The name of this series made me really curious, I've enjoyed it, the author expertly depicted the less shining part of London but I expected more mayhem from these ladies.

Scarlett Wynn joined a group of women who watch and protect the most defenseless and try to fight the abuses of the powerful. When her seamstress goes missing she begins to look for her getting involved into something very dangerous, fortunately she also finds the unexpected help of the Duke of Aylesford. Ambrose Cross, fourth Duke of Aylesford, has to save once again his younger brother but this time things are pretty shady so he decides to investigate some more, but he is too flashy on the bad streets of London so he finds an ally in an intriguing woman. Will they solve this mysterious disappearance or will they get hurt trying?

I liked the mystery plot even if at the end it feels rushed. I'm not too convinced about the romance between the two main characters because I see a too big economic and social gap between them, but in the end I'm still a sucker for romance so I want to believe in their happily ever after.

Duchess If You Dare was easy to read and overall a nice one.

Scarlett is a Maiden of Mayhem – a group of ladies who have made it their own personal mission to protect those that live in London, and often find themselves straying outside the lines of society whilst doing so. The Maiden’s of Mayhem consist of four ladies, however the two we learn the most about are Scarlett and Julia – who is a strong supporting character throughout the book, with Phoebe and Diana playing a more subdued role.

When Scarlett’s seamstress Linie suddenly disappears, Scarlett comes to learn of a line of girls who have also gone missing. Determined to get answers, Scarlett goes about investigating a nearby brothel – and this is where she first meets Ambrose.

Ambrose is the Duke of Aylesford and is on his own mission here, trying to track down his brothers favourite woman within the brothel. With Scarlett’s arrival grasping his attention, and her allure turning him away from the mission he came here with, her presence threatens to derail his search completely. As the pair find themselves being thrown together with a similar mission in mind, they end up working alongside one another, and as tensions begin to soar, and emotions run high – it was only a matter of time before things began to heat up between them.

I loved Scarlett’s character from the start. She is such a fierce, strong minded lady that knows exactly what she wants in life and has the means in which to achieve her goals. She had such an authentic personality, and her backstory really added to the person she is today. Ambrose has a far more complex personality. As a Duke, he has lived a life full of privilege and authority, but also full of expectations and rules in which he must follow. When he meets Scarlett, he is overwhelmed by the need to protect her, however it is clear that she does not need his protection at all.

I really enjoyed the way in which this story was told. Full of mystery, deceit and drama, it certainly had plenty to grasp the readers attention and hold it firmly throughout. The plot is well structured and has a good pace to it, with the intensity picking up as the mystery came closer to being solved. The relationship between Scarlett and Ambrose was a slow burner, and with them being different in so many ways, I found their budding romance truly endearing to follow.

An interesting read full of drama and mystery, I really enjoyed this story.

Fabulous and great fun
Scarlett is a Maiden if Mayhem, a band of ladies who protect the citizens of London. Ambrose is a duke and an unexpected shared mission brings the 2 of them together with drama and danger hot on their heels
I loved Scarlett, she is not in any way a typical woman but she has fought her way through life to become the protector she is. She isn’t highly born but I think that actually works in her favour as she knows people and can do things that others can’t. She has brilliant fighting skills and dress designs way ahead of her time which make it easier for her to do what she needs to. She doesn’t trust love or many people but she must learn to trust Ambrose so they can work together. Scarlett is so unconventional but also such a fabulous character and I so wish I could be like her which I think is part of the reason why I adore her
Ambrose is more the typical image of a duke, reserved and determine to uphold the family name but he is drawn into a mission by his wayward younger brother and realises that maybe his life doesn’t have to be as it always has been. Once he relaxes Ambrose became more real in my head and I could almost hear him saying things in his best ‘I’m a duke’ voice where he expected his commands to be obeyed. As his personality come through I started to like him more and more, even if at times he did do something that had me thinking ‘seriously??’ But those times helped me to connect to him and made me love him
Scarlett and Ambrose have to cope with a lot of danger and drama throughout this book but I have to admit that I also loved their fights and arguments, it allowed their personalities to shine through and me to fall in love with them. This book looks at part of life that most books don’t focus on but it was done so well that it drew me in and made me think about things I hadn’t previously whist still wrapping me up in the story and not letting go
I would recommend this book to those who enjoy a romance full of danger and drama, with amazing characters and a brilliant story that will catch your attention

A strong Regency romance that centers on a strong, intelligent heroine dedicated to doing the right thing even if doing right is not as ladylike as society would like. For fans of Georgette Heyer.

Such a great book! Anabelle Bryant is a wonderful addition to the genre! Can't wait for her next book.

This is the first book in a brand new series, and historical romance with an appealing cover, of course I was curious. The book sound very different from what I usually read in terms of this genre, at least that's what caught my attention when I read the synopsis.

In this story we follow Scarlett and Ambrose, both fun characters to get to know more about, in terms of their background and their interactions with each other and the those around them. Scarlett is part of the Maidens of Mayhem and I kind of felt as I was a part of the group. Ambrose is the Duke of Aylesford. The combination was definitely excited.

As we follow the events of this novel, learning more about the society and all the crazy antics, I did see differences in comparison with other books, which I quite enjoyed. It was a breath of fresh air. And I was taken on a rollercoaster and it was a fascinating way of seeing another side of the society back then.

Overall, I enjoyed it and I can't wait to see the news books to learn more about the upcoming main characters and whose Maiden of Mayhem we will follow next.

[I want to thank Rachel, at Rachel’s Random Resources, and Anabelle Bryant for the eCopy of this book, and for allowing me to join in the fun and being a part of the blog tour with my honest review of the book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.]

First in a new series, Duchess if You Dare introduces us to the Maidens of Mayhem, four women who have taken it upon themselves to right the wrongs of Regency London by straying outside of society's rules. While two of them do not get a lot of page time and Julia is a strong supporting character, the Maiden in focus is Scarlett, a clever, competent, and fiercely independent woman with a fondness for roaming London in breeches.

When Scarlett's seamstress Linie disappears, she learns of a series of missing girls. It's pretty dark subject matter, but while investigating a brothel, she crosses paths with the handsome Duke of Aylesford. Ambrose is trying to track down his brother's favourite whore, but Scarlett's mysterious allure threatens to derail his search and upend his world. Dangerous situations lead to heightened tension until there's no way this won't lead to love.

While I loved Scarlett - I'm a sucker for competence and her actions flowed so naturally from her rough backstory - Ambrose has the more complex character arc. As a duke, he's powerful and privileged but constrained by responsibility and expectations. He takes a long time to realise how much his birth has benefited him and even longer to leverage it into any sort of action. His protective instinct wants to wrap Scarlett up in cotton wool, and while it comes from a place of emotion (and later love), he seems to completely ignore how well she can handle herself and her own self-determination, which I did find frustrating.

I definitely would've liked to see more of the Maidens, as Scarlett's friendship with Julia is a good emotional foil to the romance but Phoebe and Diana felt more incidental. A throwaway line makes me wonder if there's another story running concurrent with this one, perhaps the subject of a sequel. Ambrose's brother also seems ripe for his own story, given his the curtailing of his wayward tendencies.

After deceit, danger, and a smattering of abduction, the mystery wraps up quickly and Scarlett and Ambrose decide that love conquers all, including their hesitations and the huge gap in their social status. It felt a little handwavey but I'm willing to overlook it for the sake of a happy ending.

Overall, this is a solid romance for those who want a bit more grit with their Regency (but don't worry, there's still a ball!)

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Rachel's Random Resources, all opinions are my own.

Duchess If You Dare is the perfect mix of romance and adrenaline-pumping action. Anabelle Bryant weaves a tale that portrays the ugly side of London with the extravagance of the aristocracy. This tale delighted me more than I could imagine.

This first book in the Maidens of Mayhem series is delectable and exhilarating. I fell in love with Scarlett from her first scene. She is a true bad-ass and takes no crap from anyone. I loved Scarlett just as the feisty woman she was, but when Ambrose entered, the excitement heated up.

The underbelly of London takes the reader on a roller coaster ride of debauchery and murder. The thrill I got from the seedy side of town is something I’ve not experienced before. When I read romance, it’s always the same balls and pert debutantes. Duchess If You Dare offers so much more than the same old Regency romance.

I can’t wait to read the next installment. The Maidens are remarkable women, and I wonder who the next Maiden will be next.

I award Duchess If You Dare a full 5 out of 5 stars. I recommend this book to anyone who loves romance. The dash of something different makes it even better.

I loved this first book in a new historical romance series. I had to check to make sure this was a first book actually because you are dropped into the middle of a story. Scarlett is a woman who has grown up in the poor section of London, far away from the glittering world of the wealthy. She is associated with three other women who call themselves the Maidens of Mayhem. They aim to help people who the upper echelons of society don't care about. You don't find out much about how they got together or what exactly they do in this book. That's part of the reason I thought this was maybe a later book in the series. I thought I missed the back story but I guess that will be explained as the series goes on.
I liked Scarlett a lot. She's content with her life. She is making a difference in her part of London and isn't looking for a lot more. She has a seamstress friend who makes custom garments for her like trousers- gasp! When her friend goes missing she finds that she has been working a second job as a prostitute in a high end brothel. As she investigates, she finds that her friend isn't the first to go missing. But is this the normal attrition of life on the streets or something else?
Ambrose is trying to rein in the excesses of his younger brother. He's summoned to the brothel to collect his brother when the younger man insists he heard a woman being abused. The owner of the brothel is not amused by his attempts to draw attention to the issue and Ambrose is obliged to pay her off to try to keep his brother's name out of the London gossip mill. His brother's insistence that something bad happened inspires Ambrose to investigate himself and that's where Scarlett and Ambrose come together.

I liked that both characters had strong points of view and that they weren't points of view that I've seen in a dozen other historical romances. Scarlett is content with where she is in her life. She isn't looking for a husband. She doesn't need rescuing. She is actually quite offended to be patronized by this man who she knows looks down on her because of her class when in reality she is much more able to survive in the world than he is.
Ambrose is very much about Being The Duke. He's used to people jumping to meet his every demand. Now he's moving through a part of society where being a Duke is irrelevant and he's completely thrown by that. He needs to actually be useful instead of relying on his social position to make things happen.
I'm looking forward to reading more in this series and looking at other books from this author.

In Duchess If You Dare, readers are introduced to the Maidens of Mayhem, who do not follow societies’ rules and choose to explore mysteries. It is historical England, so it is not the norm for ladies to be out without escorts, wear pants, or let alone try to solve crimes. They are a group that on the surface seem to have little power, but they want to prove society wrong and do good deeds. This novel is the promising first novel in the series that seems to take a member of the “Maidens” group and give them their own tale.

Our first main character is Scarlett is one of the founding members of The Maidens of Mayhem. She is the daughter of a former brothel worker, who was murdered by one of her supposed protectors. She learned early on that she would need to rely on herself to protect both herself and those that need protection. When her seamstress, Linie, goes missing, she decides to make it her mission to find her. The investigation leads her initially to a brothel, The Scarlet Rose, where Linie moonlighted as a worker. It is here that the true mystery unravels as it is revealed that Linie is not the only one to have recently gone missing.

Ambrose Cross, the Duke of Aylesford, first “meets” Scarlett at the Scarlet Rose when he is there attempting to clean up one of the many messes created by his brother, Martin. The two of them live very different lives as Martin gambles, visits brothels, and seems to live a carefree existence. On the other hand, Ambrose is more uptight, as he is the head of the household and the one who needs to uphold the family name and position. As it turns out, Martin, and Ambrose by association, become involved in the mystery of the missing brothel workers. Since Ambrose and Scarlett are after the same goal, they find themselves constantly meeting in unexpected places causing the two of them to begin knowing each other.

Ambrose and Scarlett have insta-lust because they each represent something that the other wants. Ambrose loves that Scarlett is not like other women in society, given that she is not an official member of the ton. Scarlett loves that Ambrose represents the security and protection she never had in her past. They develop feelings for each other extremely fast given that they do not spend a ton of time together, but, for me, it is slightly more understandable in a historical novel as it follows a lot of what you’d expect of the times. There is a lot of resistance given their different stations, which could be considered scandalous for the duke to marry below his station, so they need to overcome the obstacle of society. The two do get to know each other and initially acknowledge their lust rather than love, but, like most stories, there is not much needed to sometimes push lust and turn it into love.

This is a series that has one central group, The Maidens of Mayhem, and each novel seems to follow one of the ladies in their own stories. This type of series has its positives and negatives as I love that the universe can expand with all the characters, but sometimes I wish one character can be the main to have their story told over multiple books. This novel was the latter. Although it was very enjoyable, I feel that the novel needed more time to get to know the maidens, so the readers are fully invested in getting to know more by the time the next novel is released. I think a prequel novel is greatly needed just to give the reader background into the formation of the group, how the different members became involved, and how they each gained their different skills.

Overall, this was an enjoyable novel that is almost two novels in one as there is both the mystery portion and the romance portion that mingle together to become one story. Each piece separately was great, but it seemed the two did not always come together as there was not enough depth given to each to seamlessly put them together. Maybe a few extra pages could have been beneficial just to tie them together a little more. The novel itself though is a very enjoyable and easy read. The stage is set nicely for the next novel in the series to take place and I look forward to reading it once it is available!

**I want to give a special thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, Kensington Books, Zebra, and the author, Anabelle Bryant, for a copy of this delightful novel! It was seriously entertaining and the opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.**

I love the premise of the book, but the reading experience didn't measure up to my expectations. Duchess If You Dare is the first in Annabelle Bryant's The Maidens of Mayhem series, an idea I was intrigued by. The Maidens of Mayhem are a group of women who seek to fight for social justice in Regency England, particularly for women's rights. We meet one such maiden of mayhem, Scarlett Wynn, in the midst of an alley fight in the first chapter, and I was drawn right in. Alas, as I kept reading, there was little mayhem and more moralizing about prostitution than actual women kicking butt together.

The basic plot: Scarlett is drawn into a mystery when an acquaintance goes missing - a seamstress who turns out to work at a brothel on the side. Scarlett discovers that other sex workers have gone missing too, and so she determines to find her friend and the other women. Along the way, she meets Ambrose Cross, the straitlaced Duke of Aylesford, who ends up joining Scarlett in her sleuthing. Both of them view sex work with alternating disdain or pity, and an early scene's conflict hinges on both of them judging the other for being at a brothel. When Ambrose mistakes Scarlett for a prostitute, he thinks, "he wouldn't be made to feel lowly by a woman of questionable morals. A proper lady would fall on her fan and pierce her heart before entering a disreputable establishment." Not a hero I'm going to fall for anytime soon...

There are period-typical attitudes and then there is repetitive, simplistic moralizing; Duchess If You Dare seems to trade in the latter. For a novel with a heroine who is a maiden of mayhem that dons pants and knows her way in a fight, I would have expected a bit more nuance than Scarlett's view of the brothel as "a place where women exchanged innocence for payment." And then, for all of this, the brothel mystery fades into the background as the sexual tension between Ambrose and Scarlett develops; as the novel goes on, that plot seems like an afterthought, and the mystery is poorly tied up. I thought the other Maidens of Mayhem would come into play more, but they’re barely a part of the novel. The idea of a group of outlaw women standing up for other women has so much potential, along with a privileged duke learning how to leverage his privilege along the way, but the novel just doesn’t go where it seemed like it would.

I couldn’t really get into the romance either, sadly. I found a lot of the dialogue to be quite wooden; they didn’t feel like conversations. Whether Scarlett and Ambrose were talking to each other or other characters, their speech often seemed to serve more of an editorial function than dynamic, realistic dialogue. Scarlett and the duke focus a lot on their attraction to each other and constantly question their burgeoning relationship, and I questioned it too – there wasn’t any chemistry there for me. Scarlett has admirable traits, but Ambrose fell flat for me. Ultimately, Duchess If You Dare has the bones of a good story but I felt that Bryant just didn’t bring it to life.

4.5 Stars!

Here we meet Scarlett who is searching for Linie which is how she meets Duke Ambrose. It turns out they are searching for the same person so they decide to join forces. Of course that leads to all kinds of things. I will say this was an amazing start to a new series.

I loved Scarlett, as a heroine, she was well written an simply put amazing. I hope we see more of her in some way in future books. I will say I did expect a little more mayhem and that was why I took of a half star. I mean she is one of the maidens of Mayhem after all.

However, while there wasn't enough mayhem for me it didn't take a lot away from the plot itself. As far as a the beginning of series goes, as I said I thought it was a great start. Also can I just say how truly beautiful the cover for this book is? It is simple yet effective.

I felt this book didn’t live up to its full potential. All the elements were there; it just didn’t finish strong. I would have liked a more extended conclusion or an epilogue. I felt the ending was a little rushed. That being said, the book was likable and easy to read. It did set the stage for other books focusing on the other members of the club. I feel these future books can be excellent if they will build momentum from the first book. Overall, I wanted a little more, but it will not deter me from reading the other books in this series. I feel with a few improvements; the subsequent books could be significant.

I am a sucker for a regency era book and this one was so good! I really enjoyed the character build ups! Annabelle is a badass in the best way. Def perfect for fans of Bridgerton.

This is the first book in the Maidens of Mayhem series with a strong female protagonist determined to find a missing acquaintance despite the danger of doing so. Meeting Ambrose Duke of Aylesford is disconcerting, she knows nothing can come of it, but the attraction is undeniable.

Scarlett and Ambrose share their connections to solve the mystery, which is more menacing than first supposed. There is danger, deceit and passion in this story, which explores the less salubrious side of Regency London.

Despite the gravity of the storyline, this remains a lighthearted read. It promises courageous women, passionate men and dastardly villains and delivers an engaging, escapist read.

I received a copy of this book from Kensington Books - Zebra via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I liked the characters in this book as well as the storyline but could not get into it. I found myself skipping over the introspection of each character, which was a big part of the book. The ending was a little off as well, probably because it is a lead in for the next book in the series.

3 stars = Good/fine/solid

A solid romance with an engaging mystery plot. I was captivated by the mystery and kept reading to see how things would work out, but I wasn't especially attached to the characters in this one. The main characters are good, but we don't get much about the Maidens in this first book. The heaviness of the plot also wasn't a great fit for me. (Sex, TW: assault/sex trade/trafficking)

My first historical romance book to be quite honest and not bad at that. It was a little difficult to get into the book's storyline at first, but I eventually was able to get into it. Duchess If You Dare is a simple, easy read, and is a great book to get out of a slump or pass time.

When Scarlett's seamstress disappears, she vows to find out what happened to her. While looking for clues, she keeps running into the Duke of Aylesford. Since they appear to be investigating the same thing, they decide to work together.

Ambrose's brother has gotten himself into trouble once again and he has given his word to help him out. Crossing paths with Scarlett means that they might be able to solve the mystery that much quicker.

What neither counted on was the mutual attraction they felt. But with the huge differences in their class, can anything come of it?

I really enjoyed Scarlett and Ambrose's story! An added mystery always takes the story up a notch and Bryant did a good job of incorporating it into the love story. I'm excited to see what the other Maidens of Mayhem get up to!

This book was just ok for me the premise seemed way more interesting than it ended up being. My first experience with the author though maybe I’ll try another of her work to see if it’s just this story. It’s also possible I’m burned out on Regency/Victorian romances. Still not bad but it could have also been better.