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The Duke Heist is the first novel in Erica Ridley’s The Wild Wynchesters series. It’s a light-hearted but sometimes silly tale featuring the adopted daughter of a baron who happens to fall in love with the duke she kidnaps!
Chloe Wynchester is one of six orphans adopted by Baron Vanderbean – affectionately known as Bean. Each orphan has a special talent: Chloe’s is the ability to blend in and assume different identities because no one ever seems to remember her. Eight months previously, the family’s beloved painting of Puck and Family – precious to them because of the symbolism of its depiction of Puck and six of his fellow sprites – was stolen and replaced with – of all things – a vase. The siblings know exactly who took their painting – the now deceased Duke of Faircliffe – and have devised a plan to get it back. They’ll switch it with a fake after the current Duke presents it to his intended. The plan is successful but in the process of escaping, Chloe accidentally kidnaps the new Duke of Faircliffe, Lawrence Gosling. She takes him to an inn she and her siblings use when they need an escape, then hides Lawrence in a cupboard so he won’t be seen and forced to marry her when her brother comes to rescue her. In exchange for hiding him (and thus avoiding an unwanted marriage) Lawrence promises her a favor.
Upon returning home, Chloe and her siblings discover the painting they so love is also a fake and decide Chloe should claim her favor from the Duke, and ask him to tutor her in the ways of society so she can find herself a husband – and so that she can secretly search his home for the real painting.
Lawrence is all too happy to teach Chloe the finer points of fitting into society if it means settling their debt. Since his father was a walking scandal, Lawrence is desperate to avoid making a spectacle of himself at all costs. The first thing he shows Chloe is how to behave at dinner: how to enter, where she might sit, and which piece of silverware to use when. Next, Lawrence teaches Chloe to dance. Through the lessons, he begins to realize the woman he thought would make an ideal duchess isn’t the ideal woman for him.
I was excited to receive this title for review, but sadly, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. The Wynchesters are a tight knit group of siblings unrelated by blood but still fiercely loyal to each other. I enjoyed reading about each character’s talent, even if I felt some of them were a bit over the top and unrealistic to the point of almost being completely ridiculous. I liked the way Chloe’s talent (being ‘invisible’) ties into how she views herself and how she overcomes that feeling in the end. Lawrence is delightfully stuffy and unwilling, for a time, to change his mind. That’s my favorite kind of hero, and I thought he was great, even when he was being a bit of a prig.
The pacing isn’t too bad although there are a few slow spots. The synopsis is a bit misleading though, as Lawrence is kidnapped and released by the twelve-percent mark, and I had expected the story would be more of a Lawrence-in-captivity type of situation. I still enjoyed the mini kidnapping episode, but wish it had been as important to the plot as the blurb implied. I have a fondness for stories in which one character giving another lessons of the sort Lawrence gives Chloe, so that aspect worked for me as well.. I do, however, wish there had been more of a clear main plot, as once the kidnapping was over it was hard to tell where the story was going.
While I am generally entertained by Ms. Ridley’s novels, the uneven pacing, sketchy plot and the sometimes ridiculous ‘talents’ of the siblings made this one a rare miss for me.
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Grade: C+
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 18/02/21
Publication Date: 02/2021
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.
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Is this the book where she’s supposed to be able to fade into the woodwork but the hero sees her driving away with him and thinks about how beautiful she is? Hard to believe that a beautiful woman is overlooked so easily unless she’s into serious disguises.
About on par for every other Ridley I’ve read, sadly.
“We’ll switch the painting for a fake… oh no, this painting is also a fake, so where’s the real painting?” reminds me of the Fallen Madonna plot of Allo Allo.
All switching painting scenes default to this in my brain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJKWjeMtEDM
OMG. I remember that one all too well…
If Chloe had been adopted by a baron why would she need lessons in deportment and table manners? Or what that just a scheme to get closer to this particular duke? He’s a prig and she seems to behave like a complete idiot so have to say this one sounded like a sight-unseen DNF (actually a DNES – Do Not Even Start) but maybe I am wrong?
I suspect it’s part of that whole thing we were talking about on another thread – authorial desperation to provide their heroines with Things To Do. This usually ends in completely ridiculous plotting (as it seems to be here) and completely anachronistic characters (ditto)..
If I were to refrain from all good manners I would call it a complete piece of cr@p. I despair, Caz.
I’m with you on that. I read this author once or twice a few years back and that was enough – she’s incredibly prolific but sadly seems to have opted for quantity rather than quality.
Agreed. One thing I’ve noticed about a lot of HRs lately is this irritating need to shoehorn a mystery or a caper into a romance. Part of me wonders if they are trying to snag multiple audiences. The problem is, they’re going to lose a big chunk of their audience too by plot stuffing. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of blurring genre lines, but there is such a thing as getting carried away.
This also reminds me of the acting advice Spencer Tracy gave to Burt Reynolds: the secret to acting is don’t act, behave. I think a number of HR writers could take this advice to heart and adapt it. While their heroines shouldn’t sit there all the time like a bump on a log (the heroine who just stands like a statue while her man is fighting with the villain is a big pet peeve of mine. Can she at least flee from the room or arm herself with a candlestick holder?), she doesn’t have to do wild, crazy, anachronistic stuff to get noticed as a strong character either. Taking initiative can be as simple as making a sly comeback when she gets insulted or solving a problem with resources she has on hand (Scarlett O’Hara and the drape dress, anyone?). Authors would do well to ask themselves, “How would this character behave in this situation in this time and place?” rather than “How do I make this more interesting?” If you write characters well, you can make their mundane tasks interesting just through their thoughts, actions, and reactions to them.
Authors would do well to ask themselves, “How would this character behave in this situation in this time and place?”
I’ve always said that surely the challenge of writing historical romance is actually finding a plausible way for two people to be together at a period of history when unmarried men and women were not allowed to be alone together. Now, it seems that challenge is gone and has been replaced with “how outlanish (silly) can you make your plot?” which is, as you say becoming seen as a replacement for strong characterisation and good writing.
I think this is one of the reasons why I have been favoring queer HR lately. Unlike historical MF, historical MM and FF have yet to be infected with this kind of flashy one-upmanship (with at least one notable exception…). For one thing, same-sex couples having to be in the closet by societal necessity requires the authors to get more creative and plausible with their HEAs/HFNs. True, two males or two females would have had the freedom to be alone together in friendship without raising much suspicion- and there would have been no risk of pregnancy- but making a lifetime commitment of their secret relationship would have required a lot of maneuvering and skill. Such intricacies are fascinating and fantastic to explore as both a writer and a reader. And I’ve read some good stories that nail it.
It’s too bad I’m generally not seeing that same dedication in opposite-sex HR lately, with some exceptions. An author certainly can create realistic scenarios for pre-marital trysts, but those decisions have to be justified in some period appropriate fashion. An widow, for example, would have had more freedom of movement because protecting her virginity was no longer a concern. Or a prostitute in the Wild West could marry, move, and start a new life under a new name to regain her respectability. This was actually pretty common according to some of my research on the subject; it was considered coarse to inquire about someone’s background in that particular place and era. So there are a lot of possibilities out there, but they require research and proper implementation.
Another problem I think is the time crunch traditionally published HR authors are under nowadays. Because of internet algorithms that favor new work regardless of quality, a lot of authors find themselves on a content mill/hamster wheel. And if those contrived, plot-stuffed wallpaper historicals consistently sell, there’s really no incentive for an author to deviate from a commercially winning formula.
Yep, I agree with all of that.