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My Review:Title: The Duke Undone
Author: Joanna Lowell
Published by: Penguin Audio
Release Date: April 6, 2021
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Mary Jane Wells
Length: 12 hours and 34 minutes
Genres: Historical Romance
Potential Triggers: View Spoiler »
Source: Audible
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2023 Audiobook Challenge, Lenoreo's 2023 Backlist Reader Challenge, Lenoreo's 2023 COYER Chapter 3, Lenoreo's 2023 Diversity Reading Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iTunes ✩ Libro.FM
My rating:
Blurb:An artist stumbles upon a naked duke and an unlikely love story begins in this captivating Victorian historical romance.
When Royal Academy painting student Lucy Coover trips over a naked man passed out in an East End alley, she does the decent thing. She covers him up and fetches help. Trouble is, she can't banish his muscular form from her dreams as easily.
Compelled to capture every detail, she creates a stunning portrait but is forced to sell it when the rent comes due. What could be worse than surrendering the very picture of your desire? Meeting the man himself.
Anthony Philby, Duke of Weston, is nobody's muse. Upon discovering the scandalous likeness, he springs into action. His infamous family has been torn apart by shame and secrets, and he can't afford more gossip. Even a whisper may jeopardize his inheritance and his chance at independence. His plan is simple: Burn the painting, confront the artist.
Or rather, it's simple until he meets Lucy and decides to offer the bewitching young artist a devil's bargain. He'll help save her foreclosed home, if she'll help repair his family’s brutal legacy. An irresistible passion ignites between them, but when danger strikes, Lucy and Anthony must risk everything...for a love that might destroy them both.
4 stars — I will admit that the main reason I picked up this book is because Mary Jane Wells is the narrator. That won’t completely sell me on a book, but it’ll have me giving it a second look. And it sounded a bit different, a bit out of the ordinary for a historical romance, and I do enjoy those possibilities.
I will say, right now, that blurb is…kind of misleading. This is the Audible blurb, not the Kindle blurb, and I feel like the Kindle blurb is a bit more accurate. It’s subtle, but it gave me a different expectation for our characters, and they definitely swerved wildly from those expectations. Not necessarily in a bad way, but I don’t think it’s a terrible thing to represent the story properly.
First things first, I still love Ms. Wells’ narration. For some reason, her cadence, her accents, her voices (in general), her emotions — they just do it for me. Occasionally I found that Lucy’s sarcastic inner voice kind of sounded like Weston’s voice, and that could be a bit confusing, but nevertheless I feel like she brings something to the story that I wouldn’t get if I read it on my own.
So Lucy and Anthony. Wow. They were not what I was expecting. They were both a heck of a lot more passionate and volatile, for starters. I can’t help but wonder how Lucy would get away with the way she would talk to folks, and I was forever worried about men putting her in her place (in a few scenes in particular). But I did appreciate her frankness, her ambition, her passion for art, all of that. She was a pretty complicated heroine, because I didn’t always like how she reacted, even as they were pretty realistic given her history — especially with reference to Anthony’s alcohol addiction. But if I’m being realistic, it fit. It especially fit in that day and age, when they knew so little about the effects of addiction. But my heart still hurt occasionally with the way she would say things. (not everything, that boy needed a wake up)
And then there’s Anthony. Wow. That boy is fucked up. I can’t think of how else to put it. He is holding so much inside himself, and if I’m being honest? It was a bit much. He has horrible PTSD from his time in the war, definitely struggles with the yet unknown dyslexia, is a sincere alcoholic who uses it to cope. He has family issues, both present and in the past. And to top it off, he’s being horrifically gaslit. I appreciated all these realistic struggles in his character…but I don’t know. It was kind of overwhelming. Like Lucy, I might have understood a lot of why he was the way he was, but that didn’t make it any easier to like him along the way. Yet at the same time, I thought the author struck an interesting balance of having us see inside his head when he was struggling with the addiction, and giving it a bit more humanity, if that makes sense. It’s a tough thing to tackle, and a tough thing to tackle in a Victorian setting in particular.
I definitely really enjoyed parts of their romance and connection, but other times felt more volatile than my poor sensitive heart can take. They could both be a bit awful to one another when backed into a corner.
The outside plot elements were actually pretty interesting, from the stuff Anthony was dealing with wrt his inheritance, finding Effie, Lucy dealing with the possible eviction, her time at the Royal Academy. I loved it all, BUT…but. There was too much. Like, seriously, too much. I would have enjoyed this book a LOT more if it had been condensed and tightened up. There were bits that could have been left for another character’s story, kwim?
So all in all, I really enjoyed it, but I’m uncertain whether I want to tackle another novel by Ms. Lowell just because of the too muchedness. Though if/when she writes Gwen’s or Kate’s stories, I will likely be in line.
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