Delightful opposites-attract romance!

Wyatt is happily living a carefree life, until he learns that if he doesn't marry within the week, he'll lose his grandmother's inheritance, and worse - it would instead go to an organization that he loathes. Fredericka, on the other hand, sees an immediate marriage as her only chance to keep custody of her young nephew and nieces. Wyatt's terse and abrupt proposal goes against every need-to-plan bone in her body, but she is truly out of options so she agrees to a marriage of convenience.

What I loved most about this book is that both characters are so very realistic. They both make mistakes, say things without thinking, jump to conclusions to hide their insecurities, and fight to find enough common ground upon which to hang their futures. The sizzling chemistry between them certainly doesn't hurt, but both are level-headed enough to know it's not enough on its own.

The children are lovely little rugrats, not nearly as perfectly behaved as their aunt would like them to be. But even with all the pressure she's under, Fredericka does try to show how much she loves them above all else. She and Wyatt have vastly differing parenting styles, which is just one more area they need to work through as they figure out how to keep their new family together. I adored the gentle way they opened up to each other about their past traumas and how those events shaped their current attitudes.

I appreciated Wyatt's attempt to orchestrate a final reconciliation between Fredericka and Jane, for the children's sake, and felt that he was wise to stop short of requiring anything from Fredericka except for hearing Jane out. I loved how the resolution required a solid dose of "fighting fire with fire" which was very well-deserved, indeed. The HEA was everything I could hope for.

I love this author's writing style and am looking forward to reading more in this charming series. I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of this book.

The premises of this book are fun, after all what not to enjoy when a rake and an all prim and proper miss’ paths collide.
But for all the build-up, Fredericka remains the straight-laced young woman from the beginning. The one really maturing is Wyatt.

I enjoyed the writing style, the humor and watching these two people from different world meeting, yet until very late in the story, it is only he who moves toward her while she stands by where she is.
Wyatt is driven by his own pursuits, pleasures but mostly entertaining, a young man who can not stand still. He is far from perfect but he is kind, resilient and caring. Why he is probably the perfect choice to go under the high walls of Fredericka’s strict demeanor.
Fredericka is so prissy, so upset against her kin, she stifles children, she uses them too as pawns in a war against her relative. She believes it is for their benefit but forgets they are only children.
And while there is a chemistry between them, once the first impression fades, their only interactions are about the children, and how different their views are. But, what of their own dreams or expectations. I feel like they needed more time together for them only, to rekindle what they experienced at first.
3.5 stars

𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 closed door lovemaking scene.

I have been granted an advance copy by the publisher, here is my true and unbiased opinion.

This was my first Amelia Grey book. It is a good book. I loved Wyatt he was great hero. The problem for me is Fredericka was a bit whiny and not fun. I kept wondering what does he see in her!
I will read the 2nd book in the series as I want to see what happens to Wyatt's friends Rick and Hurst.





I received this advanced reading copy for my honest review.

Marriage of convenience is one of my favorite tropes, even better if it includes children worming their way into one of the spouse's hearts that never thought they wanted or even liked children.
Enter Wyatt who has just found out that in order to keep his inheritance from his grandmother and keep it out of the hands of the poetry society he must marry within the week.. he does what he must and proposes marriage to someone whom he thinks needs him as much as he needs her.

Fredrika needs a husband, preferably as quickly as possible in order to help her keep custody of her sisters children. When the Duke shows up and says exactly what she needs to hear, namely that he will do whatever it takes to make sure she and the children stay together Fredrika agrees to the marriage. They will live separate lives until the time comes to make an heir... which doesn't need to be for some time yet.

Of course, we know that things never go to plan, and before we know it Fredrika and the children are showing up in London upending the Duke's life... and he finds that he doesn't mind it at all, in fact, he actually enjoys the kids. He finds himself wanting to spend more time with them all... and he and Fredrika end up having some wonderfully spicy moments, along with falling in love... although neither would be able to admit this to themselves.

Overall this was fun, entertaining, and I flew through it. While I loved Wyatt and Fredrikas relationship, the children were my favorite, I loved seeing them come out of their shells, and start working through the grief of losing thier mother. I am definietly interested in reading the next book in the series.

I will try reading another time, but feeling a little burned out. Trying not to force things, will try to check out from the library sometime. Thank you for the cjance.

“Yours Truly, The Duke” Say I Do series, book 1 by Amelia Grey
Heartache, Tears, Joy
I loved my time within this story. Watching the characters grow into wiser, more empathetic people than when the story began. Hope you will enjoy this story as much as I did. Happy Reading ! !
NOTE: This review expresses my honest opinion.
I received a copy of this book via NetGalley.

I do so adore a marriage of convenience story, but this one missed the mark for me.

You do feel for everyone in the story—the husband and wife, separately trying to atone for things in their pasts, the children trying to find joy and stability after the loss of their parents, and even the frustrating cousin, who swoops in trying to claim rights to the children. While I was interested to see where this story of a duke needing to marry to guarantee his inheritance and a woman needing to marry to maintain custody of her nieces and nephews was going, it ended up running long for me.

It is a long slow burn, punctuated by multiple quarrels over miscommunication and disagreements over conflicting parenting styles.

I was expecting more heat out of this marriage of convenience, but the two are living in separate cities for a portion of the book, and even when in the same home, they maintain separate schedules.

Ultimately, it was a pleasant enough read, but not one I plan to revisit.

I received an advance copy from St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley. All review opinions are my own.

I enjoyed this but it was just okay. I feel like I wanted the two of them to interact more. I think I needed to understand his motivations more. They were sort of explained but never in enough detail, at least for me. I did really love watching him build a relationship with the children though.

I received an arc through netgalley.

One drunken night the Duke of Wyatthaven, Wyatt decides he must wed a lady unseen per request of his solicitor in order to secure his grandmother’s fortune. That is if the lady will agree to stay in the country while he remains in London then he won’t ever have to be bothered by her. In fact, any lady will do no matter who she is, that is why he settles for Miss Fredericka Hale. So, Wyatt scrawls a hasty letter of proposal to Fredericka. Wyatt really doesn’t want to marry but really wants the money promised to him. So, Wyatt finally decides he will just go to Fredericka in the country and tell her that she will marry him. When Wyatt gets there, Fredericka is nothing like he thought. She is raising her two nieces and nephew, really without any help but also, she needs financial assistance. Fredericka is shocked to hear that Wyatt would want to marry her. All Fredericka could do is admonish him for his outrageous words. Still Wyatt wants Fredericka to be his wife. The whole arrangement is utterly perfect Fredericka will be out of his hair while he stays in London. The more time Wyatt spends with Fredericka though he wants her with him no matter if it is the country or the city. He can’t imagine his life without her.
What a delightfully clean Regency historical romance filled to the brim with misunderstanding, funny circumstances, beautiful settings and equally wonderful characters! The story simmers with lots of humor making it hard not to laugh at all the situations happening. The writing is even quite good even without all the sex that is always in romances now-a-days. That isn’t to say that it isn’t lacking in steaminess or attraction because it is obviously apparent that there is enough heat between Fredericka and Wyatt. Fredericka, the bubbly feisty heroine is truly a breath of fresh air! She isn’t scared to speak her mind or stand up for her principles. Sure, she acts older than Wyatt but in a sense that isn’t a bad thing at all. While Wyatt seems a bit immature and pales in comparison to Fredericka and appears to bungle up every encounter he makes including when he asks for Fredericka to marry him. Yes, he does grow up eventually which is a good thing. The story is still an amazingly intriguing tale which I would willingly read again too!

Rating: 4.5/5
Pub: 3.28.23
I received a copy of eARC for my honest opinion.

Would you marry someone for convenience? What if I told you, that the person would be a Duke and a very handsome one to toot.

I thought this book was so cute and I would have never thought I would like historical romances but this author really knows how to bring the older boring historical romances into a new light and make it fun. I really enjoyed that the author gave us a nontraditional MFC as a single woman, and she is raising three children. Normally it’s a single woman who is looking for love and finds the guy of her dreams or someone she would have never picked but they fall in love.

I thought the plot was well done and the author did not leave anything confusing, she wrapped it up nicely. I do wish that we could have seen a little more heat in the romance department, over than fading into the dark. With all the passionate kisses throughout the book I was hoping that we would have seen a little more.

The characters in the book were easy to connect with other than Fredericka. I thought she was a little misplaced, she doesn’t follow the traditional ways of a woman in some parts of her life but in others she follows the traditional ways a little too much, but enjoyed seeing her character growth in the book. I thought the Duke was done great, the playboy turned into a loving husband and uncle to the children. I thought his character growth outshined Fredericka. The children are who I just adored and I wish that we could have had a little sneak peak on how they were doing with everything throughout the book or in the ending but that is the only thing I would have changed.
I will be reading more from this author and the Say I Do series.

I want to thank NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to review this book

This book ticked all of the right boxes in theory, marriage of convenience, rakish bachelor with himbo friends, attraction at first sight, cute kids… but at the end of the day it was just ok, The poetry bits were just uninteresting, Frederika and Jane are both so awful and so grating as to be completely off-putting. Frederika had to misconstrue and misinterpret every little thing Wyatt said and she could never admit fault.

It was a fine story. There were many elements that were cute and interesting (who doesn’t love a rushed marriage of convenience plot with adorable kids). I didn’t understand some of the secondary plot things (the whole poetry thing) but it might be just not a sticking point that I am used to people having other issues to get over. That was a little too much to me but it was any otherwise good story.

Rating - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice - 🌶️

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me this Arc.

Fredericka and Wyatt- a fake marriage is meant to solve both of their problems but......She's been caring for her orphaned niece and nephew but now a hateful cousin who has no children is threatening to take them because, after all she's married and Fredericka is not. Wyatt, a Duke must be married in order to get his inheritance. So why not? They might start out as slightly reluctant allies against others but that quickly turns to affection and then to love. This is trope-y for sure but the kids add a nice twist to the mix. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

Wyatt, the Duke of Wyatthaven, has learned about a condition in his grandmother's will, and it threw him for a loop. He had to marry within 7 days, or he'd lose a substantial inheritance. With help from his solicitor to find a suitable bride, he proposes to Miss Fredericka Hale. Fredericka has her own reasons for needing a husband, and with only Wyatt's word that he'd help her retain guardianship of her nieces and nephew against her cousin Jane's suit, she marries him. Wyatt goes back to London to live his carefree life, and Fredericka stays behind to take care of the children. During a contentious visit with Fredericka, Jane informs her that she'll not give her her suit to win control of the children; Fredericka makes the decision to go to London and seek Wyatt's help to defeat her cousin. But what she finds in London shocks her. Can she learn to trust a man in this crucial matter, when he doesn't seem to take anything seriously?

I've read other books by Ms. Grey and have enjoyed them, but this book was not one of my favorites. Fredericka was way too harsh and rigid in her discipline with the children, always wanting them to have perfect behavior. She seemed very much a shrew. It made her unlikeable, not that Wyatt was much better. He didn't seem to take anything seriously, including Fredericka's concerns that Jane would win custody. The story centers mostly on the children, and I would have preferred more with the main couple. Every time we saw them, Wyatt and Fredericka were fighting about their different parenting styles. When did they have time to fall in love? I just wasn't convinced of their passion for each other. If Wyatt took the time to tell Fredericka that he hadn't seen his mistress since they had married, why not just say he broke it off with her? Otherwise, there was no reason even to mention it. By the time I got to the end of the story, I didn't really care about either of them. Sorry to say, this story won't stay with me at all.

Overall: ⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡
Romance: 💞
Sensuality: 💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥
Humor: Some with the children
Perspective: Third person from both hero and heroine.

Should I read in order?
This is the first in Grey’s new series, Say I Do

Basic plot:
Fredericka must marry to secure her guardianship of her nieces and newphew. Wyatt must marry to secure his inheritance from his grandmother. They find each other the perfect marriage of convenience...

Give this a try if you want:
- Mostly London setting
- Marriage of convenience
- Children in the story – heroine is guardian of 3 children (2 girls and a boy, aged 5, 7 and 9. Charlie has a stutter)
- Low steam – there’s plenty of kisses but they are all very short and PG and only 1 scene that you will have to read a few times to be sure it’s an actual intimate act.

Ages:
- Heroine is 20, hero is 28

My thoughts:
This book really exhausted me in the worst way. I don’t even really want to write a review on it, so you should just read Fringe Book Reviews take on it because it is exactly what I felt!

I was really hoping I would love this one – I loved the initial set up of it. Duke must marry in 7 days?? Leading to a marriage of convenience? Yes please.

Then we get 3 children, which okay, not my favorite but I can totally have that with some great romance. But I never felt the romance between these two, or even came to like them.

This book seemed to be filled with quite a bit of miscommunications and assumption on both characters parts but especially the heroine. Then she would confront the hero on it and not even let him speak! Or explain anything! And then he would just let it go and they both just kept thinking things that were wrong about each other…

Then we have custody battle which isn’t my thing anyway – they are just so, so stressful and isn’t usually an environment that gives me lots of feels. And in this situation I felt like they both made a number of foolish decisions that of course lead to disaster. It made it an immensely frustrating book for me to read.

Also, not sure we needed the whole strange poetry plot. The hero has a hatred for poetry and the heroine loves poetry and it was just….strange? His extreme hatred for it (the trauma from his teacher, burning poetry books...It seemed extreme? Especially with everything else going on in the book it definitely wasn’t needed – the plot had plenty.) I went to think about what I know about these characters and I felt the character depth wasn’t that great but they do have this as a part of their identity…

And the hero is pretty jerky to the heroine. He tells her to do things that she shouldn’t be doing and doesn’t really listen to her in a number of parts. And the fact that he tells her to forgive her extremely toxic family members instead of protecting her from them? No. No. shudders in remembrance

Basically I didn’t like anything about this book. I actually felt angry reading it in quite a few places. I’m sure it will work for others – it wasn’t badly written or anything it just gave me the opposite of good romance feels and I’m glad to move on from it.

Historical romance. Regency-era England. Book 1 of the Say I Do series. We start here with one of the silliest reasons for a marriage of convenience, which is an inheritance-related reason. Our duke Wyatt has just been informed that he needs to marry within 7 days to keep the property that his grandmother left for him. Not to worry though, his solicitor has already found him a bride: Fredericka is in a custody battle with her cousin over the guardianship of her sister’s orphaned children and needs a husband to bolster her cause. When the duke shows up at her house to offer marriage, she’s stunned and would rather have had more time to consider the proposal, but they’re on a time crunch, so she accepts. Along the way, we find that Fredericka is the strict caregiver and expecting proper behavior from the children (but mostly so she doesn’t get the kids taken away from her) and Wyatt is the one who wants to see the kids rambunctiously playing. These two are constantly bickering from their opposing views on childrearing, plus misinterpreting each other’s words anytime they’re speaking. It was a fun book to read and I’ll definitely be reading more from this author.

Fredericka agrees to a marriage of convenience to a well known rake to be able to keep her sister's children. Wyatt marries to meet the terms of his grandmother's will. It's not as if he needs the money. No, it is because the money would be left to a poetry society if he remains single. And he would do anything to prevent that for personal reasons. Wyatt has the gift of saying the wrong thing to Fredericka and she has the gift of taking everything he says wrong. She generally overlooks it because he really does have a way with the children. This is a witty delightful story of two people trying to resist passion and keep to a business arrangement.

This is the first book in a new regency romance series, Say I Do. This is about Wyatt, who needs a wife to inherit his family fortune and Fredericka who needs a husband to endure she retains custody of her sister’s children.

I had high hopes for this book but felt that it was very hard to get into. The characters seemed very surface-level and I never warmed up to them. There’s many books with this storyline and this one just wasn’t as well written as others I’ve read.

Wyatt, The Duke of Wyatthaven needs a wife quickly or risk losing an inheritance from his grandmother. She has a surprising codicil to her will that he just learned about. It doesn’t effect his dukedom but is of value and prime property in London. Frederika Hale needs a husband. For the last year she has been raising her sister’s three children. But a cousin has threatened to take as she realizes she wont be having children of her own. A husband, especially a Duke will give her protection. They’ve not met and seemingly Wyatt learns of her situation through a solicitor. He doesn’t want any changes to their lives at the moment. He is busy with his gaming and card tournaments. And he is content to let her stay in the children's country home. (Oddly, he knows he will need an heir eventually but they don’t discuss this while deciding to wed.)

I’m mixed on this book. I like Fredericka and feel like she’s done well with the children given the circumstances. Wyatt wants to bring out the more playful side to the children when he does involve himself in their upbringing. Both MCs have insecurities from their childhood. But Wyatt doesn’t take care of business as far as I’m concerned. He seemingly doesn’t have much power as a Duke because he belongs to the wrong political party. He has the information to stop the process regarding the children but it doesn’t seem to be a priority for him. His actions don’t always follow his words. And a personal pet peeve, he never cuts ties with his mistress, although he doesn’t see her in the story. Those two are not the same thing. On the plus side his kisses make her swoon and he is very kind.

I am new to Amelia Grey and this is the first in a new series. But with this beautiful cover I was expecting more heat than a couple of kisses and a few sentences of a non descriptive love scene. The author shows some extra in the story by bringing up past issues, and mention of spousal abuse and the effects on the children of the parents deaths. But surprisingly I didn’t feel much towards the characters. I like historical romances and often can recall small details of why this or that one stands out. This one felt like a formula book. The story is okay but it will quickly fade from my mind.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC in exchange for a review.

This is the first book in Amelia Grey's new series, and it was an ok read for me. The story has a few tropes that I always enjoy, especially the marriage of convenience and the opposites-attract romance. Plus, the kids are adorable! I didn't love the romance as much as some of the other aspects of the story, like Wyatt's friend group, and Fredericka's relationship, and Wyatt's growing relationship, with the children.

The love story between Wyatt and Fredericka didn't quite hit the mark for me. They have a lot to overcome, and there were times when they both frustrated me with their miscommunication and failed attempts to understand each other. I almost think they were too different. I found Wyatt to be immature, and it was hard to get invested in his character. Fredericka, on the other hand, was a bit too strict, which made it challenging to connect with her. Fredericka is very disciplined and straight-laced, while Wyatt is a rake and very carefree. He has a lot of growing up to do to fill the role of husband and father, and their parenting philosophies were so different. There were times when they complemented each other well, but the chemistry wasn't quite there for me. It's definitely a slow-building and burning, closed-door love story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of the book. All thoughts are my own.