in the early 19th century England.

The romance revolves around the Duke of Taunton who is a really rather selfish rake. He has three mistresses simultaneously and is, apparently, compensating the husband of one of his mistresses for his wife’s, er, attentions. Yech. His mother is determined that he marry because who knows, one of his two brothers might die. The mother is extremely obnoxious and cruel in the patronizing insults she has for those she deems to be “peasants.” She keeps screaming that someone who doesn’t show her sufficient respect. For some reason, she’s conceived the idea that Cassie would be the perfect spouse for her son and that the castle, which is portrayed as extremely dilapidated and barely habitable, would be a great venue for parties and tourism for the aristocracy. She wants to spend a fortune renovating the place. Really? I just don’t think that early 19th century elites would pay enough to tour an old castle to justify the costs of renovating the place. She invites herself and her entire family to camp out at Cassie’s castle even though there is only one bedroom and she’s supposed to be fanatical about cleanliness. And her son allows her to impose herself on strangers for, apparently, months.

Meanwhile, he’s decided to pursue Cassie so he can sleep with her. Within moments of meeting her, he’s thrusting his hand in her undergarments. And she’s okay with that. I totally lost patience with the both of them at that point. Why would this woman who is supposed to be very responsible and loving fall for this guy?

The book is quite poorly edited with lots of punctuation problems with quotation marks either not being used or used for only part of a quote. There are abrupt transitions that force the reader to backtrack to reread paragraphs to figure out what just happened and what the author is talking about now. It’s all very irritating.

Meanwhile, there are all sorts of anachronistic or just plain wrong turns of speech. For example, it’s “chomping at the bit,” not “tamping at the bit.” And the book continually refers to doctors as “Physickers.” That word wouldn’t have been used in this period. And no one would be saying “Methought.” It’s as if the author had read some romances from the Middle Ages and just thought to move that vocabulary over to the 19th century. And then there are anachronisms going the other way when Cassie and the Duchess discuss how they like the protest parades that women are participating in because they’ve been inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft. No, there wouldn’t have been women’s parades in 1819.

I just can’t recommend this book.

This novels follows a couple of different characters. Miss Cassandra and Belle Whitney's parents are deceased and Cassie has raised her siblings. The man who's land they live on wants to marry Belle and has been asking for her hand and is refused each time. When Cassie receives a letter that tells her she inherited a castle and is now a countess, she jumps at the chance to save her family.
The Dowager Duchess of Taunton wants to get her hands on the castle in order to show off to the ton and have control of the castle. Her son Maximillian the 6th Duke of Taunton, does not want to marry and has a few mistresses. He is not impressed when he meets Cassie, a scheme formulated by his mother. However, as Cassie and Max get to know each other over months, things change. Max cannot resist a woman who tempts him and Cassie is not willing to give into him. Max introduces his friends as well, one who is interested in Belle, However, Belle has a secret and knows she will be ruined if discovered. Before Belle can do anything, she is kidnapped. It is up to Max and the others to find her before it is too late.

A good summer read.
Follows the pattern of romantic stories.Predictable in the long run the hot undercurrents, hard to get female the man truimps in the end.

I couldn't believe how absolutely bad this book was. There are so many plot errors that I just couldn't read it. From Cassandra inheriting her mother's aunt's title to the Dowager wanting to take over Cassandra's new castle. How did a reclusive old woman rewrite an entail to get her husband's family title transferred to a woman? The book was very stiffly written and did not flow.

I normally don't comment on formatting because I know that the NetGalley edition I receive isn't a final copy. In this case, the Goodread's blurb says that the book was edited, rewritten and shortened from the January 25, 2017 version of "The Countess Refuses". The book was hard to follow at points because it changes from scene to scene with no paragraph separation. In the beginning, it jumps from a scene with Max to one with Cassandra. I had to go back and re-read to see if I missed anything.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Posted by Laura Tague at 6:25 PM

I am giving an honest review in exchange for this ARC. Some parts of this story were quite good. Some parts were a bit underwhelming. There were times when I found the characters conversations just a little too odd. I think it must have been the language used. In some areas it was salacious and in others, in my opinion, it was slow and lacklustre.

It doesn't happen very often that I don't finish a book and in a way I did finish this one as well because I kept skipping pages just trying to find out what happened. That's why I rated it with two stars and not less, actually.

The story itself sounded promising and I expected a nice read, just something light and entertaining.
Well, instead of that I found myself breathless and rather stressed, trying to keep up with the book that seemed to rush from scene to scene, invoking one villainous scheme after the other till I felt that I couldn't keep up with the story anymore.

The interactions between the characters are not very convincing and rather unlikely and the characters themselves remain one-dimensional with the dowager duchess resembling a caricature, always crying for a servant to be whipped and put in the stock and whatnot - and a rather disagreeable caricature as that.

"Too much" one the one hand when it comes to the story and the things happening and "not enough" speaking of the characters, while making my head reel with the fast pace and the chaotic style.
This was my first book by Katy Walters and I fear that I won't try to read another, once was enough.