Review: Grace Burrowes’s NEVER A DUKE.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.

I’ve written this before (way to be original, Jess 🙄) but every single time I’ve read a Grace Burrowes book I think, it feels like I’m watching Downtown Abbey right now. Restraint & repartee meets drama!!! (Why am I feeling like that koala in the movie Sing right now?! 😬).

Never a Duke has that same Downton Abby-ness. Also a truly nice hero, an unconventional heroine who isn’t liked by many of her contemporaries, & sweet love story that wavers a little for me toward the end but for the most part soundly holds my interest.

Burrowes explores class boundaries & the legal system compellingly with this one when she repeatedly relays how poor people are punished for trying to exist, trying to keep themselves & their families alive & fed & provided for.

It’s a belief that the leads Ned Wentworth & Lady Rosalind Kinworth share & that draws them together, despite the fact that Ned was born on the rougher side of London & was sent to Newgate for crimes & also nearly transported for them & Lady Rosalind is the daughter of an Earl.

Binding everything together is a stirring mystery focusing on missing young women in service & an attraction that shimmers between Ned & Rosalind, despite the many obstacles between them.

Rosalind occasionally comes across as somewhat high-handed to me but watching her pursue him & challenge the seemingly indomitable Wentworths also has its fun recompenses.

Never a Duke is another strong installment in this series. It’s been really fun meeting such an unconventional & powerful family that straddles class lines & seeing them shake the aristocracy—& my own reader expectations—up a bit.

4 ⭐️. Release date: 04/26.


[ID: a white woman wearing pink shoes stands in front of an orange ottoman. An ebook rests on an open hardback on top; above the hardback is a closed hardback with a giant peanut butter cup covered with m&ms on it.]