The accidental governess.
After her livelihood slips through her fingers, Alexandra Mountbatten takes on an impossible post: transforming a pair of wild orphans into proper young ladies. However, the girls don’t need discipline. They need a loving home. Try telling that to their guardian, Chase Reynaud: duke’s heir in the streets and devil in the sheets. The ladies of London have tried—and failed—to make him settle down. Somehow, Alexandra must reach his heart... without risking her own.
The infamous rake.
Like any self-respecting libertine, Chase lives by one rule: no attachments. When a stubborn little governess tries to reform him, he decides to give her an education—in pleasure. That should prove he can’t be tamed. But Alexandra is more than he bargained for: clever, perceptive, passionate. She refuses to see him as a lost cause. Soon the walls around Chase’s heart are crumbling... and he’s in danger of falling, hard.
The Governess Game is a historical romance novel published in 2018 and written by Tessa Dare. It is book #2 of the Girl Meets Duke series, all of which are set in England and can be read as a stand-alones. It's written in third person, past tense and it tells the story of Chase: the duke, the rake, the guardian, and Alexandra: the lady, the clock setter, the level-headed.
Now as for the plot, this rakish duke finds himself in charge of two cute, witful, sweet girls whom he is related to somehow. They've been burned by their past, and he has as well so they're not accomodating well to this new circumstance. Also take into account that he does not like resposibility at all, in fact, he loathes it and is utterly terrified by it.
Cue lady Mountbatten. She arrives to the manor on the mistaken assumption she's to be setting the clocks there yet founds out she's tending to the girls of the handsome, alluring duke she accidently bumped into months before. She wants nothing to do with it but again, due to some out of her control circumstances, she lands at his door. And so the story begins.
The truth is the book was funny sometimes, the duke was thoughtful, the female lead was indeed level-headed and had drive, professionally speaking which I liked seeing in a character: someone with actual interests and who was smart. As for him, well he was kind to others and his humor and wit also kept me from dropping the book half way through. I smiled each time the girls made an appearance because it meant something outrageously funny or profound was going to happen.
However, I did not like the author's writing style for some reason, the book proved to be slow too many times and I was more often than not tempted to skip ahead for some good bits. This is a book I could have read in a week, at the most, yet I left it aside so many times it took me more than a month. I think I read another one during that hiatus I took, too. It was good I guess, just not my cup of tea. I rated it 3.8 inconspicuos stars, and I'm feeling generous.
