The ugly duckling retold as a romance. I found it a little odd (but not distasteful). The dark moment of the soul happens very early, which was an interesting switch-up.
Havng read and loved all of Eloisa James’ fairy tale books thus far, it was a complete surprise to find just how much I hated The Ugly Duchess. Built on a premise that I find distasteful, marriage by fraud, this book started at a low point and never rose above it. I’m still not clear why everyone thought Theo was so ugly, other than everyone said she was so it must be true. If you're going to make her ugly, make her ugly. Give her a lazy eye, buck teeth and a hairy mole. Don't just make her statuesque, which was what she was, as far as I could tell.
Meanwhile James was a wimp when it came to facing his father, and then Theo. The only part of the book I enjoyed was when James was living as a pirate and that was only because I didn’t have to …
Havng read and loved all of Eloisa James’ fairy tale books thus far, it was a complete surprise to find just how much I hated The Ugly Duchess. Built on a premise that I find distasteful, marriage by fraud, this book started at a low point and never rose above it. I’m still not clear why everyone thought Theo was so ugly, other than everyone said she was so it must be true. If you're going to make her ugly, make her ugly. Give her a lazy eye, buck teeth and a hairy mole. Don't just make her statuesque, which was what she was, as far as I could tell.
Meanwhile James was a wimp when it came to facing his father, and then Theo. The only part of the book I enjoyed was when James was living as a pirate and that was only because I didn’t have to watch him try to fumble his way through interacting with Theo and/or manipulating her. Even at the end, when supposedly he's changed, we find out he's still been manipulating her by hiring fake gossips/reporters to hang around the house as a pretext to keep her indoors with him. When I read that part, I would have thrown the book across the room had it not been an ebook.
My biggest issue with The Ugly Duchess was that although I hated both of the main characters, I still really loved James’ writing. I kept getting sucked into the writing only to be annoyed by the characters. What makes me sad is that the companion to this book, [b:Seduced by a Pirate|15851980|Seduced by a Pirate (Fairy Tales, #4.5)|Eloisa James|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1347712981s/15851980.jpg|21599389] is 100% better than this, and that is just a novella. I desperately wish it was the other way around, or alternately, I could get the several days back that it took to read this. The second star is for the writing alone.
