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 on my website that 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.
Full review here.