Review: The Duke I Once Knew

The Duke I Once Knew by Olivia Drake
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have read and enjoyed several of Olivia Drake's previous books, but this one was not one of my favorites. In general, I am not a fan of "big misunderstanding" plots because it is so frustrating for me to know that most of the problems keeping the hero and heroine apart could be solved if they just had an honest conversation. In this case, Abby and Max had part of that conversation somewhere around the middle of the story instead of waiting for the very end, which admittedly cut down on some of my frustration. However, Max's refusal to share the "big secret" of his childhood, or at least acknowledge to Abby that his parents' marriage had been strained, made it almost impossible for Max and Abby's relationship to progress. When Max finally decided that he loved Abby and wanted to tell her the truth about his parents, the speed of it took me by surprise and made his love for Abby seem somewhat unconvincing.

There were several other things about the book that bothered me, particularly that the overall plot was fairly predictable and that I didn't find the heroine to be especially likeable. At first, Abby seemed to be a relatively sympathetic character because of the way her family treated her, but as the story progressed, I found myself liking her less and less. At every opportunity, she rushed to a negative judgement of the hero and never really seemed to trust him. Even in the last scene of the book, when Max is proposing to her, she throws his past behavior with other women back in his face along with a snippy comment about how she's "not like" him because she wouldn't have "made love without being in love." It's hard to have faith in their future relationship if it is not based on mutual trust and respect, and even though Max had proven Abby's assumptions about his rakish behavior to be incorrect on several occasions, she still didn't seem to trust or respect him very much. It made me question why she would agree to marry him at all.

Overall, I would rate this 2.5 stars if half stars were a possibility, but I rounded up to 3 stars because it was generally a well-written book and a fairly light, pleasant read. I will probably give the next book in the series a try and hope that it more closely resembles the earlier books I read by Ms. Drake.

*ARC provided by the publisher via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

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