Caroline Lee has written us a book that starts with a bang and ends with a bang – literally, depending on how you define bang. 😉 This spicy story is the fifth in the Surprise Dukes series and, while it can be read as a stand alone, it would be more enjoyable if you start at the beginning and read the series. BUT!!!!! If you haven’t and you want to start with this one or you just need a refresher course on the series, the author has done us all a HUGE favor and has included a note at the beginning that sums up the parts of the series that you really need to know in order to understand the relevance of the characters and events in “The Duke’s Wicked Widow”. Everyone give three great big hip hip hoorays to the auther! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!

Fawkes, the hero, meets the heroine, Ellie, when she approaches him to ask if he would be so kind as to father her child. She is in a bad situation and is evidently prone to desperate decisions. She has care of and loves her dead husband’s natural daughter. The family wants to kick them both to the curb. So, she is on a mission to get pregnant and to pass the child off as her dead husband’s in order to secure herself and her child a home. Thus the banging begins.

Fawkes is a complicated and lovable (I loved him; Ellie loves him so that makes him lovable!) guy who is also in a bad situation where he did some bad things. Ellie is a wonderfully smart heroine who has the nerve and the will to do what she thinks needs to be done. The couple is well matched and their romance is both hot and sweet. I deeply appreciated the amount of forgiveness that happened in this book. Sometimes I just want the hero or heroine of the book I am reading to apologize and have that apology accepted. It was just a small thing anyway, right? (Heh.) It was rather relieving! This book is a wonderful addition to the series! It is found on KU with the rest of the series or you can always just buy it outright – click here to go to Amazon!