Lady Katherine Howe is feeling quite a bit of pressure to marry her late husbands heir in order to forgive a large debt that must be repaid to her otherwise. Her late husband squandered her entire dowry and her father gave him a loan that must now be repaid. But Katherine does not want to be forced into another marriage not of her choice so she comes up with a rather bold plan. She plans to propose to Gerard de Lacey--yes, that de Lacey of the wild rumors of illegitimacy--as she knows he will be in need of a large fortune if the rumors are true. But her deeper reason for wanting this marriage to the bold captain has to do with one long ago rainy afternoon in which he kindly helped her--a plain, quiet young lady.

Gerard is stunned when he receives a most unique proposal from this rather unremarkable looking woman. Kate, as Gerard grows to call her, is so careful with her wording and demeanor and he just can't understand why she wears such dull, drab clothing and as he is most intrigued to find out more about her, he agrees to her proposal. He steals a kiss and is relieved to find there is a bit of passion hiding underneath her facade. As Gerard was on his way to Bath to uncover clues as to who is blackmailing his family, he takes Kate with him as soon as they are married and together they try to find the right balance for their new marriage of convenience.

If you read the previous book in this series, [b:One Night in London|11315200|One Night in London (The Truth About the Duke #1)|Caroline Linden|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327928210s/11315200.jpg|16243181], this book takes place during the same time as that one but with hardly any overlapping as most of the story is set in Bath versus London. I was a bit surprised by this as the ending of [b:One Night in London|11315200|One Night in London (The Truth About the Duke #1)|Caroline Linden|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327928210s/11315200.jpg|16243181] left me quite anxious for this one and I was a little disappointed that the reveal of what happened isn't almost until the end of this story. I understand that the whole book leads up to the dilemma Gerard got himself into but I was hoping for a bit more scandalous reveal I guess. *shrugs* Once Gerard finally confesses the reason for being in Bath to Kate, they are able to uncover some clues about the blackmailer but overall this book seemed a bit light in the illegitimacy issues and I would have liked it to move forward in that direction more.

I really enjoyed our two characters. I liked that Kate is not a raving beauty and is quiet and we get to see her emerge from her shell and transform into a lovely butterfly and I really enjoyed how Gerard saw her for her true self almost from the start. He quickly learns that getting Kate to smile is one of the best things to do and he loves to watch her transform when she gives a rare smile. Gerard for his part is brash, bold and a bit quick-tempered but he learns to curb this soon around his new wife as she divulges she suffered some abuse from her first husband. Together, they mesh and this is a sweet yet hot romance of two people finding love where they least expect it. Overall, I enjoyed this book for its uniqueness of no titles for the couple, a different location, an unassuming woman just waiting to be polished off a bit and a decisive hero. There really is no major action or danger to take away from the romance so it truly is a lovely romance to watch emerge. I know I am anxiously awaiting the final book in this series and the teaser already has me wanting it right now even though this book left me wanting a bit more from it. 3 1/2 stars

I received this eARC from Avon via netgalley.com

The narrator was terrible... kind of hard to ignore and ruined a lot of the story. Also I hated both the MCs.

The De Laceys are my new favorite historical romance family...they're right up there with the Bridgertons as the best ever! I loved One Night in London, and this one was even better. Normally, romance "series" contain characters in the same family or group of friends, but the stories are not related. I like the relationship between the stories, and how they take place at the same time. It's well written, and it doesn't feel like you're reading the same thing twice.

Gah, Caroline Linden never disappoints. I loved this marriage of convenience book with a quiet, shy heroine who blooms over the course of the story. And the hero is good and kind but still slightly wicked. This story is the middle book of an overarching mystery plot, and not much is resolved on that front. It's much more about the relationship between the two main characters.

3.5 stars. Good marriage-of-convenience story. Just not the smoldering, scorching tale the first book weaves.
Solid read.

Blame It on Bath sees the youngest of the de Lacey brood try to overcome the scandal of his father's passing, and purported bigamist marriage while using his military past to aid him. He knows as the youngest son, he will definitely struggle if he loses his inheritance, and is proclaimed a bastard, so when a beautiful young widow, and heiress, organises a clandestine meeting, and proposes a marriage of convenience , he can't help but accept. Marrying Katherine Howe allows Gerard to still continue his search for the blackmailer, in Bath, and with a handsome wife to boot. Katherine needs Gerard as her husband to stave off the advances of her late husband's nephew and heir, who is badgering her to marry to deal with debts that she can call in at any point, and the handsome war hero, who she's had a shine on since childhood, is the perfect choice. Will Katherine be able to stop Lucian, and help Gerard find the evidence he and his brother's need to prove their legitimacy?

As the second book in the series, you would expect to have a lot of the backstory already fleshed out, but Blame It On Bath seemed to run alongside the events of One Night in London. Gerard is extremely focused on finding the blackmailer, and only pauses his journey to Bath shortly to meet with Kate and then marry her, and after that's done, seems to expect he'll be able to leave her to her own devices in the townhouse they've leased. Well, he's wrong about that. Kate may be shy, but she doesn't appreciated being abandoned, and I love the fact that she grew so much as a character once away from her vindictive mother and Lucian, and when she embraced her own worth. Becoming 'Kate' rather than 'Katherine', and showing Gerard she's someone who can help him in his efforts was fantastic, and this just added to their growing intimacy and flourishing relationship. The plot line of the late Duke's secret marriage continues in this story, and I liked seeing Gerard finding more of the evidence they needed to help their cause, which also helped Gerard and Kate become a better couple. Seeing Edward make an appearance towards the end of this book, and seeing him take some more responsibility as he steps into the mantle of Durham, makes me much more excited for his book, The Way to a Duke's Heart.

Gerard de Lacey may be declared illegitimate because of a clandestine marriage his father, the recently deceased Duke of Durham, entered into in his youth, before he married Gerard's mother. A year before his death, the Duke started receiving letters blackmailing him. Now the London gossips won't stop talking about the "Durham Dilemma", his brother Edward is busy trying to prove their legitimacy through legal means, and his older brother Charlie, the heir, is mainly staying far away from the whole business. Gerard thinks the best way of solving the situation is tracking down the blackmailer. He also plans on finding himself a rich wife as soon as possible, so that he can secure his future, even if the scandal is not resolved in the de Lacey brothers' favour.

The blackmail letters were posted from Bath, so Gerard resolves to go there. Before he even leaves London, he may have solved the issue of securing a rich bride. Lady Katherine Howe, a recently widowed lady, approaches him at an inn, offering him marriage and her enormous fortune of nearly one hundred thousand pounds. She needs a husband in a hurry, or she'll have to marry her dead husband's unpleasant nephew. She knows Gerard needs money, in case the courts declare him and his brothers bastards. What she doesn't tell Gerard is that she grew up not far from the ducal seat in Sussex, and has nurtured an unrequited infatuation for him for over a decade.

So Gerard suddenly finds himself very much married, to a complete stranger. It doesn't take him long to see that the combination of Katherine's beautiful, drama-queen mother, and her much older, stern and overbearing former husband have had a massive impact on her self-esteem, confidence and general demeanour She seems desperate to please him, and is extremely surprised every time he wants to spend any time talking to her or you know, have marital relations with her. She's even more surprised to find out that sex can be fun and enjoyable. Of course, he also needs to learn that actually sharing his thoughts and feelings with his wife is good, she won't just be distracted with more smexy times every time difficult topics come up.

I mentioned that I liked the fact that the heroine in the last book in the series, [b:One Night in London|11315200|One Night in London (The Truth About the Duke #1)|Caroline Linden|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327928210s/11315200.jpg|16243181], was a widow with a happy former marriage, who seemed to have a very positive attitude to romance, sex and relationships in general. Well, here we get the opposite. Poor Lady Katherine has been told that she's plain and dull and unattractive since she was little, and her mother has made sure she got everyone's attention at all times by making sure her daughter dressed in frumpy, unflattering clothing. Then she was married off to a much older man, who mistreated her and had several affairs.

So it's no surprise that she built her infatuation of the gallant young Gerard de Lacey up as something wondrous, and decided to go after him when he was finally in a position that he was unlikely to accept her offer of marriage. He really does a very good job being patient and understanding and encouraging, insisting that she buy colourful and pretty dresses and not cower all the damn time. I can't really fault him for being so thoughtless that when he finally gets a lead in the blackmailing case, he goes off for weeks without sending her word, because it's established that he's rather impulsive and rarely thinks things through carefully.

I still enjoyed this book a lot, if maybe not quite as much as the first book in the series. Next up - the resolution of the whole blackmailing scandal, and the eldest brother Charlie's book.

The first book in this series was okay but this one was pretty fun! I like that the two main characters had some arguments throughout the book but worked them out. Plus its fun that the middle brother got married first, then the youngest, and now the oldest (the one who will become the Duke) will be the third book!

When I was growing up, my mother made it clear there was a path for nice girls who wanted to wed some day. One met a wonderful man, fell in love, married, and then had sex. In Blame it on Bath, Ms. Linden’s latest enjoyable entry in her The Truth about the Duke series, heroine Katherine Howe follows that path only to find her husband, Captain Gerard de Lacey, has not. Gerard does wait until after he weds Katherine to bed her. But, much to Katherine’s dismay, he completely skips the falling in love part and appears quite content to do so.


Gerard is the youngest of the Duke of Durham’s three sons. The three men are currently living under a cloud of suspicion dubbed by society as the Durham Dilemma. On his deathbed, their father confessed a whopping secret: He’d married as a young man then separated from but never divorced the woman. Thus, his marriage to his sons’ mother, the Duchess of Durham, long dead, was quite possibly an invalid one. The Duke never spoke to anyone of his early marriage, but in the months before he died he'd been receiving blackmail letters threatening to publish proof of his earlier union. Were it to be proven the Duke was indeed married to someone other than Gerard’s mother and that woman had been alive when he wed the Duchess, his three sons would be illegitimate and would lose their fortunes, titles, and entailed properties.

Gerard’s middle brother, Edward, the hero of the first book in the series, One Night in London, is trying to resolve the problem through Britain’s legal system. Gerard, who has spent his adult life in the army, has no patience for that slow moving process and he decides to track down the blackmailer himself. He also plans to find and wed a wealthy woman before the Durham Dilemma scandal further taints his prospects. If his family does lose everything, Gerard will be left with only a small estate in Cornwall and an annual income of a thousand pounds a year. He, who has grown up as a Duke’s son, doesn’t want a life of comparative poverty and sees marrying for money as the only sure solution to his looming misfortune.

Two of the four blackmail letters were posted from Bath, and so there Gerald decides to go. On his way, he stops and spends the night at an inn on the outskirts of London. He is musing over his troubles when there is a knock on the door of his room. A servant woman begs him to come to the inn’s private parlor and meet with her mistress, whose name she does not give. Gerard whose “abiding weakness was curiosity,” goes to the parlor and encounters a woman (he thinks) he’s never met before. She introduces herself as Katherine Howe and, after swearing him to secrecy about their meeting, asks him to marry her.

Katherine is a widow of thirty, considered by most to be a plain, quiet, and serious woman. Her husband died less than a year ago, and she, much to her horror, is being pressured into marrying his heir, a cold and dour man named Lucien Howe. Lucien is desperate to marry Katherine. Katherine is a wealthy woman — she inherited over a hundred thousand pounds from her father. Her husband, Viscount Howe, left Lucien saddled with debt, much of which is owed to Katherine (the note was originally held by Katherine’s father and when he died, it became hers.) Lucien has no way to pay the money he owes and sees marriage to Katherine as the only way he can escape penury. Katherine’s mother Mary, an unpleasant, conniving, vain woman, also wants Katherine to wed Lucien so that she, Mary, will remain the mother-in-law of a wealthy peer. Katherine would rather die than marry the grim and ascetic Lucien but she is increasingly anxious that he and her mother will somehow force her to do so.

So, knowing of the Durham Dilemma, she seeks out Gerard and offers him her fortune in exchange for his hand. Unlike Gerard, Katherine knows the night she meets him in the inn is not the first time the two have met. Katherine grew up in the same town as Gerard and, twelve years earlier, when Katherine was caught walking in downpour, Gerard came upon her on the road, swept her up onto his horse, and gave her a ride back to her home. That act of consideration on his part stirred something in Katherine’s heart and she’s been in love with him ever since. As she explains it, he was the first man to ever put his arms around her willingly. Her marriage was not a close one; for a dozen years she’s thought of Gerard as ”Her knight, her hero, the ideal man she had kept in heart." When she learned of his situation, she decided to pursue him. Not only would marriage to him free her from Lucien’s grasp; finally she’d be with the man she loves. She tells Gerard nothing of their past or her feelings and presents marriage as simply a convenient exchange of her wealth for his protection.


This is a partial review. Please go to likesbooks.com (All About Romance) to read the rest of the review.

http://www.likesbooks.com/cgi-bin/bookReview.pl?BookReviewId=8630[b:One Night in London|11315200|One Night in London (The Truth About the Duke #1)|Caroline Linden|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327928210s/11315200.jpg|16243181]

I just returned from a whirlwind visit to London and Bath so it was wonderful to curl and read this book after having visited Queen's Square! I could picture Kate and Gerard's home and the setting of this book in a way that brought it to life for me. Kate was a fabulous heroine!