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My Review:Title: The Wolf and the Wildflower
Author: Stacy Reid
Published by: Entangled: Amara
Release Date: February 27, 2023
Format: Kobo Book
Pages: 286
Genres: Historical Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2023 COYER Chapter 1, Lenoreo's 2023 Diversity Reading Challenge
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My rating:
Blurb:USA Today bestselling author Stacy Reid’s addictive tale of two lost people who are found…by each other.
London is buzzing with the news that James Winters, the Duke of Wulverton—thought lost at sea a decade ago—survived in the harsh wilderness of the Yukon. Now he’s been returned to his family, his responsibilities, and a nightmarish world of artifice and noise. He has three weeks to become a refined, elegant duke for the Queen…or doom the entire family to ruin and scandal.
Promising psychologist Jules Southby knows a lot about disguises. She’s secretly been living as a boy since birth, enjoying the freedoms of men and knowing little about how to behave like a woman. When she meets the alluring duke, she’s unprepared for his raw, masculine beauty and icy intelligence…or that he can see through her darkest secret.
Jules has very little time to transform the duke into a true semblance of an English gentleman. Yet his very presence seems to unravel her in every way. Their attraction is stark and achingly real—and forbidden. But loving the lost duke would mean losing every sacrifice she’s made to earn her freedom…
4 stars — There were parts of this book that I absolutely loved, but I think I spent a lot of time thinking of gender identity and all that that encompasses, and while this touched on that to some degree, particularly the paths that were open to women in this time period vs all the paths that were closed, it really didn’t delve too deeply into that. Which…is kind of to be expected, it’s been done many times I’m sure. It’s just that our world is changing and has opened my eyes, and I think I kept expecting to…I don’t know, just some commentary on what it was like to have to present yourself as the opposite gender…which is kind of a great allegory to what trans people have to go through every day. So basically, if you’re expecting something along those lines, it’s not here. But it’s still a delightful love story, and it still does touch on the topic of gender, just more in line with the times.
That was a lot. Sorry. I couldn’t figure out how to start this review, b/c that kept rattling around inside my brain so I had to get it out.
Jules lives a really strange life, but for her it’s the only life she ever knew. She wasn’t confused about her gender, but because of her mother’s decision when she was born, she has only known one life. And then she encounters something that challenges her expectation of living the rest of her life alone as a man. I felt for her struggles. I loved how caring and compassionate she was, how she had taken what she had learned but had a more gentle hand with it. It was lovely to see her understand and connect with James on that level of living life for other people, but chafing at those bounds. I will admit that she makes a decision or two that felt very reckless to me, and I somehow doubt how well they would have worked in real life, but whatever…it’s a romance novel.
James had his own set of struggles, and I ached for how much the world tried to put him into a little cage of appropriate behavior. It really highlighted how difficult it would have been to be at all different in the haute ton. No thanks. I didn’t always understand his bottling up of emotions, or maybe it just took me a while to get it. I loved to see those moments when he gave his family something small, just to show that he did care.
They had an intriguing romance, since it was so entirely different from any normal historical romance courtship. I kind of loved how they connected with each other at so many levels, and their chemistry was intriguing.
So yeah. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I probably would have enjoyed it even more if I could have gotten my brain to shut up.
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