#CBR11 Book 65: "A Rogue by Night" by Kelly Bowen

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Sir Harland Hayward, Baron Strathmore, is something of an oddity among the nobility, in that he insists on not only continuing to run a shipping company, but he works as a practising physician, treating aristocrats and commoners alike. A less widely known fact is that he also helps his sister, the headmistress of the prestigious Haverhall School for ladies (a profession she has kept up with, even after becoming a duchess) to each year train some select students who are interested in becoming doctors as well. Harland knows that women can be just as capable, if not better, at certain things than men. He doesn't have a lot of illusions left after surviving and treating survivors on the battlefields of the Napoleonic wars.

When his parents died, Harland discovered that the family fortunes were nearly gone. He tried his best to save the family shipping business, but after some devastating losses, had no choice but to make a deal with ruthless underworld crime boss King. Now he has no choice but to run a smuggling operation along the Kentish coast, taking advantage of many of the people on his lands. When one of his smugglers, Matthew, is shot during an operation, he shows up to help in his guise as the local benevolent physician, only to discover that Katherine, Matthew's sister, has the situation well at hand. She's able to deal with the complicated gun shot in a way that shows she has a lot more skills and experience than your regular village healer and wise woman. Harland is both impressed and intrigued by Katherine, but his guilty conscience for the situation he's put her family in wars with his attraction for her.

Katherine hates that her father and brother are involved in smuggling, and determined to get them to go straight, if she can just ensure that her brother survives being shot (and the possible following infection). Like Harland, Katherine has extensive battlefield experience in France, having fallen in love with and followed a manipulative nobleman to war, only to discover he only saw her as a passing fancy, and ended up abandoning not only her, but his dying men on the field towards the end of the war. So Katherine doesn't trust handsome nobles anymore, and clearly being the most intelligent member of her family, seems to be the only person who questions why the local baron suddenly shows up to offer medical assistance after her brother's "accident". Who exactly told him there was a need?

Ignoring Katherine's animosity, Harland offers to let her brother recover at Avondale House, the manor house his brother in law owns, and from which his sister Clara houses her summer students. The authorities won't think to look for him there. Harland also suggests that Katherine help with instructing the medical students and once his sister enthusiastically supports the idea (and Katherine is sure it's not just a strange way for him to seduce her), she grudgingly accepts the job.

Katherine has barely started her instructor job when Harland comes to her, asking for help with a dangerous mission he's been given by King. There are French prisoners who need to be rescued from prison in London and escorted back to France. Harland needs an extra physician with him to ensure he can treat the wounded prisoners, and Katherine is the most skilled person he can think of. As it turns out, her past smuggling experience and quick wits make her even more invaluable partner on the mission.

Katherine's distrust and animosity towards Harland doesn't last very long, and while they don't plummet into insta-love, they haven't spent much time in each other's company before they are pretty hopelessly in love. Sadly, the early smugglers vs corrupt and violent authorities sub-plot, followed by the more adventurous escape and rescue heist takes up most of the story, with less time to properly pace and develop Katherine and Harland's relationship.

King has been the enigmatic sort-of-villain in a lot of Bowen's books by now, and he's always fun (I'm really hoping he's getting his own book sometime soon). It was extremely refreshing to see Katherine taking him on head on, not even vaguely intimidated by him. Harland, bless him, for all that he's compassionate and deeply feminist, is clearly not all that clever and never stood a chance against King, getting mired in a deal that keeps forcing him to take advantage of his Kentish tenants and putting them at risk. Katherine, whose mother (before her death) successfully masterminded the local smuggling long before Harland got involved, taught her daughter well (for all that Katherine hates smuggling, it doesn't take away from the fact that she's very good at it). Once she understands the full truth behind Harland's predicament and how it impacts on her own family, she goes toe to toe with the London crime lord, basically saving the day before Harland even realises what's going on.

Sadly, I don't think either of the books in Bowen's The Devils of Dover series have been as strong as those in her Season for Scandal trilogy, but it continues her trend of having interesting, unusual and extremely proficient women fall for powerful men who utterly adore them, and rather than feel threatened by them just want to use their power and resources to make sure that the women in their lives can live their best lives and continue to be awesome. While she's not on my auto-buy or pre-order list yet, Kelly Bowen is a historical author whose books I've come to look forward to and I'm excited to see what she's going to come up with next.

Judging a book by its cover: None of the books in this series have had particularly great covers, but this is just a bit sad. First of all, the cover model looks very little like our hero (his hair, for instance, is described as red - not the dirty blond of this guy). Putting some boyband reject in a period shirt and dark trousers and asking him to scowl for the camera, before photoshopping him over a nice generic old timey house background - it's scraping the bottom of the barrel, ideas wise. Kelly Bowen is lucky that by now she's proven herself good enough that I'll read her books regardless of what the cover looks like.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 96: "Last Night with the Earl" by Kelly Bowen

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Eli Dawes, the current Earl of Rivers, has been presumed dead for several years after Waterloo. Before he defied his father's wishes and went off to war, he was a handsome, popular and carefree nobleman; now he's got all manner of scars, both physical and emotional, as well as a healthy helping of guilt for never letting his father know he survived the war. He returns to England for reasons (I don't remember, it's been like a month since I finished this), but instead of going to London, he returns to the country house in Dover, where he plans to hide away and deal with his inheritance.

Eli doesn't realise that his father rented out the property to Haverhall School for Young Ladies, and that as a result, the house is full of inquisitive young ladies, as well as their teachers, one of whom is Miss Rose Hayward, who is quite surprised to find him sneaking in a window in the dead of night. Rose and Eli have a past, and in Rose's mind, Eli is the callous rake who disappeared along with her fiancee, destroying her reputation and humiliating her and many other of London's young ladies. Now Rose is a sought-after, but very reclusive portrait painter. She doesn't go out in Society anymore, and believed Eli died, like her faithless fiancee, on the battlefield.

Eli takes his responsibilities seriously, and while he's reluctant to rejoin society, he wants to do good with his inheritance (among other things, open a charitable foundation to take care of soldiers' families). While Rose is initially reluctant to spend time with him,  they can't seem to stay away from one another, and Rose discovers that Eli had absolutely no idea what his former best friend did before he ran off to join the army. He eventually confesses his long-held feelings for Rose, who may in fact return them - but she can never be the wife the Earl of Rivers needs. Rose has scars of her own, they're just a lot less visible than Eli's.

I came to have very high expectations of Kelly Bowen after really enjoying every single book in her Seasons for Scandal series. In this new one, The Devils of Dover, the books are entertaining enough, but not really very memorable. I read this a month ago, and barely remember the finer details of the plot or the central romance. In contrast, I can still remember most of the plots of her previous trilogy, so something is clearly just not there in the same way for me with these books.

I don't think it helped that Eli, the scarred war hero wanting to hide away from the world, kept reminding me a lot of the Duke of Ashbury, in Tessa Dare's much more memorable and enjoyable The Duchess Deal. This was a perfectly fine book while I was reading it, with cameo appearances by several people already introduced in A Duke in the Night. In this, there is no disappointing subplot with a weak antagonist (if there is an actual antagonist, it's Rose's dead fiancee, whose past actions have driven a wedge in Eli and Rose's earlier friendship), bu there isn't really any grand passion here either.

While this book was perfectly fine while I read it, it's one of those romances that just doesn't stick much in my mind. There's nothing too objectionable about it, but nothing to make me want to re-read it either. I am looking forward to book three, where Rose and Clara's brother has apparently been running a smuggling ring as well as being a doctor, but really hope it's better than the first two in this series.

Judging a book by its cover: While half of the cover model's face is in shadow here, it does not look as if his face is terribly scarred and disfigured from the war. From what you can see, if you squint, this guy has a perfectly normal face. Same with his arms and chest - no serious scarring there. If one of the major points of the book is that the hero is scarred from the war, maybe choose a different cover image? Or have, I don't know, a female cover model, to represent the heroine?

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 15: "A Duke in the Night" by Kelly Bowen

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 4 stars

August Faulkner, the twelfth Duke of Holloway is a known ladies man and ruthless business man. Very few people know how extensive his holdings actually are, though. He's just bought the Haverhall School for Young Ladies and is planning a trip to Dover to persuade the current Baron Strathmore to sell the family's struggling shipping company to him for a large sum as well. Then he discovers that Lady Anne, his beloved younger sister, has run away to spend the summer with the Haverhall School's summer program, and decides to combine fetching her back with charming the Haywards into selling him their family business.

Miss Clara Hayward and the Duke of Holloway shared a dance at a ball ten years ago, an occasion neither has forgotten. Clara is therefore taken aback when the Duke shows up, claiming to want to keep an eye on his sister. While the regular terms at the Haverhall School for Young Ladies is everything you might expect from a prestigious boarding school for the wealthy and titled, the summer program is meant for specially selected ladies who dream of something more. For twelve weeks, Clara works with them to increase their confidence and teach them self-worth, and they get to try their hands at professions that ladies are normally excluded from. She doubts Holloway would approve. His presence and his attempts to charm her are also very distracting to Clara, who may have had an unusual upbringing, but needs to keep her reputation spotless if she wants to continue as headmistress of her school.

While Clara and Holloway share an attraction, does their relationship have a chance of survival if Clara discovers why the Duke really came to Dover? Can she find happiness with the man who's already purchased her beloved school and wants to take over what remains of her family's business?

This is the sixth Kelly Bowen romance I've read, and as in all the others, A Duke in the Night has a very capable and unorthodox heroine. To society in general, Miss Clara Hayward is all good breeding and proper manners, from a wealthy background, but so educated that she's been relegated to wallflower and spinster status. Since Clara has no intentions of marrying and subjecting herself to the whims of a husband, her reputation suits her just fine.The wealthy families who send their daughters to her school don't know just how unusual an upbringing Clara and her siblings have had, with parents who encouraged them to pursue their interests and learn what suited them. Clara's younger Rose is a talented artist, while her brother Harland, the current baron, is a practising physician. Any whiff of impropriety, such as if Miss Hayward were rumoured to be the mistress of the Duke of Holloway, could destroy her career. So while she enjoys the flirtatious banter between herself and Holloway, Clara needs to stay unaffected.

Most of society also don't know that the Haywards are struggling financially, because their popular parents left their children in quite a lot of debt. Their public image is still one of success. Of their formerly successful shipping company, only two ships remain, and due to storms and inclement weather, they are currently missing. Both Rose and Clara are doing whatever they can to help their brother keep the company solvent, but there is absolutely a strain on their finances. Initially, Rose and Harland are concerned about Clara's reputation when Holloway shows up. They both feel she's free to make her own choices, but are not blind to the attraction between their sister and the duke, who doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to ladies or business.

Holloway's determination to buy the Hayward's business is the main conflict in the story. Faulkner may be a duke now, but he's one of those off-shoots on the family tree that only inherited the title after a whole slew of distant family members kicked the bucket and passed the title onto him. Faulkner grew up in abject poverty on the streets, stealing and doing whatever he could to make money to support his father and sister, stuck in debtor's prison for years. Now that he's a duke, Faulkner spends an absolute fortune lavishing fancy dresses and jewelry on Lady Anna, determined that she will have everything she missed out on when she was a child. What he fails to do, is listen to what his sister actually wants. She wants nothing so much as a chance to run a business of her own, trying her hand at hotel management.

Faulkner can't forget his years of starvation and poverty and keeps buying struggling enterprises and turning them around for a profit. He uses middle men and acts through corporations, so very few people actually realise just how wealthy and successful (or ruthless) the duke is. The duke seems incapable of just enjoying the wealth and power he's already amassed and resting on his metaphorical laurels, so to speak. Until he comes to terms with having enough, he's never going to find happiness with Clara.

While Clara is worried about the duke's reactions to her summer program, he turns out to be surprisingly understanding and progressive, if he occasionally needs a little time to come to terms with each new revelation. He keeps insisting that Clara keeps challenging him, and she does. Both protagonists in this may be somewhat anachronistic in their opinions and beliefs, but it felt refreshing with a thoroughly alpha hero who was nevertheless willing to be questioned and wanting to improve.

There is a minor subplot in the story with a rather predictable antagonist. While I didn't like the character or the subplot, I was surprised at the way the story played out and overall, this was another solid historical romance from Ms. Bowen. Based on the sample chapter at the back of the book, Clara's sister Rose is the next one to find her happy ending.

Judging a book by its cover: As with the prequel novella The Lady in Red, the title really doesn't have much, if anything, to do with the book. Yes, there is a duke (like in pretty much half of all books set in historical Romancelandia), but where the "in the night" comes in is uncertain. I don't know if scowly, brooding man on the cover is better than lady with partially undone dress, or yards and yards of fabric making up the skirt, but this is a pretty generic cover. I like the shades of blue in the background, but this could be the cover of almost any historical romance novel, and it's not exactly memorable.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.