When I was younger, I absolutely devoured every fairy tale and Nancy Drew mystery that I could in the school and public libraries. As I got older, I graduated to Barbara Cartland's sometimes overwrought romance novels (with the perfect heroines) and lots of annoying pauses (though I did not find them so at the time). As she was extremely prolific, it took me awhile to work through her complete oeuvre.
Based then on my pleasure reading during my early teens, I assumed that you had to be perfect since the princess always was (along with Nancy Drew and pretty much all of Barbara Cartland's heroines) and this seemed to involve being tiny, thin, and impossibly beautiful. So this always put me outside looking in as I have always been the tallest girl in the class and while I wasn't so curvy during my teenage years I certainly compensated for that as I got older by putting on enough weight to be curvy in the good and bad areas. Additionally, while I didn't need to walk around with a bag over my head, I was not going to be winning any beauty contests either then or now. And then one day I read a Georgette Heyer book and realized that heroines could be funny and get the guy and yet not always be the prettiest or thinnest girl in the room. It was very freeing, not to mention a boost for my self-confidence, and I've never looked back.
The latest in Eloisa James' series of reinvented fairy tales embodies the type of heroine I can relate to. She is funny, clever, loyal and certainly not perfect from society's perspective. She has self-doubts about her attractiveness but still has admirable self-confidence. Furthermore, Eloisa James always does an excellent job of propelling the plot with real things that occur in our everyday lives and not contrived misunderstandings, and she does so in this novel as well.
If you have never read any of her books prior to this one, I would really recommend some of those where the hero and heroine are already married as it is easy to recognize the same kind of misconceptions that are easy to make in your own relationships. The Desperate Duchesses series as well as the Duchess quartet are filled with these types of stories. Once you have finished "The Duke is Mine" if you are looking for other heroines that have similarities to Olivia I would also recommend "Pleasure for Pleasure" (the last in the Essex sisters series) and Enchanting Pleasures (the last in the Pleasures series..and also Eloisa's first series of books).
With that said, I can tell you that if you pick any of Eloisa's books you can't go wrong as they are all enjoyable, each with their own special theme that helps set them apart from many of the quickly cranked out and sub-par romance novels. She is very particular with her historical details so you don't have to worry about being painfully jolted out of a story because the characters titles are all wrong, and yet she keeps everything relevant to our times so that it doesn't feel dry or dated. Furthermore, she doesn't mess her grammar all up or use words in the wrong context. I used to read one author that insisted on using the word ambivalent when she really meant adamant (or something similar) and droll when she seemed to mean dour; basically the word was completely opposite in the context of the sentence. Another example of a common error that I have seen several authors make is when they use puce to describe a color and the implication is that it is a greenish color rather than a sort of maroon (the word is derived from fleas' blood). Eventually that sort of thing gets so distracting, that you cannot immerse yourself in the story.
Okay, I'm stepping off my soap box on things I find irritating. Back to topicality, (very slight spoiler here) if you follow Eloisa on Facebook she allows you a small peek into her life. She has a gifted ability to either be very funny or sometimes incredibly poetic in describing events in her life. So anyone that keeps us with her on Facebook is aware that she adopted a very cute rescue dog named Lucy about a year or so ago and that her just-turned-thirteen-year-old daughter has an unwavering devotion to Justin Beiber. So I loved that she worked this in to "The Duke is Mine" by having a dog named Lucy that is crucial to the story and a teenage lord with a singing ability with a tutor named "Mr. Usher" and he actually uses the lines "never say never". How can you not love that? :)
So thanks for bearing with my review and I apologize for all the grammatical errors I am sure I made (but again I'm not being paid to do this and clearly do not have a copy editor). I also apologize for the fact that I am parenthetically happy and feel the need to make numerous asides (like this one). At least I am not ambivalent on how I feel about this wonderful story or the author, as she is in my top ten list of favorites.
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Genre addict
Great writing and very engaging...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 29, 2011