I loved Never a Duke. the closing book in Grace Burrowes' Regency romance Rogues to Riches series. The series follows the four Wentworth siblings and some of their extended family from a childhood of abuse and abject poverty through the oldest brother's climb to riches and then an accidental Dukehood, to well-earned happy marriages all around. Each of the family members and their spouses have their particular unhappy back story -- including SPOILERS
teen pregnancy, patricide, a stint in a horrible mental hospital -- and the love they find takes hard work and courage.
Mostly, though, I found these books a pleasure to read because they are well-written, not just the overall arcs of the books and the series, but the chapters, the paragraphs, the sentences.
Never a Duke follows the adventures of Ned Wentworth, an adopted brother. When I began the book, quite a while after I read the last one, I actually had him confused with a different character who I had forgotten already had his own novella (Duncan, a cousin, who I think married a "lady banker," although that could have been a different character). Once I realized Ned wasn't Duncan I had very little recollection of him. The book talks a lot about the beginning of his story that occurred in the first book of the series, My One and Only Duke. When I read Never a Duke my recollection of My One and Only Duke was fuzzy enough that I wasn't sure how much of the back story had actually occurred and how much was retconning. To tell you how much I loved this series, I actually went back and reread My One and Only Duke -- and I'll review it in a future post. (Spoiler: it's excellent, and even better when viewed as the first in the series.)
In the earlier books in the series Ned had met the then-future Duke when they were both in prison, the Duke as a man wrongly accused of murder and Ned as a child collared for shoplifting. Ned taught the Duke how to survive in prison and was an all-around good and spunky kid, so when the Duke was sprung he took Ned with him, adopted him into the family, gave him the Wentworth name, and educated him. A couple of decades or so have gone by since the first book, and now Ned is the very Gen Xish-type manager of the Duke's bank, a stressed-out workaholic overlooked and taken for granted by the more flamboyant members of the generation above him.
In all these years the other Wentworths have never really gotten to know Ned. Does he like being an adopted Wentworth? Does he ever feel like he is really part of the family? What was his original last name and why was he willing to give it up? Why did he end up in prison when the Duke was there? Does he like being a banker? Does he like working the long hours? Does he actually enjoy spending time with the rest of the Wentworths? What are his secret hobbies?
This is where the book begins. I'm not going to go into too much detail of the plot of the book itself, which is all about (ugh) kidnappings, and makes little sense, involves some very unlikely coincidences, and includes an encounter similar to Biblical Joseph meeting a mysterious and unexplained man in a field who sent him in a certain direction, without which the rest of the story could not have happened.
Ned's love interest is Rosalind, and she's fine. She's the unhappy, secretly illegitimate daughter of an earl, and her true desire is -- actually, I forget, she's not that interesting and I just want more Ned and more Wentworths. The point is, Ned is a great character, his relationship with the Wentworths is perfectly drawn, and he gets his happily ever after which includes not only marrying Rosalind but SPOILERS
being reunited with his family of origin, and time to work on his secret hobby.
It is an altogether satisfying end to the book and to the Rogues to Riches series.
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