Avon, $8.99, ISBN 978-0-06-291366-1
Historical Romance, 2022

Caroline Linden’s All the Duke I Need returns to Carlyle Castle, as the heroine here is Philippa Kirkpatrick, the stepdaughter of Her Grace the Duchess of Carlyle’s late daughter. I’m looking forward to this one, as the old lady is the most interesting character in the Desperately Seeking Duke series thus far.

Instead of the smart old broad bent quite a bit by the tragedies in her life in the first story, however, here she is revealed to be far less knowledgeable than she appears, and in fact, she’s actually sometimes afraid of the changes in the world around her. This is a more realistic character, and I’d appreciate this more if it hadn’t been such a character departure from her first appearance.

That and I have this sneaking suspicion that she and the heroine had been deliberately made into dumb dumbs to elevate the hero William Montclair. The author did this to the heroine in the first story, hence my suspicion about her motives this time around!

William Montclair and his brother are sent by their father to manage the London office of their American shipping company. Our hero is bored of being stuck behind a desk all the time, however, and he is also tired of the constant clash of wills with his brother. When the opportunity arrives to be the steward of Carlyle Castle, he accepts.

As he tells his brother Jack, the pay is very generous and the money will go a long way to clearing the debts incurred by the London operations, plus he may forge some useful connections with noble folks that can only benefit the company. Just don’t tell their father that he’s running off like this.

Philippa is most at home in Carlyle Castle. She doesn’t feel that she fits in with the rest of Polite Society, as she’s half-Indian and not everyone is that open-minded about that and the possibility that his mother might had been his father’s Indian concubine. She has been doing more and more of the running of the household as Her Grace declines gradually with age and grief, and she likes the routine and the stability that comes with her responsibilities.

The arrival of William, the stereotypical brash and take-charge American type, disrupts her routine and challenges much of what she thinks she knows about the estate and the surrounding lands. Her response is… not at all graceful, let’s just say, as it’s two-parts stomping her foot and exclaiming the equivalent of “You suck!” and one-part lusting after the guy because he’s just so, so hot.

Well, William is definitely getting the connection he is looking for, but hold that thought. This is a full length story, after all, so he decides that he’s not worthy of her and his stay here is only temporary. Naturally, he tells her this only after withdrawing his instrument from her toolbox after a jolly good hammering.

All the Duke I Need is a really strange beast, so to speak, because it feels so uneven. Let me explain.

I love the opening few chapters, as it brings out beautifully the relationship between Philippa and her guardian, and sets William up as this charming, dashing scoundrel that can easily get under my skin in a good way.

Then, the moment they meet, it’s About a Rogue all over again: the heroine’s brainpower plummets straight down to the pits, so that the hero can always correct her, show her how things are done, and generally come off as smart mostly because he’s compared to a sputtering, flustered ninny.

Worse, it is revealed that while Philippa and her guardian focus a lot on making sure that the castle is well maintained, the surrounding estate is falling apart because of neglect. While this sets the stage nicely for William to flex his brain and muscles, sometimes without a shirt to make the scenery prettier, it really downgrades the heroine and Her Grace a lot.

Since I prefer my romance stories to have the hero and the heroine on an equal footing, I find it hard to get into the romance here, as it’s essentially the hero dangling a bone way above the yapping heroine and daring her to jump and get it.

So, the middle parts of this story are pretty uninteresting as far as I am concerned, although I’m piqued by William bonding with the mentally-incapacitated current Duke of Carlyle. Unfortunately that aspect of the story doesn’t really go anywhere so there’s that.

Later into the story, I find my interest rising again when William decides that he loves Philippa and this leads to some genuinely sweet and tender moments.

Then, all that is shoved aside as the story then becomes one long, long exposition dump to explain why William is hired in the first place, and how he’s linked to the quest to find an heir to the Duke of Carlyle title. I’m sure most folks will be able to guess correctly what that link is.

My annoyance with this part of the story stems from how it really feels as if the author had been suffering after eating some too-spicy chili a while ago, so she has finally found a working toilet after several false starts, and now she just takes a seat and wooosh, lets everything spew out with a loud groan of relief.

Seriously, that’s a lot of information dumped onto me in a most inelegant manner. I feel that the author could have cut down on the number of tedious “the hero is smarter than the heroine… again” moments in the story and use the freed-up space to add in some foreshadowing scenes. That way, when the twist is revealed, I would feel that the story had been leading me gently to that point all this while, instead of the author just unloading everything on me because she really has to go and here it comes.

There is a good story and a good romance in here somewhere, possibly, but the entire thing feels uneven, with sharp spikes of brilliance followed by huge dips into meh territory. Sure, there are some really good scenes here that hit the feels nicely, but the story on the whole is a bumpy ride from start to finish.