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The Courtesan's Wager

by Claudia Dain

reviewed by Christine Shoup

February 2009, 355 pages, Publisher: Berkley, ISBN: 0425225801

The Courtesan's Wager is the third book in Claudia Dain's "The Courtesan Chronicles" the series. I haven't read the previous books in the series and doubt I will be reading the next.

Lady Amelia tried very hard to be everything she should be in order to capture the attentions of a duke – she perfectly dressed, perfectly coiffed, perfectly modulated, perfectly proper. What makes Lady Amelia so unappealing to the Dukes of the Upper Ten Thousand is the fact that while she's working so hard to be perfectly perfect, she's also made herself perfectly boring. Nevertheless, she professes not to understand why she's still quite invisible to her targets. Therefore, after speaking with her cousin Eleanor, she decides that it is indeed time to consult Lady Sophia Dalby, the former courtesan and widowed countess, who had a hand in seeing her cousin Louisa married to Henry Blakesley a week ago.

Lady Amelia and Lady Sophia have devised a plan to conduct interviews of all the eligible duke's - all three of them - to see if these men meet the qualifications set forth by Lady Amelia. Once the list becomes public and wagers are set at White's, all bets are off (so to speak) and it's every duke for himself. The once unpopular and entirely forgettable Amelia is now the belle of the ball with many vying for Lady Amelia's attentions. A social tsunami occurs with wagering at White's and various inappropriate male pissing contests. No actual urinating occurs, but you know what I mean….

As I have not read the first two books in this series, the first part of this book was deceptively involving in that I really had to pay attention to the numerous characters and their subplots to get up to speed with where, I assume, readers from the beginning would already be. Having said that, you don't really need to have read the others in order to get this one but it could help with keeping the lengthy list of secondary characters straight as well as their individual stories.

First, the good stuff. I like the premise for the book - the storyline has promise. It has witty repartee and the author's descriptiveness is wonderful and easily paints clear pictures of the individuals and their environment.

Now, the not-so-good stuff. I was sadly disappointed. The book is disjointed - enough so that it sucked all of the fun out of reading it. Next up is the needless emasculation of Lord Cranleigh. Now don't get me wrong, when a man needs to learn a lesson, I'm all for showing him the error of his ways (it's actually a hobby of mine) but I think this particular character lost some of its luster because of it. The length and nature of the emasculation made me sadly disinterested in what I originally thought was a decent male protagonist. Finally, and most importantly, somewhere in the middle, the author changes lanes (when Amelia comes clean) and totally forgets to put her signal on. That's annoying enough in traffic let alone in a book which causes you to turn back three pages and think to yourself…WTF? When did? Whuh? Ugh…wait a second here?!

My considered opinion is this – if you are struggling to decide between spending your hard-earned money on this book or another, buy the other.