the trouble with true love by laura lee guhrke

The only problem is how she can keep her newspaper and independence while ensuring that everyone else gets a happy ending too. Secondly, Henry might be opinionated and exasperating, but she does rather like him.

Firstly, she sees that Henry’s mother is actually happy with her artist and likely to remain so, even if she has ignored Irene’s advice about locking up the better part of her finances where her beau can’t touch them. Irene goes to stay with the family in order to fulfil her part of the deal, still returning home regularly to ensure the newspaper is running smoothly, but soon makes two realisations. Finding them to be one and the same, Henry makes a deal with Irene: either she prevents his mother from marrying such an unsuitable fellow, or he will ruin her paper for good. Fearing the total loss of his and their reputations and prospects as a result of this latest scandal, Henry seeks out the persons he believes responsible: the advice columnist, Lady Truelove, and her publisher. Long-since widowed, Henry knows he will eventually have to remarry and produce an heir but is presently more concerned with finding suitable matches for his younger sisters – a task made infinitely more difficult when his mother elopes with an Italian artist. Henry, Duke of Torquil, considers himself to be the only sensible member of his large, rambunctious family, his only deviation from society’s expectations being a short-lived marriage to a woman from an entirely unsuitable background.

Her success seems about to backfire on her, however, as one wealthy gentleman removes his advertising revenue from her paper’s income, and an angry duke arrives on the doorstep. Out of desperation Irene turns from publishing serious news and worthy advertisements to printing gossip pieces, advice columns, and fashion items – and in doing so recovers at least part of her family’s wealth. Irene Deverill has taken over the editorship of her family’s newspaper, following her grandfather’s death, her brother’s absence over a family quarrel, and her father’s descent into a permeant state of drunkenness – though not before he nearly bankrupted the business. And who can blame her when the men in her life have so far proved distinctly unreliable? No American heiresses this time, however, just a man overwhelmed by the rapidity at which events happen around him and a woman keen to speed up progress in order to make her own way in life without having to rely on a man. I thoroughly enjoyed Laura Lee Guhrke’s previous late-Victorian-set series, and was very keen to see what she’d come up with next in roughly the same era.

Historical Romance published by Avon 28 Mar 17 Stevie‘s review of The Truth About Love and Dukes (Dear Lady Truelove, Book 1) by Laura Lee Guhrke

The trouble with true love by laura lee guhrke