Scan barcode
A review by savvyliterate
A Most Unlikely Duke by Sophie Barnes
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.