#CBR12 Book 57: "Daring and the Duke" by Sarah Maclean

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Official book description:

Grace Condry has spent a lifetime running from her past. Betrayed as a child by her only love and raised on the streets, she now hides in plain sight as queen of London’s darkest corners. Grace has a sharp mind and a powerful right hook and has never met an enemy she could not best, until the man she once loved returns.

Single-minded and ruthless, Ewan, Duke of Marwick, has spent a decade searching for the woman he never stopped loving. A long-ago gamble may have lost her forever, but Ewan will go to any lengths to win Grace back… and make her his duchess.

Reconciliation is the last thing Grace desires. Unable to forgive the past, she vows to take her revenge. But revenge requires keeping Ewan close, and soon her enemy seems to be something else altogether—something she can’t resist, even as he threatens the world she's built, the life she's claimed…and the heart she swore he'd never steal again.

Spoiler warning! I don't think I'll be able to properly review this book without going into quite some detail about what I think worked, and in what ways the story just didn't deliver for me. So if you haven't read the book and would prefer to remain unspoiled about plot specifics, probably best if you skip this review.

Still here? Cool cool. Daring and the Duke is the concluding volume in Sarah Maclean's Bareknuckle Bastards trilogy. The man the rest of world knows as Robert Matthew Carrick, the Duke of Marwick and his half-brothers and the woman he loves knows as Ewan, has been the villain in the preceding two novels in the series, trying his very best to ruin his two half-brothers both financially and personally while trying to track down the woman they consider their sister and he, Ewan, loves obsessively. When told in Wicked and the Wallflower that she had died, Ewan's shattering grief turned to rage and he became unhinged and deeply destructive. By the end of Brazen and the Beast, Ewan's quest for revenge against the two men with whom he shared a father, who he had trusted to keep his beloved safe and then was fooled into thinking had failed at that task, had ended up costing six people their lives and his half-brothers a considerable amount of money.

But of course, Grace, the illegitimate daughter of the former Duchess of Marwick (presented as a baby the world as Marwick's son and heir and her true identity hidden) never died. Along with the two men she's chosen to consider her brothers, she rules Covent Garden as Dahlia, the owner of an extremely profitable pleasure house catering to women. She's observed Ewan's increasingly more out of control attempt to find her and later to avenge her apparent death, and she's unimpressed. She intends to show him once and for all how little he means to her, crush his spirit and send him packing. But first, she personally nurses him back to health after the explosion he caused on the docks, which nearly killed Grace's brother's fiancée. Once he's strong enough, she stages a public boxing match, where he refuses to fight back as she beats him up. 

She believes him to be gone for good and tells herself that this is fine. Of course, about a year later, he's back in London, claiming to be looking for a wife. He arranges a grand ball, with the sole intention of luring Grace into his presence once again. She lies to herself that as long as she's masked and disguised, hooking up with him won't be a problem. He shows up in Covent Garden with a big chest full of money to pay reparations to the families of the men he killed and starts doing manual labour on the docks for Whit's wife, to show that he's a changed man now and wants to make amends for all the damage he did.

This is the second of Maclean's romance trilogies where a really shitty duke needs to make amends and grovel on an epic scale to be a satisfying hero in the final volume. While the duke of Haven in Day of the Duchess caused less death and destruction overall, I still found him even more loathsome than Ewan (who is at least super messed up because of the continual torture he was subjected to by his father throughout his life). I did not, however, feel that Ewan's grovelling and atttempts to make up for his former actions were enough to redeem him. I also found Grace's plan of first tenderly nursing him back to health only to beat him up publically to be deeply unsatisfactory. I will say that Ewan's final plan for getting rid of the family legacy he so detested to get his happy ending with Grace was pretty hardcore. 

The reason this book is three stars is that I really enjoyed the presence of Devil, Beast and their interaction with the families they've now established. Otherwise, it's unlikely it would have gotten more than two and a half stars. Once upon a time, Maclean was an auto-buy and pre-order author for me. Now she's on "buy on sale", which makes me sad. I still like her championing the romance genre publically as much as she does, but it's been a long time since she wrote a book I loved as much as One Good Earl Deserves a Lover. 

Judging a book by its cover: I know some people really like these covers, I find them way too anachronistic. On this one, I love the cover model's stunning red hair (like our heroine Grace/Dahlia sports), but the dress is simply all wrong. First of all, I would have loved to see a cover model wearing what Grace/Dahlia wears for most of the book, tight breeches, leather boots, elaborate silk corsets with a fancy overcoat. If Avon felt they had to put the cover model in a dress, they could have at least tried to find something that didn't look like a prom dress made from a rain slicker. Grace/Dahlia does wear a GOLDEN gown at one point in the book, but it looks nothing like the dress portrayed on the cover, nor is it bright canary yellow. Yellow and gold are NOT the same colour!

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR11 Book 60: "Brazen and the Beast" by Sarah Maclean

Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 4 stars

#CBR11 Bingo: History Schmistory (set in the Victorian era)

On the eve of her twenty-ninth birthday, Lady Henrietta "Hattie" Sedly, aided by her best friend Lady Eleonora (Nora), the daughter of a duke, is planning on going to an exclusive brothel in Covent Garden catering to women. She needs to lose her virginity, so her father will stop trying to pressure her into marriage. Firmly on the shelf, Hattie has discovered that despite a generous dowry, no one actually wants to marry her. She's too tall, too voluptuous, her face is too plain, she's too smart, too opinionated, too interested in running a business - really, there are a number of stumbling blocks. Hattie has worked her ass off trying to prove to her father (an Earl, a lifetime peer) that she's the right person to take over his shipping business. Her younger brother is a complete idiot and a wastrel, but he does have that important y-chromosome (and a penis), which means he doesn't need to work hard to be first in line to take over.

Hattie and Nora are rather taken aback to find a big, strong and exceedingly attractive man unconscious and tied up in the carriage they intend to use to get Hattie to Covent Garden. Hattie persuades Nora to drive the coach anyway and does a bit of flirting with the angry, clearly dangerous man when she wakes him up. Then she impulsively kisses him, cuts the ropes that tie him and throws him out on a street corner.

Whit, brother and partner in crime (literally) of Devil from Wicked and the Wallflower is trying to find out who keeps stealing the shipments of contraband that the Bareknuckle Bastards are transporting. Having lost three valuable lots of goods (as well as several loyal men) already, he's none too pleased to find a fourth shipment snatched. Not to mention finding himself knocked out and tied up (although he managed to throw a knife at one of the thieves before they got him). He tries to question the opinionated woman in the carriage, convinced she's somehow connected to one or several of the thieves (he's not wrong). She frustrates him by refusing to answer any of his questions, but luckily dumps him out on a corner of his own turf, where his many spies easily can tell him where her carriage ends up.

Whit shows up in Hattie's room at the brothel and tries to continue his questioning. She's figured out exactly who is stupid enough to knock out one of the kings of Covent Garden, and promises Whit that his missing property will be returned to him, but she refuses to give up the name of the guilty party (spoiler - it's her moron brother and his manservant). In return, Whit promises to divest Hattie of her unwanted virginity and try to help her achieve the rest of her plan for the Year of Hattie.

Of course, Hattie hasn't realised that her brother is responsible for four valuable shipments having been stolen from the Bareknuckle Bastards, nor does she know who's ultimately responsible or just how dangerously unhinged this individual is. Whit, on the other hand, is pretty sure who is stealing his wares and killing his men, and he cannot take the chance of getting too attached to Hattie, for fear that she get injured as collateral damage in his rather complex family rivalries.

The books in the Scandal & Scoundrel series went from middling to bad, and so I was very relieved to see that Sarah Maclean appears to be back on more familiar ground with the second book in her Bareknuckle Bastards trilogy. Whit may call himself Beast, but in reality, he's a big softie, desperate to protect all those he cares about, always trying to make up for being the smallest and weakest during his super shitty childhood (the details of the Duke of Marwick's "child rearing" attempts continue to be appalling, and I'm sure the next book is really going to delve into the depths of depravity the guy was capable of in order to get himself a "worthy" heir).

Even before the book's release, I'd seen several write-ups of how great Hattie was as a heroine, and she's pretty awesome. Like so many larger women, she has a ton of hang-ups about her body and her looks, not that Whit seems to be bothered by any of them. As is only right and proper in a romance hero, he adores every part of her, from her brain to her larger than average body.

If there's a weak part of this novel, it's the villains of the piece. Hattie's brother is a complete imbecile and the actual power behind him is going to come as no surprise to anyone who's read the first book in the series. His motivations now seem to be that he's gone pretty much completely crazy after the events towards the end of the previous book, which begs the question why Hattie escaped completely unscathed after a direct conversation with him. Maclean is also going to have to do some serious heavy lifting to make this guy a believable and satisfying hero in the concluding volume of the trilogy, out next year.

What I'd REALLY want, though, is a novella about Annika (Nik), the Bareknuckle Bastards' capable lieutenant, and Hattie's BFF Nora (Nik and Nora, see what she did there). There's clearly something brewing there, and I want the whole story.

Judging a book by its cover: Us larger ladies don't often find ourselves represented in the pages of romance fiction, so it's nice to see a plus size model on the cover of this, in a beautiful (if not entirely period appropriate gown - these books are Victorian, not Regency). The colour is even the same as of the dress our heroine is wearing in the opening chapters, which is always a nice detail when they manage to swing it. This cover really is tons better than the one for Wicked and the Wallflower. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 106: "Wicked and the Wallflower" by Sarah Maclean

Page count: 416 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Felicity Faircloth may be the daughter of an Earl, but she is now on the fringes of society and her family desperately need her to land a rich husband, sooner rather than later, please. She's not at all happy to discover just how dire the family's finances are (and that they've kept the truth from her for over a year), but she may have just doomed them all, but telling a very inconvenient lie at a ball held by the reclusive Duke of Marwick. The lie - that she's in fact already betrothed to marry him.

Imagine her surprise when a scoundrel shows up in her bedroom after the ball, promising her that she can, in fact, land the Duke if she makes a deal with the Devil of Whitechapel. Felicity misses the time when she was part of the popular crowd and wants to save her family's reputation, so she agrees, but she also wonders how in the world this Devil will convince the Duke to agree to marry a woman he's not even met, and what this mystery man's motives are for "helping" her.

Said Devil of Whitechapel is in fact one of three bastard sons, born to the former Duke of Marwick on the exact same day, to three different women (this is the sort of implausible coincidence you just have to roll with). There is in fact a fourth child sharing the same birthday, the Duke's daughter Grace (who ironically is NOT his legitimate child either). The three boys were brought to his estate as children and forced to compete in horrific challenges to see who would become the Duke's heir. They swore a pact that there would never be any actual heirs - and since Ewan (now the Duke) seems to be breaking that promise, by trying to find a wife and possibly sire children, his half-brothers Devil (real name Devon) and Beast (Whit) are determined to stop him.

Devil/Devon plans to help Felicity snag him, get publicly engaged, then seduce her, so she can't marry the Duke because of the ensuing scandal. Beast/Whit thinks this is a rubbish plan, and can clearly see that his brother is far too besotted with Felicity to ever use her to gain revenge over their other brother. As it becomes very obvious from early on that Felicity returns Devon's attraction, and doesn't really care one whit for the Duke, the plan goes awry pretty quickly. Yet she's unlikely to regain her position in society if she spurns a handsome and eligible duke in favour of a shady underworld smuggler.

I really don't like revenge plots where some dude is going to get back at another dude by using a woman. Thankfully, Sarah Maclean has Felicity be a heroine who refuses to be used in anyone's game, and who is far more interested in the supposedly dangerous and double-dealing underworld crime boss than the handsome Duke she initially lies and says she is to marry. She's far too good for Devon/Devil (such a dumb nickname), but not really because she's the daughter of an earl and from high society, while he's illegitimate and fought for most of his life to establish a criminal empire with his brother and foster sister. He wants to use Felicity to thwart Ewan, the bastard who became the Duke's heir. Ewan, in turn, wants to use Felicity to get to Devon, because he desperately wants to find Grace, the Duke of Marwick's actual heir (although the Duchess of Marwick had been just as unfaithful as her husband), whom he is obsessed with.

Felicity wants adventure and to be loved, she wants the Duke, but only if he'll fall passionately for her. At the start of the book, she longs to return to the centre of the ton and be popular, but as the sordid scheme progresses, she realises that she wants something else, and she just needs to make the stubborn ice smuggler understand it. She also discovers that while she loves her family, she's sick of being used by them, and is done trying to appease them and sacrifice herself to bail them out.

As with Tessa Dare's novels, Sarah Maclean's romances need to be read with a healthy suspension of disbelief. Really, throw your disbelief out the window. At the same time, there is an almost fairytale like feel to this new series. You have the four children, born on the exact same day, all connected to a very wicked man who made their childhoods hell. There is Felicity Faircloth, with a name like a fairytale heroine (and Devon keeps referring to her by her full name, which starts out sort of charming, gets annoying and kind of goes back into charming again because of the repetition), who ends up not just saving herself, but the stubborn man she falls for. While Whit (the hero of the next book) is clearly the strong, silent type), the two most intriguing supporting characters are probably Ewan (who is sort of nominally the villain of the piece) and Grace/Dahlia. Ewan is clearly unhealthily obsessed with his foster sister - it is said that he loved her once, but Devon and Whit are clearly willing to risk their lives to keep her from him, and because her very existence threatens Ewan's title and wealth, his need to find her at all costs is definitely cast in a sinister light.

None of the books of the Scandal and Scoundrel series really worked all that well for me (and the whole Kardashian thing in the Victorian era didn't really stick the landing), so I was reluctant to start this one. I waited nearly six months to start it (after I got it on sale) and was really very pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was. Maclean is still not back at "buy at full price", but then, so very few authors are nowadays, but she has earned herself a reprieve, and I'm more excited to read the next book in the series now than I was before I finished this one.

Judging a book by its cover: Oh mercy me, do I hate this cover. I'm pretty sure that it would have been difficult, if not impossible for that colour of lurid fuchsia to be produced in the Victorian era. Then there's the fact that the cut of the dress is wrong for the period, not to mention the horrible mini-skirt effect they're trying to achieve, which makes my eye twitch. I have loathed this cover since I saw it revealed many months ago, and it was a contributing factor to me waiting so long to pick up the book.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.