The Corset Diaries

Tessa Riordan is an ordinary American woman. She is normal, sweet, funny, a size eighteen and an actress. Oh and she is also quiet insane. When offered the role of the duchess in A MONTH IN THE LIFE OF A VICTORIAN DUKE, a British reality television show, she says yes. She desperately needs the money. She soon discovers that the original actress dropped out after the costumes were made. She finds this out when she is laced into the historically accurate corset of the smaller woman. Amid promises to revamp her wardrobe and corset, she departs for the isolated location of the shoot. The wickedly funny MacAlister has Tessa record her hilarious experiences with a quirky cast of characters and her passionate encounters with Maximillian show more Edgerton, the sexy Englishman playing the Duke of Bridgewater, in a laughter-laced diary that is a saucy, delight. show less

In this book, Tessa is given the opportunity to take part in a reality TV show about a Victorian family. The family is there and she'll be stepping in to play the part of wife and mother. What she doesn't count on is falling in love with the Duke and with his family.

You either like Katie MacAlister's books or you don't. I do. I like her humor, her heroines, and the incredible supporting characters she comes up with. Her books are fun, light reads.

As I read the first chapters I thought I going in for a Bridget Jones kind of Diary, but with the weird mix of 21st century and Victorian romance.

After a few chapters I in a full on hot sex scene I wasn't expecting at all.
I have read more than a couple of other book by this author and they all had sex scenes scattered through the action, but the sex was generally mild and leaving a lot more to the imagination.

In this book plot is what happens between sex scenes.
There are a lot of secondary characters, but they are pretty flat, and all the secondary plots are resolved in an almost Deus Ex Machina kind of way "look who we just find out sabotaging the project, on the last day of filming..."

But Oh My Gods The Sex Scenes. They are a mix of show more arousing sex and babbling dialogue between the characters. Most of the scenes are pretty graphic, but not pornographic, but there is this one "foreplay" scene during a dinner, involving so asparagus that without being totally original will be forever burned into my mind. Luckily I don't really like asparagus and buttered asparagus aren't a popular dish around my corner of the world... show less

I really wanted to like this because I love shows like Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs. I thought it would be a romance novel, but it was more of a slapstick comedy with a lot of silly love scenes thrown in just to fill space. And I got tired of the main character pretty quickly.

This was my third time reading this book and I enjoyed it every bit as much as I did the other times. The byplay between the two main characters is laugh out loud funny that had me actually snorting in places. Am very glad I pulled it back off the shelf.

Funny, funny, funny, laugh out-loud funny. This author is an expert in romantic comedy. I love her writing, lots of sex, but funny stuff.

Starts out quite funny as only Katie MacAlister can be, but gets limp 3/4 the way through.