Once this unlikely team begins, misadventures follows leading to some hot tension and ultimately intimacy. I like that we get to know these characters a bit before they reveal themselves to each other (and to us reader) and it feels like we are better prepared through some hints/foreshadowing. He wants her to stay in residence to increase the value of his house flip next door, but she can only stay if she homes her menagerie of rescued animals.īoth have some pretty significant childhood trauma (see content warning above) that Dare teases until all is revealed somewhere towards the last half of the book. It feels like a formulaic joy ride in the beginning, with an eccentric spinster who’d rather tend to animals than be with people (other than her besties) and a ruthless businessman nicknamed the Duke of Ruin (because his surname is Duke) who team up to solve their mutual problem. But, you know, that’s just me and my nit-picking about titles that are a bit misleading. Because there was more of a bargain struck between these unlikely paired MCs, rather than a wager, and its later agreed Lady Penelope is less of a wallflower than a recluse. The third in a series that I thought worked great as a standalone, The Wallflower Wager might’ve been more appropriately titled The Devil’s Bargain or the Ruin of Duke. Now she’s set her mind and heart on saving him.ĬW: sexual assault/molestation, abandonment, extreme poverty Soon he’s covered in cat hair, knee-deep in adorable, and bewitched by a shyly pretty spinster who defies his every attempt to resist. How hard can it be to find homes for a few kittens?Įasier said than done, for a cold-blooded bastard who wouldn’t know a loving home from a workhouse. She will part with her precious charges, if he can find them loving homes.ĭone, Gabriel says.

When her imposing-and attractive-new neighbor demands she clear out the rescued animals, Penny sets him a challenge. Loyal and passionate, Lady Penelope Campion never met a lost or wounded creature she wouldn’t take into her home and her heart. Wealthy and ruthless, Gabriel Duke clawed his way from the lowliest slums to the pinnacle of high society-and now he wants to get even. To an undaunted wallflower, he’s just the beast next door.

The wallflower wager tessa dare