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Once upon a time, I read some Grace Burrowes books I really loved. They were rich and historical and character-driven. Never a Duke, unfortunately, is none of those things.
Ned Wentworth is the adopted brother of the Wentworth family because he saved the life of their brother Quinn, now the duke, when he was in Newgate prison. He is, by title, second in command of the bank, but in reality puts most of his waking hours into the enterprise. Until, that is, Lady Rosalind Kinwood approaches him and asks him to investigate the disappearance of her maid. The two slide into affection and a relationship in a way that doesn’t have much conflict. Lady Rosalind hates going out in Society, but Ned knows they can’t marry because there will be gossip about his origins, which will prevent her from going about in society. You can see why this objection isn’t exactly a crisis.
The missing-maid plot is frustrating for two main reasons. First, there is no sense of urgency in the pursuit. I get that investigations go slowly in real life, but the characters seem completely indifferent to how much time is passing; they keep setting up dates and times to meet that are days apart. Second, although we learn who is responsible for snatching the maid – and other women, too – the motivation is nonsense. If the guilty party is doing this independently, which the book suggests, they have zero reason to do so (they don’t profit or benefit, either directly or indirectly). If the guilty party is the middleman, we don’t know who their boss and therefore the main criminal was, which is a gibberish way to end a series.
This book will be a much better fit for people who have been following the Wentworth saga, of which this is the seventh (and apparently final) installment, because everybody who has ever been in one of these books is back. The author actually does a good job of maintaining the characters, including flaws, of these previous protagonists; it’s just the sheer quantity of them that’s exhausting. Everyone has to stick their oar in, and I couldn’t even keep them straight. Well, except for Lord Stephen, who apparently has a limp or leg injury, because the author makes sure to comment on his disability every single time he’s in the scene. Sure, our physical bodies are a part of identities, but do we really need it shoehorned into comments like how Stephen had “come to crave such domesticity, to need it more desperately than he needed his canes”?
So we have a suspense plot that is annoying while in process and unsatisfying when it resolves, perhaps eight or so returning secondary characters who, although at least not rubber stamps of bliss, are not serving a narrative purpose, and a weird writing tic around disabilities. What this book needs, then, is a bizarre coincidence in the finale!
I’ve seen a lot of authors go this way, where they start writing faster and their books get more and more dilute. I’m sorry this seems to be the case here, but I’ll still hope for a return to form, because Burrowes is capable of better.
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Grade: C
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 28/04/22
Publication Date: 04/2022
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I'm a history geek and educator, and I've lived in five different countries in North America, Asia, and Europe. In addition to the usual subgenres, I'm partial to YA, Sci-fi/Fantasy, and graphic novels. I love to cook.
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I liked this book, because I have read all the others in the series and like Burrowes, but my liking was lukewarm. I wonder if Ned should have been dealt with in a novella or been given a heroine who had more emotional and shunned-by-the-ton or barely-part-of-the-ton baggage. Like some other limp finales to romance series, perhaps some of the ways Burrowes backed herself into a corner limited her inspiration.
In regard to Lord Stephen’s disability, my feeling was that the references were mostly to allow the novel to be read on its own — backstory so new readers caught up. I strongly feel that readers of the book need to read at least one of the other Wentworth books before attempting Never a Duke.
Finally, the women-being-kidnapped plot was much more effective in Stephanie Laurens book To Distraction, part of her Bastion Club series. The contrast between the two affected my expectations of Never a Duke and contributed to my disappointment. The Burrowes plotline was not quite what I was expecting — I am still wondering why there were not rumors and some government concern about the machinations with the women — and the resolution was not as satisfying as I found the one in To Distraction.
I think I gave the last Burrowes I read a solid B. Intrigued about this one, but might save it for later.
Your opening lines resonate with me. I used to be a massive GB fan and read all her books as soon as they came out (and she’s so prolific keeping up was HARD!). But while I still like her style – which is distinctive and a bit quirky – she’s got bogged down in plots and even more massively extended families. I still think her Captive Hearts trilogy is her best work and she has yet to top it.
I like two of the Captive Hearts books, but I am not so fond of The Laird, and I have not reread it recently enough to remember why. I like all the social interaction of Grace Burrowes’ extended families — the Bedwyn series by Mary Balogh is also a favorite — so I have a bias toward a series which develops extended social circles.
The Captive Hearts books are more angsty than the later books. I thought Darius and Trenton, sons of the Earl of Wilton, were more like the Captive Hearts books because of the Lindsey family history. Some of the angst was also present in Nicholas, who marries their sister, both because of her situation and because of Nicholas’s own troubles.
I am not sure that all those extended, interlocking family series can ever provide books that consistently have angst and fraught plots without having extremely disfunctional family histories that would undermine the illusion of a strong family core that permeates, for instance, the Bedwyns and Cynsters. Jo Beverley’s Malloren books do have some nasty family history for Rothgar, but his siblings are close and don’t carry as much of his baggage, reducing the angst.
Stella Riley’s Rockliffe series, like the Malloren books, is an extended family series that has problems, but lacks consistent angst. Riley’s books about the English civil wars have more angst, perhaps because they are set during war and stressful political times. The Captive Hearts series plots originate in wartime, too.
It may just be easier to write about extremely difficult emotional conflicts if war sets changes and challenges ordinary life does not. That may be part of the appeal of the early 1800s and the Regency to novelists — in addition to an era made famous by Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer — there’s a war to blame for the many emotional and social ills that make plotting easier. And it isn’t just romance novels that feed off war; would John le Carre have been as successful without the Cold War?