It’s time for me to talk about the 2nd book in the 12 dukes of Christmas series. I was excited to jump into this one because I was looking forward to the comedy and just the general feel-good aspect of the story. After all, it’s a romance that still has development but isn’t extremely complex making it difficult to follow. Whenever I read romance or watch a film about it I like it when it has some development in it where you can see the 2 characters grow closer with each interaction to a point where they soon fall in love no matter what was going on between them before.
That can be said about this book because this one is basically your classic enemies-to-lovers story in a snow-covered village as a background. And now having read the 2nd book in this series I can’t help but notice that this is a regency setting but it still has a modern twist to it such as women holding jobs that probably wouldn’t be common for them to have in that era or appropriate should I say?
I did catch glimpse of Penelope Mitchell in the 1st book but her role was very small and so were Nicholas Pringle and his brother Christopher. It is revealed that Penelope is a chemist who creates perfume and she is celebrating its success at a party, and as soon as word gets out to Nicholas he immediately sees it as a threat to his reputation.
At first, I scoffed at this but then I realized that, oh that’s right he’s a big womanizer, who never relied on a bottle of perfume to earn a one-night stand with a woman, and if he sees men doing that where they’re trying to be like him then yeah I can see why.
And the reputation that he has earned, everyone calls him Saint Nick. With that being said in this story he approaches Penelope hoping to make a deal with her to sell the rights to the perfume just so he can cease and desist its production. Penelope, of course, refuses but since she’s working on a woman’s version of the perfume she decides to basically use him as a guinea pig. I thought, at that time, that the reason for her doing that was so that she could prove him wrong and that her perfume works. But as you might expect overtime as she spends more time with him while testing the perfume on herself to see how he reacts to it there’s a little bit of romance that starts to blossom. But they both deny it in first because she doesn’t believe in love and he doesn’t consider himself the type of man who would settle down like his brother.
It never occurred to me until I reached the end of the book that the author was basically trying to make Nicholas literally like Santa but more attractive and thinner where he enjoys biscuits. It was also the way Penelope sees him when she tells him he’ll eventually be too old to continue his lifestyle. But he also has a love for smithing which is nice too and it was really sweet how he embraces that part of him instead of trying to hide it.
The funniest chapter was actually the 1st one when Penelope and Gloria are arguing over how the perfume was successful. Gloria talks about how she wants men to swoon at her feet when she wears something and Penelope just remains logical the whole time, cause well she spends a lot of time in her laboratory, so she doesn’t have a lot of experience with social interaction. Her very logical personality is where I can often relate to her even though I don’t speak in scientific terms like she does!
But when all’s said is done she eventually learns to believe in love in the end and Nicholas also becomes a better person because he spent his whole life just being what they call a rake, or what I would call it, is that he was very promiscuous. But even people like that can fall in love and that’s what I like about these stories it’s just a nice feel-good thing to read no matter what time of the year it is. I can’t wait to read the next book because this time it’ll be about his brother.
👽Emily
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