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I like Sarah MacLean so much that I preordered this book. It pains me to admit that I hated it. Normally MacLean is good for a really swoony, emotional story, but there's none of that here.
The hero is tall, handsome, rich, Scottish (accents, amirite?), and a duke, but he feels he's not good enough for the heroine. We don't get to learn the deep, dark secret behind this bizarre lack of self-esteem until the very end of the novel, and it's actually not deep and dark at all.
(show spoiler)Lillian is a fairly depressing character. In the intro she considers herself to be deeply in love with a jackass painter, but a few days later she's fallen hard for the duke. Her whole arc is based on her extreme loneliness and isolation, so it's a bit hard to take her feelings seriously. One imagines she'd have fallen in love with damn near anyone if it meant she'd have someone to talk to.
There's also a string of annoying secondary characters from other books. Several of them are Kardashian-like sisters who all have ridiculous S names, like Sesily. No thank you!
On the plus side, I liked the hero's dogs, there were some funny bits, and the scandal sheet plot is fun. I am cautiously optimistic about the next book in this series.