Recent Read: Waking Up with the Duke

I’m currently taking a class on writing conflict with the great Sarah MacLean, and the book Waking Up with the Duke, a historical romance by Lorraine Heath, kept coming up as a good example of a book that is driven almost entirely by internal conflict.

As a new author who writes more realistically and shies away from external conflict and events that are too explosive, I was intrigued. Naturally, I decided to read the book right away, as any self-respecting book lover would!

To say that this book blew me away would be an understatement. The basic premise (no spoilers, I promise—this is all set up in the first chapter) is that the hero’s cousin and dear friend was left partially paralyzed and bound to a wheelchair after a carriage accident three years before, for which he feels responsible. In order to repay the debt for leaving him unable to move from the waist down, the cousin asks our hero to impregnate his wife for him as he is no longer able to give her a child.

While there are obviously MANY issued here, the two main ones that are quickly revealed is that the hero has secretly loved his wife for years, and the heroine cannot stand him for his recklessness that led to the accident. Not to mention, she does not wish to break her marriage vows to her husband whom she loves!

There are so many layers of conflict here it’s ridiculous, and it’s hard to see how a happily ever after will be reached for any of these characters. But Heath does an exceptional job of looking into the interior battles of these characters and their changing feelings as the events of the book unfold. This is a difficult needle to thread because the premise in and of itself breaks one of the golden rules of romance—NO CHEATING!

Readers will be understanding of boundary pushing in a story if done well, but cheating is a line many readers won’t forgive if crossed. But the way the scenario is laid out here raises the question, is it cheating if permission has been given? We the reader must struggle with these questions just as the characters do throughout the novel.

I don’t want to say too much more as I don’t want to spoil anything. What I will say is run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore to find this book. This is only the second Lorraine Heath novel I’ve read, but I’ll need to remedy that in the near future as her writing is a masterclass. For a full assessment of this book, listen to Sarah MacLean and Jen Prokop discuss why it’s so amazing in an episode of their podcast, FatedMates.

I’m currently doing a massive rewrite to my third book, and I can tell you I’m thinking about the emotionality of my characters in a whole new way after finishing this amazing book. When Once and Again with the Viscount comes out at the end of September, you’ll have to tell me if I was successful!