Archer, Duke of Westmead, needs an heir. Poppy is a neighbor and a botanist. Archer's sister Charlotte hires Poppy to decorate for a ball to find her brother's bride. Poppy and Archer are discovered in a compromising situation and are forced to marry: Poppy for a greenhouse and Archer for his heir. Meanwhile, they both have secrets that complicate the situation.
While I enjoyed this story, a lot is going on. The two main characters are fine, though I would have liked to see more about Archer's secret and how Poppy handles it; I felt the discovery was rather abrupt and since it's so unusual to find this (no spoilers) in historical romances, I would have liked more about it, but it just pops up towards the end of the book. Charlotte, Archer's sister, is great and adds lots of fun to the story. All in all, an interesting book. ( )

The central characters of The Duke I Tempted, a botanist who chafes against the limited prospects of an unmarried woman in business and a duke suffering from a hidden pain, are both interesting in themselves. The differences between the leads' understandings of what marriage and family mean and what they're getting from their relationship are central to the novel, and Peckham does a good job of illustrating the sources of conflict between them. The author skirts and undermines a lot of the sexist conventions common in historical romance--patronizing, controlling male leads exercising their lordly privileges without criticism, silly submissive heroines, sex shaming--while still paying close attention to the effects of gender and class on characters' relationships and understanding of their own power.
The biggest problem with this novel is that it desperately needs a B-plot. Lacking one, it's twice as long as it needs to be and struggles to maintain a sense of conflict in its focus on the romantic arc. The main characters fight a lot and apologize to one another a lot, and it often seems like their fights are rehashing the same themes over and over again, resulting in the apologies feeling less impactful and the whole book blurring together in my memory. Although I found their conflict and romance interesting, their relationship is not complex enough to be the sole focus of the novel, and my interest in it only waned as the book stretched onwards. ( )

This was a decent read. I enjoyed the characters and the chemistry between them. At times I thought the plot was a little weak but the writing made up for this. ( )

This had a lot that engaged me and held my attention. The characters were interesting, and I was curious how things would play out. I might even have given it 5 stars, except the characters, mostly the heroine, started bugging me, and that robbed some of my enjoyment. For the first half or so, even when they made mistakes, it made *sense* that they would feel and behave that way. But later on the heroine really starts acting unreasonably childish, and I didn't care for it and kind of expected better or her. The hero mostly held it together except for an absolute *tantrum* he throws pretty late in the book, that felt right out of the heroine's playbook. ( )

Based on the conversations I've had about this book so far, it seems to be a polarizing novel. I was thoroughly spoiled for the ending, so when I got to the 44% mark and realized I'd been trying to read it for a week, I threw in the towel.

There's a lot to like here: Peckham's writing is gorgeous, her botanist heroine is prickly, resourceful, and totally competent, and the set-up of the novel pulled me right in.

It's the darker aspects of the book that turned me off, however, and I think readers will want to know what to expect before starting. A few content warnings: trauma as a reason for masochism, a whipping that some saw as cheating (near end of book), said trauma includes death of a small child at the hands of hero's father, heroine has an aggressive stalker-type man in her life. I felt what the hero needed was therapy and something more healing than the heroine's magic vagina. After all, if he had been punishing his body with alcohol or if he had committed suicide, I don't think his actions would be considered "sexy" by readers. (That is a larger conversation.)

The book reads as a gothic Beauty & The Beast retelling with botany and BDSM. If that sounds like your thing? You may very well love it.

Review copy received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )