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A review by beckymmoe
Dare to Love a Duke by Eva Leigh
5.0
Reviewed on my blog, Becky on Books, on 12/28/18.
This one may be my favorite of the series...!
I absolutely loved Tom and Lucia. Both have weighty responsibilities--Tom because he was born to them, and Lucia's because she worked her butt off to build a better life for herself and in the process has both made a new family for herself and decided that helping girls in situations similar to those she once faced to make a better life for themselves would be her new mission. They have equally precarious situations--Tom's because of a socially dangerous secret that his father kept, and Lucia's because her clandestine business and all of its employees depend on the fact that it is an (open) secret in London. Of course they are from wildly different social tiers--he's a duke, and she's the illegitimate daughter of a former Italian housekeeper and the son of a wealthy English family--a family that refused to take orphaned Lucia in, causing her to have to make her own way in a foreign country. She'd come a long way from the girl she'd been then by the time she meets Tom, but that vulnerability was still there, beneath the surface.
Ms. Leigh definitely takes her authorly responsibility to figure out what her characters are most afraid of and do that very seriously, because oh goodness, does she throw a lot at Tom and Lucia here. There were moments it was nearly impossible to see how they could possibly come through everything and still manage an HEA, but thankfully they manage to find a way, and it is brilliant.
The ending really should have come with a wear waterproof mascara when reading warning, though. I'm just saying. ;)
Dare to Love a Duke is the third in The London Underground series, but would work just fine as a standalone. Other series characters play small roles--the men as friends and sometime-supporters of Tom, the women popping up in the epilogue--but you don't have to have read their stories to thoroughly enjoy this one.
(But do yourself a favor--read all three. They. Are. So. Good. Rulebreaking heroines and the men that love them FTW!)
Rating: 4 1/2 stars / A
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.
This one may be my favorite of the series...!
I absolutely loved Tom and Lucia. Both have weighty responsibilities--Tom because he was born to them, and Lucia's because she worked her butt off to build a better life for herself and in the process has both made a new family for herself and decided that helping girls in situations similar to those she once faced to make a better life for themselves would be her new mission. They have equally precarious situations--Tom's because of a socially dangerous secret that his father kept, and Lucia's because her clandestine business and all of its employees depend on the fact that it is an (open) secret in London. Of course they are from wildly different social tiers--he's a duke, and she's the illegitimate daughter of a former Italian housekeeper and the son of a wealthy English family--a family that refused to take orphaned Lucia in, causing her to have to make her own way in a foreign country. She'd come a long way from the girl she'd been then by the time she meets Tom, but that vulnerability was still there, beneath the surface.
Ms. Leigh definitely takes her authorly responsibility to figure out what her characters are most afraid of and do that very seriously, because oh goodness, does she throw a lot at Tom and Lucia here. There were moments it was nearly impossible to see how they could possibly come through everything and still manage an HEA, but thankfully they manage to find a way, and it is brilliant.
The ending really should have come with a wear waterproof mascara when reading warning, though. I'm just saying. ;)
Dare to Love a Duke is the third in The London Underground series, but would work just fine as a standalone. Other series characters play small roles--the men as friends and sometime-supporters of Tom, the women popping up in the epilogue--but you don't have to have read their stories to thoroughly enjoy this one.
(But do yourself a favor--read all three. They. Are. So. Good. Rulebreaking heroines and the men that love them FTW!)
Rating: 4 1/2 stars / A
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.