Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I do like reading Romances but I've often found that many of them sound the same. Certainly the plots change and the character names and circumstances change -- but the essential dialogue and tensions often replicate themselves in book after book. This gives many Romance novels a homogenous, artificial flavor which I don't like and I feel cheated when I read books like this because I feel as if the author has underestimated the intelligence of her/his reader. How refreshing it was then to read Julia Quinn's, "The Duke and I." This was my first (certainly not my last) Julia Quinn book and I was highly impressed with her ability to create characters who don't always speak and behave the way you expect them too. Daphne and Simon's relationship is believable, they seem like "real" people and their problems were fairly ordinary and not overly dramatic or contrived. The secondary characters each deserve (and will probably get) a book of their own. Quinn also had a knack for making me laugh -- the humor was not forced or too cutesy, just well written. Although this book is set in the Regency period, it is not your "traditional" Regency as it does contain some frank sex scenes and the characters often act with a more modern sensibility than one might expect. In any case, this was a great read and I am eagerly looking forward to reading Quinn's other novels.