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cakt1991's review
5.0
Full review here: https://wordpress.com/post/courtneyreadsromancesite.wordpress.com/775
rednikki's review
emotional
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This book tries in some ways to be very historically accurate, but in other ways throws accuracy out the window. I'd been sold on this as a Pygmalion trope, but there really isn't much of that trope in this book. Some of the conflict required the characters to carry the Idiot Ball in order for it to happen. I did like the way she built the ending, however; the people wound up happy in a way that was difficult to achieve, but didn't require me to suspend my disbelief too much.
kiwicoral's review
3.0
Meh. It was fine, but I just couldn't get immerse in the story like I can with a good historical romance.
The hero was too good to be true. His only "faults" are that he's too honourable and protective over his sisters. The sisters are the best of the secondary characters at least, closely followed by the heroine's sassy aunt.
The heroine fulfills the requirements of the perky oddball with her love of entomology, but other than that, she's pretty bland.
I did like the strong friendship as the foundation of the relationship. But while they have chemistry, the one lacklustre sex scene is perfunctory.
The plot has so many elements, but most plot points are basically resolved within a few chapters at most. The fight hanging over the entirety of the book just kind of... happens.
I probably wouldn't read another book in this series.
The hero was too good to be true. His only "faults" are that he's too honourable and protective over his sisters. The sisters are the best of the secondary characters at least, closely followed by the heroine's sassy aunt.
The heroine fulfills the requirements of the perky oddball with her love of entomology, but other than that, she's pretty bland.
I did like the strong friendship as the foundation of the relationship. But while they have chemistry, the one lacklustre sex scene is perfunctory.
The plot has so many elements, but most plot points are basically resolved within a few chapters at most. The fight hanging over the entirety of the book just kind of... happens.
I probably wouldn't read another book in this series.
choirlady76's review
5.0
Wow, what can I possibly say about this amazing book! It is absolutely one of the most tantalizing and suck-you-in-deep reads of the summer! A high 5 stars for Sophie Barnes A Most Unlikely Duke!
We start off with Raphe in a boxing match where he wins the match with flying colors. Later, he's promised his coach that he will take on a very strong opponent and match coming up and that he'll win! He heads home, where he's greeted by one of his sisters, the other sister is in bed. He eats a bland bowl of soup and discusses the day's events with his sister. They live in extreme poverty and in dire straights, that is until she hands him a letter. He's been informed that he is the heir to the Huntley Dukedom; therefore, he's the new Duke of Huntley. At first, he wants to turn it down, but when he reflects back on his deceased sister's death and how much he wants to save his remaining two living sisters, he decides to head to London and take on his duties as the New Duke of Huntley.
Whilst moving into their new home, Raphe and his sisters are met by a very arrogant man in the street. It appears that his carriage has been blocked by Raphe's and a young woman, Lady Gabriella is with him and tries to ease things over. She and her betrothed mistake Raphe for being a servant. However, it is the next day that Gabriella, her mother and her aunt learn that Raphe is, in fact, the Duke of Huntley. Raphe and his sisters have some very poor manners and their speech is very common and Gabriella takes a liking to them and knowing how harsh the ton can be and also based on her own experiences of being picked on and outcast. she decided to secretly tutor his sisters and soon she also begins tutoring him.
Gabriella's fiance's family invites the Duke of Huntley to their home for a party and this doesn't give her much time to school him, so she desperately tries her best to help him. However, his stubbornness gets in the way. At the party, he's often put down and belittled even by her own father, which infuriates her. She takes it under her care even more to help Raphe and his sisters. As time goes on, Raphe and Gabriella begin to take a liking for one another. However, there's just one problem, she's promised to another. Will Gabriella break off her engagement and open her heart to Raphe, despite his common ways? Will Raphe open his heart to marrying and give into the love brewing inside for the beautiful Gabriella?
Absolutely wonderful read, I couldn't put this book down, it drew me in right from the first sentence! Barnes sure knows how to weave a tale and what a ride readers' will take. The plot is very thick and filled with fiery passion between the H and h. A lot of tension and conflict throughout that makes the reader keep turning the pages! You will not be displeased by A Most Unlikely Duke, I highly recommend this book!
We start off with Raphe in a boxing match where he wins the match with flying colors. Later, he's promised his coach that he will take on a very strong opponent and match coming up and that he'll win! He heads home, where he's greeted by one of his sisters, the other sister is in bed. He eats a bland bowl of soup and discusses the day's events with his sister. They live in extreme poverty and in dire straights, that is until she hands him a letter. He's been informed that he is the heir to the Huntley Dukedom; therefore, he's the new Duke of Huntley. At first, he wants to turn it down, but when he reflects back on his deceased sister's death and how much he wants to save his remaining two living sisters, he decides to head to London and take on his duties as the New Duke of Huntley.
Whilst moving into their new home, Raphe and his sisters are met by a very arrogant man in the street. It appears that his carriage has been blocked by Raphe's and a young woman, Lady Gabriella is with him and tries to ease things over. She and her betrothed mistake Raphe for being a servant. However, it is the next day that Gabriella, her mother and her aunt learn that Raphe is, in fact, the Duke of Huntley. Raphe and his sisters have some very poor manners and their speech is very common and Gabriella takes a liking to them and knowing how harsh the ton can be and also based on her own experiences of being picked on and outcast. she decided to secretly tutor his sisters and soon she also begins tutoring him.
Gabriella's fiance's family invites the Duke of Huntley to their home for a party and this doesn't give her much time to school him, so she desperately tries her best to help him. However, his stubbornness gets in the way. At the party, he's often put down and belittled even by her own father, which infuriates her. She takes it under her care even more to help Raphe and his sisters. As time goes on, Raphe and Gabriella begin to take a liking for one another. However, there's just one problem, she's promised to another. Will Gabriella break off her engagement and open her heart to Raphe, despite his common ways? Will Raphe open his heart to marrying and give into the love brewing inside for the beautiful Gabriella?
Absolutely wonderful read, I couldn't put this book down, it drew me in right from the first sentence! Barnes sure knows how to weave a tale and what a ride readers' will take. The plot is very thick and filled with fiery passion between the H and h. A lot of tension and conflict throughout that makes the reader keep turning the pages! You will not be displeased by A Most Unlikely Duke, I highly recommend this book!
missmarketpaperback's review
3.0
So this book was fine. The first chapter is pretty jarring: Raphe finds out he’s a Duke and with very little adjustment he and his sister discuss what they will do. We meet Gabriella, a fish out of water, who’s trying to do her duty by her family but longing to study bugs and (eventually) get with Raphe.
I wish the reader was given greater insight into the characters emotional journeys. I wish the author hadn’t made the sex scene the last chapter (yeah, no sex til then). This book was fine and cute but not really my cup of tea, trying to do way too much in limited space.
I wish the reader was given greater insight into the characters emotional journeys. I wish the author hadn’t made the sex scene the last chapter (yeah, no sex til then). This book was fine and cute but not really my cup of tea, trying to do way too much in limited space.
savvyliterate's review
3.0
Romances tend to come in two different flavors: one is where the couple struggles with their personal issues that winds up keeping them apart for most of the book or the couple makes a connection early on and what's keeping them apart are their circumstances. A Most Unlikely Duke falls into this second category. With the right characters and the right circumstances, the story can be told very well. This book had the right characters, but the circumstances ... eh?
The premise is that Raphe, a dockyard worker in St. Giles, winds up the unexpected heir of a dukedom and is scorned by society because he and his sisters were poor. They're educated, but not "educated." Their speech patterns are atrocious, and their clothes reflect the general circumstances up until Raphe gets his inheritance. Enter next door neighbor Gabriella, an amateur entomologist that seems to escape the snobby gene her parents have. In a case of "My Fair Lady" meets "Beauty and the Beast," Gabriella and the members of Raphe's new household groom him and his sisters into proper members of Society.
The characters themselves are pretty great. Raphe isn't an overbearing beast of a man, and Gabriella's sweetness doesn't leave your teeth rotting. Their courtship is adorable, especially once Raphe taps into Gabriella's love of insects. They're two good people trying to make the best of their circumstances. By the middle of the book, they're pretty set and despite the drama hurled at them throughout the book, it's obvious they're not going to split up.
And the drama. Oh the drama.
There's an arrogant, possessive jerk of a suitor; disapproving parents; a sister who ran away for love and then things happen; an absent shrew of a mother making a reappearance; the hero being caught in a blackmail situation that could ruin all of them; a friendless heroine because apparently everyone has a really long memory and holds an incident from when she's 8 against her ... if you can think of any reason for these two not to be together, this book probably has it. It got to be far too much, especially when it becomes blatantly apparent that these obstacles weren't going to keep Raphe and Gabriella apart. Some of these dramatic moments - like the mother's reappearance - come and go so fast that it feels like a waste. Even the cast themselves acknowledge this is all a bit ridiculous.
The problem with the novel's climax is that it's set up in such a way that you exactly know the outcome way back in the first chapter. There was no clever way of subverting it, and people just shrug and go to the country to deal with it. There's no element of suspense there, and by that point in the novel, all you're waiting for is the wedding night.
By time Raphe and Gabriella consummate their marriage, the book's one sex scene had no purpose other than to prove that they did it. It's in the very last chapter, in the final pages of the book. Their consummation is worded to the point that you hardly know what's going on. It's a sex scene trying to hide the actual sex, and in this case, I wish it'd been skipped. It wasn't needed at this point. We know Raphe and Gabriella have their happy ending. If you want a sexier scene, leap back to Raphe and Gabriella's first kiss. That was scorching.
A better place for the sex scene would had been just after the engagement where they make out in Raphe's office. But suddenly it's halted because they want Gabriella to be innocent for her wedding night. Which, no, no, no, there was a far better reason based in the plot for Gabriella to want to wait for marriage - mainly to avoid what happened to her sister. This sort of scenario is handled far better in Julia Quinn's "To Sir Philip, With Love." In that book, heroine Eloise and her intended Philip wind up in a similar sort of situation. It ends with them not consummating their relationship for largely the same reasons that Gabriella and Raphe don't, but in Quinn's novel Philip makes it very clear that he and Eloise are compatible. It is incredibly sexy and a huge character moment for both Eloise and Philip.
Raphe and Gabriella are fantastic characters in a book that is riveting for the first half. But it falls apart in the second with far too much arbitrary drama and too little payoff, especially when it comes to the intimacy department. I really wish the subplot involving Raphe's mother had been saved, because she seems like a proper menace that needs an entire book dedicated to them thwarting her. I liked it well enough, and I'll read the next book because I want to see what happens to Amelia, but it wasn't quite the book I hoped it would be.
The premise is that Raphe, a dockyard worker in St. Giles, winds up the unexpected heir of a dukedom and is scorned by society because he and his sisters were poor. They're educated, but not "educated." Their speech patterns are atrocious, and their clothes reflect the general circumstances up until Raphe gets his inheritance. Enter next door neighbor Gabriella, an amateur entomologist that seems to escape the snobby gene her parents have. In a case of "My Fair Lady" meets "Beauty and the Beast," Gabriella and the members of Raphe's new household groom him and his sisters into proper members of Society.
The characters themselves are pretty great. Raphe isn't an overbearing beast of a man, and Gabriella's sweetness doesn't leave your teeth rotting. Their courtship is adorable, especially once Raphe taps into Gabriella's love of insects. They're two good people trying to make the best of their circumstances. By the middle of the book, they're pretty set and despite the drama hurled at them throughout the book, it's obvious they're not going to split up.
And the drama. Oh the drama.
There's an arrogant, possessive jerk of a suitor; disapproving parents; a sister who ran away for love and then things happen; an absent shrew of a mother making a reappearance; the hero being caught in a blackmail situation that could ruin all of them; a friendless heroine because apparently everyone has a really long memory and holds an incident from when she's 8 against her ... if you can think of any reason for these two not to be together, this book probably has it. It got to be far too much, especially when it becomes blatantly apparent that these obstacles weren't going to keep Raphe and Gabriella apart. Some of these dramatic moments - like the mother's reappearance - come and go so fast that it feels like a waste. Even the cast themselves acknowledge this is all a bit ridiculous.
The problem with the novel's climax is that it's set up in such a way that you exactly know the outcome way back in the first chapter. There was no clever way of subverting it, and people just shrug and go to the country to deal with it. There's no element of suspense there, and by that point in the novel, all you're waiting for is the wedding night.
By time Raphe and Gabriella consummate their marriage, the book's one sex scene had no purpose other than to prove that they did it. It's in the very last chapter, in the final pages of the book. Their consummation is worded to the point that you hardly know what's going on. It's a sex scene trying to hide the actual sex, and in this case, I wish it'd been skipped. It wasn't needed at this point. We know Raphe and Gabriella have their happy ending. If you want a sexier scene, leap back to Raphe and Gabriella's first kiss. That was scorching.
A better place for the sex scene would had been just after the engagement where they make out in Raphe's office. But suddenly it's halted because they want Gabriella to be innocent for her wedding night. Which, no, no, no, there was a far better reason based in the plot for Gabriella to want to wait for marriage - mainly to avoid what happened to her sister. This sort of scenario is handled far better in Julia Quinn's "To Sir Philip, With Love." In that book, heroine Eloise and her intended Philip wind up in a similar sort of situation. It ends with them not consummating their relationship for largely the same reasons that Gabriella and Raphe don't, but in Quinn's novel Philip makes it very clear that he and Eloise are compatible. It is incredibly sexy and a huge character moment for both Eloise and Philip.
Raphe and Gabriella are fantastic characters in a book that is riveting for the first half. But it falls apart in the second with far too much arbitrary drama and too little payoff, especially when it comes to the intimacy department. I really wish the subplot involving Raphe's mother had been saved, because she seems like a proper menace that needs an entire book dedicated to them thwarting her. I liked it well enough, and I'll read the next book because I want to see what happens to Amelia, but it wasn't quite the book I hoped it would be.
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