Reviewer: Tracy While the Duke Was Sleeping by Sophie Jordan
Series: The Rogue Files #1
Also in this series: The Duke Buys a Bride
Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: October 25th 2016
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Sometimes the man of your dreams . . .
Shop girl Poppy Fairchurch knows it’s pointless fantasizing about the Duke of Autenberry. Still, dreams can’t hurt anyone . . . unlike the carriage Poppy spies bearing down upon the unsuspecting duke. After she pulls him to safety, the duke lapses into a coma and Poppy is mistaken for his fiancée. But one person isn’t fooled: his arrogant and much too handsome half-brother, Struan Mackenzie. Soon Poppy isn’t sure what she wants more . . . the fantasy of her duke or the reality of one smoldering Scot who challenges her at every turn.
. . . is not who you think.
An illegitimate second son, Struan may have built an empire and established himself as one of the wealthiest men in Britain, but he knows he will always be an outsider among the ton. Just like he knows the infuriating Poppy is a liar. There’s no way the haughty Duke of Autenberry would deign to wed a working class girl. It doesn’t matter how charming she is. Or tempting. Or how much Struan wants her for himself.
Poppy has this dream about the Duke of Autenberry. She fancies herself in love with him so one day when he leaves the flower shop where she works, and gets into an argument with another man and then a fistfight, she jumps in to save him. Unfortunately saving his life made him bump his head and he goes into a coma. She is in the carriage when the Duke is taken to his home – along with the man he was in a fistfight with – who turns out to be his half-brother. When they get the duke to his house Poppy mumbles to herself about how he needs to get better because they were going to get married. The housekeeper hears her mumbling and assumes he’s her fiancé.
Poppy has every intention of correcting the misunderstanding but people keep cutting her off when she speaks and of course, she does want to be with the duke while he’s recovering so she keeps quiet. One night when she is sitting vigil his best friend overhears her talking to the duke and figures out she’s not his fiancé. He talks her into keeping the secret until the duke wakes up and for some reason she agrees.
The half-brother, a bastard brother who the duke hates, is Struan Mackenzie and he’s completely attracted to Poppy from the word go. She’s a strong woman who risked her life for the duke which he admires – but finds he hates that she’s in love with the duke. He sets out to prove, more to himself than anything, that Poppy isn’t in love with the duke. Unfortunately this only gets him closer to Poppy and the more he’s with her the more he finds he’s falling in love with her.
As you can probably tell by the title of this book the story is a play on the movie While You Were Sleeping with Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman. I love that movie to death so was excited to read Sophie Jordan’s version of it. It didn’t turn out to be quite as good as I expected but I still found a lot to like in the story.
As in the movie Poppy thinks herself in love with a man that she really doesn’t know. It’s all based on looks and how nice he seems when he comes into the flower shop where she works. Struan is the type of man that she thinks would be the farthest thing from someone that she’d fall in love with but she finds it happening none-the-less. This relationship starts off as contentious but hot. Struan and Poppy are pretty steamy together and I liked that part of the story. I wish that we could have gotten to know more about the man he is now. We are told a lot of what happened to him when he was younger but besides his desire to be included in the family we really don’t know a whole lot about him which I found a bit frustrating.
Poppy we see pretty clearly and she seemed like a good heroine. One who looked out for other people and was a nurturer first and foremost. She didn’t think of her own happiness so the thought of falling in love with Struan was a foreign concept. I liked how she tried to stick to her guns about her love for the duke even though she knew deep down she was in love with Struan.
Were there many things different between the movie and the book? Yes, definitely. I, however, found that to be a good thing and enjoyed the book. If Jordan had copied the movie completely it wouldn’t have been interesting and I would have been comparing the two constantly. I was happy with what she did with the concept and that she took it in her own direction.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
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