Don’t let the fact that A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke (publication date February 4, 2025) by Adrianna Herrera is the third in a trilogy stop you from reading it! Herrera has written a nearly perfect historical romance, featuring Afro-Latinx characters, set in Paris in 1889, with a female doctor who runs underground women’s health clinics, Aurora Montalban Wright meeting Apollo César Sinclair Robles, the first black duke in the British ton. It’s also fat-positive and features queer supporting characters!
Aurora is in Paris with her two best friends, who have both recently found love, one with Apollo’s brother, the other with a woman (the first two books) and she finally feels like she can breathe because she’s doing professionally what she loves–helping women who are not being served by male doctors. She loves her independence and feels like she has put her past behind her.
Apollo has just become a duke after challenging his father and winning, but he has a lot to prove to be accepted. His first job is to find a duchess that will be able to smooth his way through society. But soon after he and Aurora have a fling, and he realizes the risks she’s taking with her safety running all around Paris treating patients, and he provides a bodyguard and transportation for her, he realizes that there could be no other duchess suitable for him.
Aurora describes herself has having “wide hips and a plump bottom, and she was not very tall” with one of the cooks at her family’s house calling her “periqueta” because she resembled a small bird with a large posterior and short legs. And Apollo worships her, and her body. He finds her fascinating and respects the fact she puts herself at risk for the good of her patients, though he does everything he can to protect her. I am a sucker for fiction featuring historical women doctors (see Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, by Lisa See; A Bluestocking’s Guide to Decadence, by Jess Everlee) and the fact that Aurora is a fat, feminist, prickly doctor made me love her even more.
The question is whether she is willing to give up her independence, and allow Apollo to risk everything he’s fought for, in order for her to stand by his side. She has secrets that make her unsuitable, in her mind, to be a duchess.
I highly recommend it if you want to read fat-positive, hot, historical romance and will be reading the first two books as soon as I can!
Reading While Fat 