Ne’er Duke Well is a charming little romance laden with feeling and a surefooted, breezy writing style… which also has a heavy shellacking of wallpapery behavior on it, with a plot that has way too many moving parts. Still, it’s a fun read, and those plot points do make sense – eventually.

Louisiana native and abolitionist Peter Kent is known for his radical politics and total inability to behave in a proper manner in his home country. He is stunned to learn that he’s inherited a dukedom. Once he lands in England, he takes on the mantle of Duke of Stanhope, meets with the crumbling and possibly haunted estate and discovers his reputation has not endeared him to his neighbors. He also spends more time than he ever has before with his younger, illegitimate half-siblings, the sword fight enthusiast Lu and animal-loving Freddie. To secure the custody of the children he turns his eyes toward the marriage mart and asks the seemingly much more staid Lady Selina Ravenscroft for help securing a match.

Only there’s something that Peter doesn’t know about Selina, who seems to be a moralistic debutante – she runs a circulating library intended for women only – a library laden with erotica and educational material related to sex. Though she herself is a virgin, naturally. Selina tries to help Peter find a proper bride, but one incident leads to another, which ultimately leads to Selina and Peter being caught in flagrante delicto. They’re forced to marry, but is it real love?

Oh, will you have to bite your lip just a bit with this one. The author tries her best to make Selina’s library seem like a credible move for a young lady of the aristocracy and, in an author’s note, ends with the notion that a woman of nobility could probably get away with running such a book service due to her status as the wife of a peer. But it’s hard to believe that, honestly.

The book suffers a bit from extraneous plot details – and really, between the library and Peter’s custody fight for the kids, there’s too much plot that has little to do with the romance. I have no idea why Peter is American, but his Louisiana life barely factors into the novel and it ought to; he and Selina already have a friendship rolling before the book, and it’s frustrating we miss out on that because it feels like the reader is missing a step.

And yet this is still a touching, charming book. I liked Selina’s brains, I liked Peter’s moral fiber and I loved how much they adore the children. I enjoyed the kids’ antics, though they read a little bit younger than they ought to for twelve and ten. The banter and humor are all fun, the sex is spicy. The way the author handles the notion of Peter and Selina not wanting to have kids is well thought out (though someone should warn them about the effectiveness of the rhythm method). Ne’er Duke Well is entertaining enough to make me look for more for the author, while noting the flaws in this first full-length effort.