Rating: 3.5/3.75
TW/CW: Sexual assault/harassment, sexual assault/harassment of a minor
“The Wallflower Wager” was on top of my most highly anticipated historical romances. It was a book that constantly popped up in a multitude of romance book recommendation posts and I was hooked on the description of the couple in this. I was told that the relationship in this book follows a closed off, very ambitious man and an animal loving, soft hearted, female lead. I love, love, when we follow a couple who are the exact polar opposites from each other so I had to pick this one up.
It’s been a couple of weeks after finishing this one and unfortunately, I still don’t know how to rate this book. I genuinely loved reading about the couple. This book had its fair share of strong points but the writing threw me off.
Let’s talk about the good things first.
The best part of this book, hands down, is Gabriel Duke. Gabriel’s one of the best male mc’s I’ve read from in a long time. When you read a ton of historical romances, sometimes, plot lines and characters tend to blur together. Gabriel broke that barrier. His background, personality, ambition, and drive to surge forward in his ambition that’s labeled as greed by both himself and the society that hates him.
His coming of age from an orphan on the streets to becoming the Duke of Ruin was amazing. I loved how ambitious he was, and his unwavering stance on the ton. His inner character conflict of trying to belong and to even accept what he has built for himself was done impeccably well. I loved how even when their relationship evolved into something more, he stayed true to himself. He was still dark and witty even though he was soft for Penny. It felt more authentic to his character and I love how he didn’t loose his hard-edges entirely for his relationship, it made his character and even the relationship more realistic. I think that his character and story is where Tessa Dare really glowed.
Can we just talk about the naming of the couple in this book?? It’s just perfect and I love how the names that Tessa Dare showed matches the personality of the characters. Gabriel, hands down, is such a dark, sexy name and then there’s Penny, which is a soft, adorable name that screams innocence.
And of course, the contrasting names are the perfect nod to the amazing chemistry and tension between these two characters who are opposite both in stature and personality. As weird as it may sound, the romance in this book is what one would imagine if dark academia had an illustrious affair with cottage core. And the whole time, dark academia is fighting tooth and nail to quench their feelings because they don’t want to corrupt and ruin the bright, innocence of cottage core while doing questionably ambitious things on the side.
It’s a very weird description, but it is what it is lol. I honestly can go on about how much I loved the pairing of hard edged ambition and soft, animal loving, compassion but I’ll try to cap myself from writing an essay solely on that trope.
Besides Gabriel Duke, the other thing I loved about this book is how Tessa Dare explored the concept of lust at first sight and not love at first sight. The trope of love at first sight while saturated is a fair point for many people when I comes to relationships but lust at first sights equally as important and it’s a trope that’s severaly under appreciated and epxlored. I loved how in this book, it was very clear from the get go that this was a lust at first sight situation and that Penny was the one to set that distinction. Having a strong, independent women set that boundary really normalized relationships that aren’t commitment first or relationships that don’t meet the status quo of societally acceptable relationships. It made the relationship even more realistic and helped the story arc of the development of their relationship. It added to the tension between the characters as they explored this relationship and it led them to discovering parts of themselves as well as each other in a more meaningful way. I just loved the aspect of a woman defining the relationship they’re in and not being run over by society’s expectations or regulations.
And last but not least, the adorable animals. I swear each of the animals in this story had their own personality and I love it! They added so much more to the story whether it be aiding in the development of the romantic relationship or with the comedic tone of the plot. Tessa Dare does humor so well and it makes everything so much more entertaining. I loved how the other couples and characters in this series made multiple cameos in the story. I loved how much of an active role Ash and Chase played in being protective “brothers” or friends of Penny. I’m a sucker for big brother/little sister relationships. I haven’t read this series in order and I personally don’t think that it hurt my reading experience at all. I think I read the book featuring Ash as a main character but I honestly don’t remember anything about the plot from that book or even the title to be honest lol. So if that’s something you’re worried about, I don’t think you need to read these books casually.
Now on what I didn’t like, the writing.
As mentioned before, the writing is the reason why I’m struggling to settle on a rating and if anything why the rating’s so low.
This book, like nearly all of Tessa Dare’s books feature alternating point of view’s (POV’s).
Sometimes, switching perspectives is detrimental to the flow of the story. There were certain events that happened in Penny’s chapters that I think would have been better if they were written from Gabriel’s perspective. The perfect example of this was towards the end, when one of the problems was being resolved. Sorry for the vagueness lol, I don’t want to ruin anything. Anyway, in the chapter right before we reached this resolution, the plot was being narrated from a certain character’s POV in which most of the tension was coming from, but, the actual resolution was in the POV from the othercharacter. This made the whole resolution of this pretty big problem and ongoing source of tension to come off a bit anticlimactic and rushed.
There were just many parts of the story that felt a bit rushed in the sense that certain things in the story felt like they came out of nowhere. At times, it felt like the author was just adding certain plot points to the story arc just so that she could address certain aspects of the characters without planting the seeds beforehand or building the tension that led up to these reveals. In other words and in continued vagueness, certain things felt a bit too convenient.
I think the biggest problem I had with how things just happened is the reasoning behind Penny’s reasoning for being a wallflower. There was a giant reason why but for the majority of the book, we only got half of the explanation but the whole reasoning behind that half of the explanation was so big that I just wish we were hinted about it before hand so it didn’t feel so abrupt.
All in all, I genuinely enjoyed this book and reading about this couple who are clearly, so very attracted to each other, whether they like it or now. I just had a bit of a problem with t he writing and pacing of certain aspects of the story arc but other than that, it was an enjoyable, quick read so check it out! I’ve added some of the major trigger warnings but please do your research beforehand!