Rating: 4 stars
Nowhere Book Bingo 25: A book that takes place entirely outside the US
Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. My views are my own.
Spoiler warning! Because some of the issues I have with this book can't really be addressed without me spoiling some parts of the plot, skip the parts of the review I've marked with spoiler tags until you've actually finished the book.
While this is the third book in the series, most of the action takes place before the events in A Duke in Shining Armor and Ten Things I Hate About the Duke. You don't need to have read either of the two other books to enjoy this one, in fact, I would say you might enjoy this one more without prior knowledge of those stories.
Lady Alice Ancaster has known Giles Lyon, the eighth Duke of Blackwood, since long before he was a duke. They first met when she was eleven and he was thirteen, and he was one of her brother's best friends and partners in crime. By the time she was seventeen and he was nineteen, there was a clear infatuation between them, and they shared one very memorable kiss. Knowing that Alice deserved someone better, and fully aware that he wasn't ready to give up his wild and reckless ways with his two bosom buddies, Blackwood chose to leave it with that one kiss and studiously avoided Alice thereafter.
Eight years later, their drunken antics take an almost fatal turn, after they play with a loaded pistol and the duke of Ripley, Alice's brother only barely escapes a shot to the head. Alice is furious with Blackwood for letting things go so far (of the three Dis-graces, he is reckoned as the most sensible one). She declares that she hates him, and only a few days later, she sets off to London determined to find a husband. The idiotic stunt proves to Alice just how likely is that her brother will die unfortunately young and their loathsome cousin, Lord Worbury will inherit both the title and the estate. Worbory hates Alice because she and her best friend Cassandra beat him up for torturing a kitten when they were younger, and he hates Ripley and his friends for looking on. Worbury is already living beyond his means, promising his creditors money once he becomes the next Duke of Ripley.
Alice's aunt, Lady Julia, orders Ripley, Blackwood and Ashmont to stay far away from London while Alice tries to find a suitable husband. While Alice has lived a perfectly respectable life, the presence of her dissolute brother and his best friends will make it more difficult for her. Ripley and Ashmont dutifully agree, but Blackwood is unhappy with the idea of leaving Alice alone in London with Worbury still lurking about, so he stays behind to sort out some financial affairs (or so he claims).
Of course, after a series of chaotic events, involving the odious Worbury, a scruffy street urchin in need (whom readers will recognise from the previous two books in the series, not to mention in a slightly cleaner guise in The Dressmakers series), dealings with the criminal underworld, and then Ripley's sudden and unexplained disappearance, Blackwood and Alice have spent so much time travelling about unchaperoned with one another that Alice is likely to be at the centre of a terrible scandal, unless she and Blackwood marry. So they decide to do so (it doesn't hurt that deep down they have loved each other for over a decade) and for a blissful six months, their marriage seems like it will always be harmonious. That is, until the Duke of Ashmont gets himself into even more trouble than usual, and Blackwood has to go off to save him from himself.
SPOILERS START HERE:
For two books now, Loretta Chase has been dropping hints about the marriage of Lady Alice Ancaster and the Duke of Blackwood, a union which so shocked polite society. In A Duke in Shining Armor, they appear to be estranged, but having gone back and looked at all the mentions of Alice, some of those hints may have been a bit misleading. Having also gone back and looked at Ten Things I Hate About the Duke, I don't understand why Cassandra, Alice's very best friend in the whole world, a person she refers to as a sister not in blood, wouldn't know the truth about Alice and Blackwood's marriage. Alice and Cassandra correspond regularly, and I don't understand why Alice wouldn't have told her friend that she and Blackwood had to spend more time apart because Ashmont was so out of control he had to have someone sensible accompanying him. Everyone who knew the three dukes would have understood why such a thing would be necessary. That most of society didn't know the truth about the Duke and Duchess of Blackwood's supposed estrangement doesn't seem strange at all, but why would Alice have kept the truth about her actually really happy marriage from her friend?
Obviously, it's because Chase wrote this book last, and can't really go back and rewrite her previous book for the details to fit in better. It is just frustrating that after two books setting up the strange and sudden marriage of Alice and Blackwood, and then their estrangement and supposed enmity, it turns out that nope, there's nothing. It feels deeply anti-climactic to have waited since 2017(!) to find out the truth about Alice and Blackwood, only to discover that their marriage was fine. They married because they loved each other, somewhat suddenly to avoid a scandal, and got along splendidly, with the exception of a few rows, where they realised their mistake and apologised to one another before it could ever become a big deal. I shouldn't be disappointed in a book because there isn't enough drama, and two very enjoyable characters have a happy marriage. But I was led to believe that there would be drama - and now I feel short-changed.
END SPOILERS
The release of a new Loretta Chase book is always a treat, and it's difficult to describe my delight when I was granted a NetGalley ARC for this back in November. Obviously, I read the book almost instantly and had to re-read it now to remind myself of the plot details before I wrote my review.
Loretta Chase has written some absolute classics, including Lord of Scoundrels, which is 30 years old this year. It's a book I have read multiple times, but never actually reviewed (must absolutely rectify that later this year). I happen to think two other books in the series are better, and I've re-read them more often, but that does not take away from the fact that it's a great book, with a stupendous heroine. Chase has also written a lot of books that are fine when you read them, but a bit more forgettable once you put them down. This, sadly, is one of the latter ones. There's nothing wrong with it, as such, but having first read it right after my re-read of Ten Things I Hate About the Duke, which is a full five-star read and so very perfect, this paled in comparison. There's the issue that I mentioned in my spoiler section, and there's the fact that Alice and Blackwood running around after a street urchin seems to take up far too much of the plot, both in the first and last quarter of the book.
It should be noted, that Loretta Chase is a queen of the romance genre for a reason, and even a not-perfect book by her is worth your time. Some of the things that annoy me about this book won't matter at all if this is the first book in the series you read. While writing this review and finding books to link to, I also discovered that there's a short story, featuring Lord Lovedon (who is Alice's main suitor in this, before it becomes obvious to everyone, including her, that Blackwood is the only man she could possibly be happy with). So now I've got more Loretta Chase to read.
Judging a book by its cover: This cover differs from the other two in the series, in that on those books, there is a woman seen from the back, apparently running away or towards something. Here, the woman on the cover, who I guess is supposed to be Alice, is happily wandering about the garden, wearing a dress looking nothing like 1830s fashion (which to be fair, was awful, so well done cover designers). She's probably a lot happier, dreamily drifting along since her marriage came about in a much less dramatic way than that of Olivia Hightower or her best friend Cassandra.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
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