Have you ever had a whole lot of fun reading a book while also being completely mentally exhausted by it? While the Duke Was Sleeping is fast-paced, fun, and spirited, but it’s also such a dizzying merry-go-round you’ll want to sit down and take a breath after a few chapters. Still, it’s a great time.

Adelaide “Della” Rosenborne’s charge, Lady Cordelia Highwater, doesn’t want to marry the man her father has chosen for her, and Adelaide decides to save their mutual skins by putting her on a ship to a place where she can hide out until the drama dies down. Unfortunately, they can’t find a sailor willing to take them (women on ships happen to be bad luck). The two women head to Berwick and rent a room from Peter, a duke who immediately takes a shine to Cordelia, who panics at his marital advances, knocks him over a cat and sends him into a coma. With no other witnesses to the crime, Adelaide is bribed into posing as her mistress, the Duke’s presumptive fiancée. It shouldn’t be any great shakes; she’ll approach Peter when he wakes up and talk him into letting Cordelia out of the marriage.

Journeyman Sir Everett “Rhett” Montgomery is a seductive ladies’ man who meets ugly with Adelaide while she’s trying to talk any boat captain she can on the dock into taking Codelia to France, which results in a failed pass from him and a dunk in the Thames for them both. He finds her space to clean off, they have one forbidden kiss before she disappears, but he can’t stop thinking of her. The temporary duke while his brother, Peter, is in a coma, he’d been previously called back from his gambolings by his brother and looks forward to going back to his carousing once his brother wakens – he’s not been comfortable in England since his fiancée broke his heart years ago. When Adelaide introduces herself to him as Cordelia, Rhett is suspicious; this brawling, beery, cursing girl does not sound like the fearful Cordelia at all.

“Cordellia” settles into the extended Montgomery clan, which includes four lively sisters. As Rhett and Adelaide get closer, her double life threatens to pop – leaving her caught between two brothers.

Rhett is an almost parody of a rake who gets lovestruck and learns his lesson, while Adelaide is a tough, uncompromising and clever lady. Their romance burns slowly and is filled with a lovely and understandable tension. I liked Peter and even Cordelia and the sisters, though the latter aren’t very well defined (but probably will be in their upcoming books).

This is a frenetic, chaotic, wallpapery historical that’s still a hoot. There is a marble phallus and a rogue cat and much Nonsense. If you don’t like highjinks in your romances, you should avoid this one. It might help if you like the romcom it’s based on, While You Were Sleeping, which I love. I had good fun reading While The Duke Was Sleeping, and if you open your heart to its ridiculousness, you might too.