Dear Lady Truelove . . . I have fallen in love, truly and completely in love, for the first time. The man whom I hold in such passionate regard, however, is not of my station. He is a painter, a brilliant artist. Needless to say, my family would not approve . . .

Henry, Duke of Torquil, wouldn’t be caught reading the wildly popular “Dear Lady Truelove” column, but when its advice causes his mother to embark on a scandalous elopement, an outraged Henry decides the author of this tripe must be stopped before she can ruin any more lives. Though Lady Truelove’s identity is a closely guarded secret, Henry has reason to suspect the publisher of the notorious column, beautiful and provoking Irene Deverill, is also its author.

For Irene, it’s easy to advise others to surrender to passion, but when she meets the Duke of Torquil, she soon learns that passion comes at a price. When one impulsive, spur-of-the-moment kiss pulls her into a scorching affair with Henry, it could destroy her beloved newspaper, her career, and her independence. But in the duke’s arms, surrender is so, so sweet . . .

It’s been quite a while since I’ve read a romance by Laura Lee Guhrke but when I saw this book, I wanted it. The whole blurb just sounded like something I would enjoy so when my book club chose it as our first book of the year, I was stoked. The Truth about Love and Dukes is the first book in the Dear Lady Truelove series and it introduces a bunch of characters that I have to come to love and can’t wait to get to know them more.

Irene Hastings is a newspaper publisher who has worked her butt off to bring the family business back to making a profit. Her father is an alcoholic and ran the family business into the ground so when her older brother was thrown out of their home and the business, it was up to her to save the family from ruin and it was in those desperate times that Society Snippets was invented. Along with Society Snippets, which is a gossip column, Lady Truelove’s advice column was also brought to life. Lady Truelove has been dispersing love advice to readers and the current Duke of Torquil is not at all happy with the latest advice that Lady Truelove has given.

Henry Cavanaugh, the Duke of Torquil has got a lot going on. He looks after his family and that is a full-time job because everyone lives with him. His two unmarried sisters, his brother in law and two nephews, his other brother and his wife…and his Mom. His Mom hasn’t been around much lately because she’s taking some art lessons from an Italian artist and though people are speculating about her relationship with the artist, Henry doesn’t put too much stock into it until his family brings Lady Truelove’s advice column and he sees that the woman asking for advice can only be his mother and the advice that Lady Truelove gives is abominable for his mother but also for his family.

When Henry and Irene meet for the first time, I was on one hand delighted with Irene’s forward thinking and her strong will to do what is right by her readers and for her newspaper. I liked that she didn’t bow to anyone, no matter what rank they held. On the other hand, I was completely appalled with Henry’s attitude and the way that he tended to think and act on behalf of everyone in his family. Like, he didn’t trust them to make decisions for themselves.

The more that I read about Henry and why he was the way that he was, the more that I understood and while I still didn’t like it, I learned to like him. He comes a long way over the course of the book and getting to know both him and Irene was a lot of fun. I loved what they brought out in each other. I loved seeing them with their families and I really came to love the two of them together.

I will say that the beginning of the story was slow for me. It took me a while to get into it and I think that was because I wanted to strangle Henry almost from the very beginning. It took me a week of starting and stopping the book before I was finally able to push through and finish it. I’m so glad that I finished it but that slow beginning wasn’t fun. Other than the slow beginning though, this is a solid romance. The middle and ending more than made up for the beginning so all in all, it wasn’t so bad.

Dear Lady Truelove Series

Grade: 3.75 out of 5