Sophie Barnes, $1.99, ISBN 978-1386581703
Historical Romance, 2017
Sophie Barnes’s The Duke Who Came to Town has a heroine that works as an accountant in a hotel, but don’t worry, people, she still has enough blue tint in her blood to compensate for the stench of working class that may have caught on to her petticoats. Romance for vulgar working-class people, ugh—the very idea.
Anyway, Josephine is working because it’s to keep a roof over her young sisters. Of course, of course. Oh, and she isn’t a prostitute, she’d have everyone know. She also doesn’t need any man in her life, because… what? She’s fired? Oh no, can the hero please come swoop in and make things right for this strong and independent woman?
Devon, the Duke of Snowdon, checks up on Josephine and her sisters on behalf of their guardian and his buddy. He is personally scandalized by the very idea of a granddaughter of an earl having to work for a living. That’s so… working-class!
So, when he realizes that Josephine is unemployed and is too proud to accept free money even if it makes still keeping a roof over her sisters’ heads, he decides to employ her himself to work at his hotel, even if she weren’t exactly brimming with the appropriate aptitude for the job.
After all, we all know that independent and strong women need to have things handed to them by a man so that they can be, er… something, I guess?
The author falls into a common trap when it comes to this story: she makes the heroine come off as loud and blustery, but without the appropriate brainpower to make the loud bluster worthwhile. It is one thing if Josephine had indeed been a pragmatic and capable woman that can indeed take care of herself and her sisters, but that’s not the case here.
The heroine clearly, desperately needs someone, a powerful man, to come to fix her life for her, and instead of letting the heroine realize this and make the best of the situation, the author has the heroine instead loudly protesting and fighting the hero in every step of his effort to make things better for her and her sisters. This doesn’t make Josephine come off as smart or independent; it makes her out to be completely delusional.
The hero is fine, he’s a nice guy that fixes things up, and if he came off as high-handed now and then, honestly, it’s not a bad thing considering that the heroine clearly needs to be pushed into accepting decisions that are good for her.
In the end, a part of me is tempted to award this one two oogies because the premise hinges on the heroine being an annoying dimwit to prolong the pain, er, plot, but still, another part of me points out that I actually have a pretty painless time reading this one. The heroine is more of a mild irritant than a cause of high blood pressure, the writing is clean and easy to digest, and much of it feels like a familiar and rather formulaic cozy read.
After some thought, what the heck, three oogies it is. That’s the standard rating for something that is readable but flawed in some way, and that’s precisely what this is.
