Dukes Do It Better by Bethany BennettMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
How her old friends in society would laugh to see the woman once hailed as the diamond of the Season dreading going to London.
Dukes Do It Better is third in the Misfits of Mayfair series and I would recommend reading at least the second in the series before this. Events that happened in the second weigh heavily here, I've read the first but not the second in the series and though I thought the author did a good job relaying what happened, I felt disconnected because I hadn't read what the characters went through. Our heroine Emma seems to have been a former diamond of the water, with some mean girl leanings, trusts and gets seduced by a Lord Roxbury who turns heel when he finds out she's pregnant. With the help of, who turns out to be her future sister-in-law, they concoct a plan that leaves Emma a respectable widow and gives legitimacy to her child. This all happens in the second, this starts off 5 years later with Emma having retired to a cottage on the sea and with the death of her father, is finally going back to London to celebrate her nephew's birthday.
The man with those eyes had been compelling enough to divert her from the restrictions she usually lived under. And what had happened? Emma let loose for a few hours and landed in a sailor's bed.
Captain Malachi Harlow is a character that has also shown up here and there in the series, he plays a part in the second with helping Emma's brother, with forged papers, transport the villain of that book. After spending 15 years in the Baltic, regulated there because his father is a Duke, his older brother dies and as the new Duke of Trenton, is being forced to land. His mother always favored his brother so they have a strained relationship and she's embroiling herself in a blackmail scheme to keep the Admiralty from sending him back out to sea. Mal's father was a spy and had a blackbook of secrets, which his mother is claiming she has and willing to spill some secrets if her bidding isn't done. So Mal's in London to try and find the blackbook to stop his mother so he can go back out to sea, he wants nothing to do with the dukedom.
Alarm bells signaled in his brain like the warning cries of centuries of sailors who'd fallen to sirens before him.
How in the world are these two supposed to meet, you ask? They already have! In what would have been a great prologue, but instead we get from Emma and Mal's reminiscing, a few months ago, Mal was offloading some more treasure to his vault he has hidden by a cliff side town. Guess who's cottage is on that cliffside? Emma and Mal met at an assembly dance and shared a steamy night together, they both thought the other was a simple widow and sea captain but when Mal comes upon Emma in the park in London and rescues her from the baby daddy heel, they both learn of their titles. Besides missing out on getting that steamy first night scene, it's a pretty good setup (add in a mysterious widow's journal that Mal found on the beach and reads every night to fight his loneliness at sea) but the carryover from the second book's plot took up too much of this book and I struggled mightily with characterization.
No, she could never see Malachi Harlow again. How she'd manage that, she had no idea.
Mal has been a sea captain for 15 years and even though we don't get any buddy scenes with his crew, it's fairly alluded to that he was a good captain who feels a sense of duty towards them. So I'm to believe that he's a man who takes his responsibilities seriously but he feels nothing towards his family's dukedom? I get there was favoritism and he's got hurt feefees over that with his mother but he's going to let it all go to hell, abandon the people that rely on that estate? It's never even emotionally dealt with, he basically just meh's away any responsibility he may have towards it. There was absolutely no reason this character needed to be a duke, the title in no way served the character or the story. Maybe if I had read the second I would have understood Emma better but, my understanding, was that as a diamond of the first water who grew up a marquess' daughter, she's had a conventional upbringing in the glittery world of the ton. The spoiled factor and not thinking of consequences fits with her sleeping with Lord Roxbury as does her working with her sister-in-law to concoct a story, shows she's very aware of society censure and her living in a cottage out of London. I was under the impression that she lived a fairly quite life in this seaside cottage, so when she's giggling about dildos with her sister-in-law and then when her brother walks in, keeps laughing and talking about them, I'm thrown a bit. I'm fully aware that women used dildos during this time period but where in the world does a character like Emma grow so lackadaisical about mentioning them with her brother? What was going down in this seaside town? Her speech also threw me out of the story at times, especially towards the end, it does come off pretty modern. Again, I'm aware of historical aristocratic women that threw around curse words, I'm saying what I know of Emma's character, it doesn't fit it her.
Emma and Mal's romance had the foundation of their shared steamy night, that again, reader's don't get to see, and that, more or less, is what we get from them, trying to find a way to sleep together again. There's some mystery and suspense plot with all three book couples entering the picture as they're getting blackmailing notes. Is it the illegally transported former villain, push back from Mal's mom threatening to reveal her husband's blackbook secrets, or the heel baby daddy making demands? The ending reveals all, gives a sudden and, again, doesn't fit the characterization that has been laid out, character one-eighty, a late misunderstanding, and our happily ever after. I generally like this author's tone of writing but, for me personally, it doesn't fit in historical.
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