ARC provided by the Publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
This book ended up on my DNF list. The characters weren't interesting.

I liked the premise of the story, but I just wasn't feeling this story. The whole reason to read a romance is to watch the H/H fall in love. By the time we join the H/H in the story, they have already fallen in love and are engaged. I wish the story had included the beginning of the relationship.

This excellent series continues with Lord Sebastian's Secret. Sebastian's secret is one not often seen in romance, and I loved it. Ashford does a wonderful job of illustrating the impact of Sebastian's secret on multiple areas of his life, without it ever feeling didactic or like a Very Special Episode of The Duke's Sons. Georgina was a lovely heroine as well. Definitely recommend.

DNF. Main characters were boring and book starts with them already engaged. Wasn't able to get into it.

2 helms

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Strugglefest! It took me 6 months to trundle through this. Just kept putting it down and picking it up and finally, I decided to finish this book once and for all…yeap it was a skim read after 40%. A tepid romance as this is about the lead up to Sebastian and Georgina’s wedding and the issues that they face while Sebastian meets Georgian’s family. Oh, and there is the fact that Sebastian cannot read and Georgina doesn’t know!! Sounds great right?. In theory, this sounded different and so interesting and I was so curious to find out how the author handled this scenario….Jane Ashford wasn’t doing a bad job at the beginning of the book and I was quite interested in Georgina and Sebastian as a couple but the pace slowed down after a while and after that, I lost interest.

Lord Sebastian Gresham loves Lady Georgina Stane and she loves him. They are engaged and are getting married in a few weeks! What can possibly go wrong? Well, meeting Georgina’s family for one and the fact that Sebastian hasn’t figured out a way to tell Georgina he can’t read.
The Stane family do not follow society’s rules and are completely eccentric with Georgina’s mother being a pug breeder and the father a passionate historian. And then there are the monster younger sisters who are underfoot all the time and make diabolical plans to try to move the wedding along quicker! On top of all the antics and drama, Sebastian has to find a way to confess his secret without losing her love, as he’s afraid his confession will make her see him the way he sees himself – someone stupid whom an intelligent bride like Georgina Stane will not accept as a husband.

This is like “Meet the Fockers”…..meeting your fiancés family for the first time is never easy and if they are eccentric then it’s a completely different story! The Stanes are a comical lot with such strong personalities, that I found the family antics overtaking Georgina and Sebastian’s courtship. I didn’t find the H/h particularly strong in their personalities either so that could also be a reason for the fact that they could easily be overshadowed. I did feel sorry for Sebastian and his predicament, as he is a sweet and lovely hero for Georgina and he holds her wit in high regard, as he finds himself so lacking.

Unfortunately, the book didn’t work for me but I do feel like this is something for someone with the right frame of mind will enjoy immensely. A book for those who like their historical romances warmer with the hint of an eccentric family and a different storyline.

*Thank-you Jane Ashford, Netgalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for the ARC.

Jane Ashford continues the Duke's Sons series with Lord Ashcroft's Secret. Lady Georgina Stane is engaged to Lord Sebastian Gresham; she has an eccentric family and he is hiding an inability to read. Hi jinks ensue with aggressive pugs, a philosophical hindu sage, and difficult siblings. Entertaining regency romance.

I didn't care for this at all. The centering around the dogs bothered me, I just couldn't get into it.

Lord Sebastian Gresham, a major in the military, who considers himself “the dimmest” of all the sons of the Duke and Duchess of Langford, goes to meet the family of Georgina, his fiancée, at Stane Castle that is “back of beyond.” He finds a most unique household.

Georgina’s parents married because of their mutual physical attraction, their mutual dislike of society and mutual respect for the other one’s desire to have the freedom to pursue his or her own interests without being nagged. These “interests” create humor, more than a little conflict, and also create obstacles that threaten to destroy Sebastian and Georgina’s dreams.

The humorous situations created by Emma and Hilda, Georgina’s younger sisters, were delightful usually. However, Hilda creates a situation that is life-threatening for both Georgina and Sebastian and really “sets the fox among the chickens” as far as Georgina’s father is concerned. While he is most unconventional in the pursuit of his varied interests, he is very conventional about the behavior of Georgina and Sebastian before they are married. How they get out of this predicament had me reading full-speed-ahead.

About the time I felt like I could slow down to catch my breath, Mr. Mitra, the guest from India teaching Georgina’s father about Hinduism, and the Governess, Joanna, create a situation that will expose Sebastian’s secret. How this gets worked out is not to be missed.

Another humorous part of the household was the herd of little dogs–pugs, no less–that showed up at most inconvenient times. They were Georgina’s mother’s little darlings and nobody dared try to discipline them—fun to read about, but probably not funny to really have to deal with.

The love scenes, so well done, give the reader a good feeling of how right Georgina and Sebastian are for each other. However, there are issues. She is an heiress and has a lot of money while he has little in comparison and then there is his secret. The author, with admirable skill, does indeed hold one’s interest as she untangles the problems.

Lord Sebastian’s Secret is delightful entertainment!

I thought it was okay but fell flat for me. I really liked the main characters Sebastian and Georgina but I found the majority of the other characters to be very annoying. There were many scenes that I thought were very good but for me it was not consistent.

I will still check out other books by the author.

Lord Sebastian's Secret is the third book in the Duke’s Sons historical romance series by Jane Ashford. I have not read the previous books, which might explain some of the issues I had with the book, but perhaps not.

Lord Sebastian Gresham is a battle-tested soldier and brilliant strategist. Yet all his life he’s had to hide his complete failure to decipher letters. In his own mind, he’s just stupid. What a miracle it is that he’s found the perfect bride. Lady Georgina Stane is beautiful, witty, and brilliantly intelligent. Sebastian is head over heels in love, proud as a peacock, and terrified. If she finds out his secret, will he lose her love forever?

Lord Sebastian's Secret begins with Sebastian coming to stay with his fiancee's family to get to know them and prep for the wedding. Perhaps their meeting and initial courtship was in one of the previous books, but it is not here. I feel like I was missing something, or the pair was missing a real connection, when the action began. I like that Georgiana's family is unorthodox, however I think that was occasionally overstated in the narrative. Sebastian is a practical man, a soldier with what would be dubbed street smarts and an ability to memorize things because of his secret. As usual, the internal doubt of worthiness that could be solved with a conversation is the cause of a distance between the pair- but since I never really believed in their closeness I just kept mentally telling him to speak up. I did like the bit of action and activity at the end, but found that I never really connected to the characters or felt like they connected to each other. I do not plan on going back to read the previous books in hopes to catch up to what I missed.

Lord Sebastian's Secret held a lot of promise to me, and I was excited to read it after reading the blurb. Unfortunately, I felt that too much background was missing and the bulk of the book somehow also had me wishing it would get to the point. So much potential, but I feel like it missed the mark for the most part.

I did not enjoy this book. At all. I had such a difficult time connecting to it. Essentially, I found it boring. I found Lord Sebastian’s secret to be weak. And for something that is supposed to be the crux of the book, that’s not good.

Sebastian thinks he’s stupid. His big secret is that he can’t read. This is no big spoiler; it’s in the blurb. There is absolutely no tension or excitement to be found here. None. Sebastian and lady Georgina met before the book began, so there was no seeing them fall in love. This was already true on the first page. The entire book is about him winning over her peculiar family while hiding the fact that he thinks he’s stupid. That’s it.

Georgina’s parents are extremely eccentric. Her mother is obsessed with breeding dogs and her father is obsessed with history. And reincarnation. At least, that is his current flight of fancy. It seems he has different ones over time. Georgina loves her parents and accepts their foibles, but come on. Sebastian has come to stay at their home for several weeks. I’m not sure exactly how many because it’s not clear at what point in time he arrives, only that their wedding will be in September and that is a ways off. So we see him being a nice guy. We see lots of pugs humping his legs. And we see Georgina’s father wax on about Hinduism and his ideas about the afterlife. Oh yeah, plus Georgina has two sisters. One of which has no discernible personality and the other is a completely self-centered brat.

I have laid out all of the conflicts in the entire book. Like I said, boring. You would think that love scenes might spice it up, but you would be wrong. While there is some sex to be had it is fairly PG material. Not exactly fade to black, but close.

It seems this series centers around Sebastian’s brothers, because we do get a little backstory on their marriages and romances once they arrive at lady Georgina’s house. But it doesn’t really add anything to the story, except, I guess, for people who read those books. Otherwise this stands up OK as a standalone.

But I had to struggle to finish it. I won’t be reading any other books in the series. I hope for their sake’s that Sebastian’s brothers have better adventures.

Rating: C-

Book three of Jane Ashford's The Duke's Sons series. This one follows Sebastian (obviously) and Georgina. They met and engaged in the previous book if you haven't read it you really don't miss much pertaining to them. Sebastian has come to Georgina's family home to get to know the family before the wedding. Georgina is worried that they will find her unacceptable because of her eccentric family. But Sebastian has his own worries between Georgina's headstrong younger sisters bombarding him with questions about London and her father who undoubtedly thinks he's too stupid to marry his daughter, Sebastian is hiding a secret of his own.

This was a quick and easy read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I've liked this more than the first two in the series but not more than the prequel novella. Sebastian is the athletic type who had trouble in school and Georgina is the beautiful bluestocking. It would seem like an unlikely match but what attracted them to each other went beyond looks. Sebastian listened to Georgina when she talked about the things she enjoyed and to Sebastian Georgina was everything he ever wanted she was not just beautiful but she is caring and loving; and smart maybe even too smart for him. They were just a great couple and they just grew together throughout the book.

But the long six week wait until the wedding wasn't all easy. They dealt with a spurned suitor, an impatient little sister, a horde of pugs, and a governess with illusions of grandeur. Overall this was a very entertaining and romantic book and I have to say I loved what Sebastian's secret was, you don't see much of that.

Lord Sebastian’s Secret was a complexly unique Historical Romance. I have read hundreds of HR novels, and I believe this is one of the first novels I have read that actually starts after the engagement has been announced. The Hero was loveable instantly; he never brooded or had any dark thoughts about prior experiences in his life that would continually come between the heroine and himself. The heroine was also immediately likable. She was intelligent, loyal and not one to be held down.
This story had the most colorful, loving, and sometimes completely eccentric secondary characters. They were a big part of the H/h’s lives and were given plenty of time in the novel to develop into people you also cared about. The dialog was wonderfully written, very witty and entertaining, (occasionally laugh out loud funny)!

Lord Sebastian Gresham, son of the duke of Langford, is engaged to Lady Georgina Stane and is heading to Stane Castle in Herefordshire before their wedding to meet her parents, Charlotte, Marchioness of Pembridge and her father, Alfred the Marquess.

Georgina’s mother loves Pug dogs and breeds them. The woman’s life seems to revolve around the dogs and Georgina’s father loves local history. Sebastian meets Georgina’s two sisters, Emma and Hilda, and her brother, Edgar.

Sebastian and Georgina spend as much time together alone as they can, but the Pugs running around coupled with the eccentricity of the Marquess and the nosiness of Georgina’s younger sisters, make things difficult for them. They enjoy stealing a chance here and there to kiss one another wishing they could do more.

Georgina has been left a rich heiress by one of her deceased relatives. This is one of the big things that drew Sebastian to her. But after getting to know her more, he has found her to be intelligent and kind in addition to being beautiful.

When Georgina and Sebastian ride out to visit a waterfall, Georgina falls into a ravine and Sebastian climbs down to rescue her. But they both become stuck and it takes days for them to be found.

But Sebastian’s secret is about to be revealed when he needs to contact his family to let them know that he and Georgina are fine.

Will they be able to get through the next few weeks until their wedding?

I did not care for this story because Georgina’s family is a serious bunch of nutcases. I have enjoyed the author’s books in the past, but this is not one I can recommend.

Connie for b2b

Posted on Les Romantiques - Le forum du site
Reviewed by Rinou
Review Copy from the Publisher

In this third volume in The Duke’s Sons series of which I didn’t read the previous ones without any troubles to understand this story, we follow Sebastian as he comes to meet the family of Georgina, his fiancée, before their wedding. The least that can be said is that this visit is going to be quirky and full of unexpected.

Most of the story turns around two facts, one concerning the hero and the other concerning the heroine. Georgina’s parents are eccentric and she’s afraid of Sebastian’s reaction when he’ll meet them (they weren’t in London when the couple met and got engaged). Indeed her father is passionate about weird researches and the most recent is about past lives, and her mother breeds and sells pugs of which she has a pack who bosses everyone around in the familial house. As for Sebastian, he’s dyslexic at a time nobody knows this disease yet, and so he believes he has a limited intelligence, and he’s afraid Georgina will break up with him if she learns about it. Of course several events will put his secret to the test.

Both are charming and likeable characters. She’s very dedicated to her family in spite of their eccentricity, and ready to stand up for them if necessary, but she’s also very fond of Sebastian. He’s down-to-earth, not very educated because of the dyslexia, and he believes he’s a bit stupid, but he’s nice and considerate and most of all more smart that he thinks. They are cute together, and we can see their feelings, but I didn’t feel a big passion between them. The fact that the love scenes are evasive didn’t help. The hero’s dyslexia is put to the test several times, and I regretted that it stayed a secret for so long. I also found too bad (and a little strange) that he never talk about it to anyone in his own family, but I thought touching that his mother feels the need to explain to the heroine that she mustn’t believe him when he says he’s less intelligent.

But my main trouble with this novel is that the author chose a humor so pushed to the extreme that at many times it comes close to ridiculous. As soon as the hero arrives we are in the tone with the attack by the pack of pugs, and many scenes had me rolling my eyes more than laughing. The secondary characters are over the top in their flaw: whether it be the father with his fixed ideas about past lives, or the mother with her dogs, or the youngest sister and her desire to escape her family which makes her put in danger the couple’s life without any remorse, or the governess who goes into a delirium of greatness after and experiment about past lives, all these characters seem on the brink of madness, and that’s a lot for a single family.

I think the author wanted to balance the serious side of the hero’s dyslexia with a side probably extremely funny for her and other readers. Unfortunately that didn’t work for me. However some other parts raised the interest of the novel, that’s why it avoids the worst rating.

This was a captivating story and I loved that it was a little different from others in how it was written. Instead of seeing all of the balls and courting, the couple is already betrothed. Sebastian is heading to stay with his fiancee's family leading up to the wedding and they are quite the peculiar bunch. They are kind of like homebodies, not caring for society functions, which is why her grandmother brought her out that season. Georgina is a lovely character. The passion between these two sets the pages on fire. A great read for historical lovers.

The secret here is no surprise as it is revealed early in the book as well as in the publisher’s text about the novel. Sebastian’s wedding to Georgina, daughter of an eccentric marquis and his equally eccentric wife, is scheduled for several weeks hence, but Sebastian is visiting early to get to know his wife-to-be’s family. Naturally, and delightfully, the course of true love does not run smoothly. This unusual and delightful book is the third in the Duke’s Sons series, and while it is preferable to read them in order, and each previous book is well worth the reading, it is not absolutely necessary. References to the first two books give just enough information to carry the narrative along and explain Lord Sebastian’s motivations, while still inspiring readers to go back and read what they’ve missed.

Jane Ashford's regency romance series, The Duke's Sons, continues in Lord Sebastian's Secret. Sebastian Gresham is prepared to marry Georgina Stane, the young heiress he met during the past London season. At Stane Castle though, Sebastian and Georgina face secrets and a quirky family that threaten their relationship.

The story itself was not as exciting as I thought it would be, but it had some moments of levity that set it apart from other regency novels I've read. While some are stuffy and focus more on setting the scene through lengthy descriptions and fancy dialogue, Lord of Secrets is quite the opposite. The story is very character based, so all the attention is on Georgina and Sebastian, and Georgina's quirky family. The Stane family is quite unconventional and a threat to the marriage. Georgina is worried that Sebastian will be turned off by them, but Sebastian is hiding a secret that he believes will cause Georgina to regret their pending nuptials.

Georgina and Sebastian were so obviously into each other from the very outset of the novel, so their doubts and insecurities about the marriage started to feel repetitive. If I as the reader felt doubts about their relationship I think it would have added some suspense to the story, but it was really plain how the story would play out. The road to get there, littered with obstacles from various members of the household, is another matter entirely. From pugnacious pugs to an obstinate father obsessed with reincarnation, something comes between Georgina and Sebastian over and over again.

After a certain point in the novel I felt like I was reading just to get to the end. I didn't expect any surprises, but sometimes when you start a novel it's easier to just finish it. Maybe the fourth book in the series, Nothing Like a Duke, will be a little more wild and unpredictable.

*eARC provided via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

A romantic comedy, “Lord Sebastian's Secret” is a story of fate and true love. Even with the most shameful secrets between them, Sebastian and Georgina are fated to be together albeit they must traverse their own families’ good-natured meddling.

With both of them coming from big families, Sebastian and Georgina are used to chaos in their own households. But, a prank with good intentions had gone bad and put the young couple in hot water. Instead of a smooth waiting period for their wedding day, there was almost a scandal.

Their love and trust for each are being tested by these circumstances. Telling each other their secrets are becoming necessary but if they do, it can end their engagement.

A fun read, “Lord Sebastian’s Secret” has many laugh out loud funny moments that make the characters so adorable! If you will only read one romance this winter, then it should be “Lord Sebastian’s Secret.”

“Lord Sebastian’s Secret” is Rated T for Teens.

I thought both Lord Sebastian and Lady Georgina were wonderful characters – both have their own secrets and anxieties that threaten their future happiness however. Lord Sebastian is dyslexic – although they didn’t have the word for it at the time – and is usually happy to play the dumb military man, but worries that Georgina, who is a witty and intelligent lady, will find him completely undesirable if she finds out he can’t read. Georgina on the other hand, is concerned that her parents, who are very eccentric, will offend Sebastian or is family.

In this story there is no villain – although some characters actions have negative effects on Sebastian and Georgina. I loved that the story really centres on these two people overcoming their internal struggles, working together and recognising their love. They are just so pure, so good!

Lord Sebastian’s Secret is sensual and sweet - a truly enjoyable and satisfying regency romance. My favourite book in the series so far!