Slightly Dangerous, much like my recent read, What I Did for A Duke, is almost universally loved and a frequent recommendation across different reddit threads on r/HistoricalRomance. And it’s not that I never wanted to read it; it’s that I tried a sample and stopped around the time when the ladies made a wager on who could seduce the duke first.Â
The story just didn’t grip me by that point, and I wasn’t going to waste my time further.
But after the roaring success that was What I Did For a Duke for me, I decided to give it another chance. Everyone is so obsessed with Wulfric Bedwyn, that I felt a bit of FOMO. I wanted to be a fangirl as well!
Brief overview: I regret to inform you that I am not a Wulfric Bedwyn fangirl, or a fan of this novel at all. I just didn’t get it! The story kept on being boring, I didn’t see the chemistry between the characters, everything was told to me instead of shown and I just didn’t feel like Christine (though we share a name) was a good match for Wulfric (not that I liked Wulfric). They just don’t work together. Maybe I needed to read all of the Bedwyn novels, maybe it’s just not my cup of tea, but I would still say that you should give it a go and make your own decision.
- Heat level: Not too spicy; if I remember correctly there are two spicy scenes and neither is too explicit (to me they read very cold and mechanical, but that could be just me).
- Standalone or series? This is part 6 of the Bedwyn saga, in which each sibling gets their own book. I read this first and based on my experience, maybe try them all?
- Page count: 365 pages
- Read if: You want a slow burn romance, opposites attract stories, romance books with cold, stoic MCs and bubbly heroines.
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Thoughts and Feelings
Let’s start with the prose. It’s not bad exactly. On a sentence level, a little run-on, but I kind of like run-on sentences (if you couldn’t tell by literally everything I ever wrote). It’s definitely readable and even pretty in places, but it leans more traditional historical romance, in places very reminiscent of Georgette Heyer or (bear with me here) Jane Austen.
The problem is the exposition, which is inserted in the most random places. Wulfric’s introduction includes two pages of him recounting what each of his (what feels like) thousand siblings is doing in their lives, how many kids they have, and a little recap of what happened in their books. This same recap is repeated again before Easter, when he thinks about who is coming to his gathering.
And then when Christine is introduced, her friend Melanie is given this page-long monologue in which she recounts Christine’s history (husband, in-laws, etcetera). Then she reveals snippets of her history with her husband in equally awkward dialogue lines to Wulfric. All of this was strange to me. I get wanting to explain the history of your characters, and giving them a background, but there are far more elegant and unobtrusive ways to do it.
Each character is introduced similarly — what they look like, who they are in relation to other people, what they’re wearing, what they’re like. With the house party at the beginning having 24 people if I’m not mistaken, this gets overwhelming real quick. And none of those characters play that major of a role.
Then there’s Wulfric Bedwyn, whom I was poised to love. Unfortunately, even by the end I couldn’t see what’s so great about him (other than the fact that most people fancast him as Henry Cavill, which is understandable, but can we not leave that poor man alone?). The point of a cold, reclusive man in romances — to me at least — is to see that ice melt at least a little by the end of the book (perhaps only for the heroine). But this man despises everything about Christine for the whole novel, and even by the end he isn’t all that charmed, the main draw of her to him being how attracted he is to her “vitality”. He smiles only like twice in this whole book!
And fine, we can keep him cold and all that, but if so, then he needs a heroine who’s soft but perhaps a little quieter and more suited to his world. Christine doesn’t seem to be. She’s bubbly and clumsy and unhappy with society’s rules, so stuffing her in a role of the Duchess seems a cruelty.
Not that I liked her overmuch either. At first, she seemed great, but the more of her antics showed on page, the less I liked her. Who in their right mind falls into water because they’re so desperate to save someone else’s glove? Who climbs a tree in a dress and then manages to tear it completely while coming down? In this era? Unbelievable. Even now, I feel like no one would be this clumsy. I know Christine has some depth and she hides a lot of her anxiety and sadness behind this bubbly persona, but it never seems like we get to it, if that makes sense.
The author instead chooses to continuously paint her as this not-like-other-women clutz who somehow manages to charm her way with everyone. And this is just unrealistic and annoying.
I feel like she would be happier if her story is that she married someone else, a normal person from her village with a similar joy de vivre but also depth. If she got to find meaningful employment somewhere and could play with kids, run around freely. Yes, I know, opposites attract and blah blah, but similar people can have tons of chemistry and maybe a better life together. I can’t help but picture her sad and depressed after a few years with Wulfric, and Wulfric annoyed and embarrassed all the time.
To top all of that, I didn’t see them falling in love. The author chooses to tell us about their attraction (tell, not show) in a very roundabout way. For example, they’ll have a conversation or a scene together, during which Christine will hate him and he’ll be annoyed at her, and then later we’d get internal monologues with “but, despite his/her awfulness, there’s something so attractive about him/her”. And this just doesn’t work. I need to feel the tingles right along with them, the chemistry in the moment it’s happening, not later.
They also don’t have any meaningful conversations. Not only do I not get to understand what they find so attractive about each other, but I also don’t get to see them speak about anything much so some sort of emotional connection will happen. Meanwhile their internal monologue is always extremely hateful towards the other person.
Wulfric thinks she’s improper and not good ton, Christine thinks he’s a cold stick in the mud, and so, how am I supposed to root for these people?
Perhaps I needed to read the rest of the series to get it, but if so, that’s on the book/author, not me. I know this is a series, but each book should somewhat stand on its own. I should at the very least be able to understand why the characters who meet in this book like each other.
If you love this book, I am sorry — I know how much people love it and Wulfric. I wanted to be a part of the club too, I wanted to love it. And yet I just found not much to enjoy here. It’s decently written, so I’ll definitely read more of Mary Balogh’s work, but perhaps not this series if it all follows the same formula.
As for you, I recommend that you give it a go. It’s so beloved that I know the error is likely somewhere in my arena, and it might suit you far better than it did me. Personally, I’m taking a break from historical romance for a day or two so I can move on with fresh, rested eyes and perhaps find another new favorite.
