Hi ForeverBookers,
How are you all? I hope you’re good!
I’ve just finished “It’s All About The Duke” by Amelia Grey, a regency romance, and I really enjoyed it! Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the chance to read it! Sorry it’s taken me sooooo long to do it. March is my mARCh month so I’m trying to get through as many of the old ARCS that I have. Wish me luck!
4.5 Stars!
“It’s All About The Duke” is about a young girl, Marlena, who is at the age where girls go to dances and become engaged to be married. Marlena, however feels she has responsibilities to her friends and loved ones and so isn’t at all worried about settling down or falling in love. Also, Marlena has a secret that she’s keen to hide from everyone except her best friends. When she meets Rath, the Duke of Rathburne, her new guardian as her old one is ill however, what will she think? She especially wants to keep her secret hidden from the Duke!
I read “It’s All About The Duke” for a few readathons again. They were:
Reading Rivalry - Book with the Main Character on the Cover - Marlena and Duke Rathburne are clearly on the cover on Goodreads.
Popsugar Reading Challenge 2019 - “A book you meant to read in 2018.” It was a 2018 arc that I never got around to in 2018, so it counts!
Fiction Feud Society - for the game of CLUE - as a part of TEAM A (The Library Lurkers)- Mr Green - A book with green on the cover - Marlena’s dress and the title are green - 5 Points!
Litwits - Green Cover - 50% or over of the cover has to be in Green - the title, the authors name, Marlena’s dress and the series title are all green so I think this counts. Also part of the staircase behind Marlena and the Duke is green. Also for Litwits I was reading it for Forbidden Love as there is an element of that within the story.
Literary Love Affair - A book with a green cover - most of the cover is green, as I said above!
There are a couple of light sexy scenes in “It’s All About The Duke” so I recommend no one below age 16 reads this.
Spoilers Below
“For some, companionship and gratification were reward enough to keep them sated if not content. And that’s the way Rath wanted it, to.”
This is the romance that “It’s All About The Duke” is based on. Without this romance there wouldn’t be a story, so keep that in mind if you don’t like romance. There are a few other storylines but they’re so minor that they might as well not be there in comparison to the romance.
“She reached for the books already in his hands, and her fingers covered his. A wave of something delicious washed over her. Their eyes met. Her heartbeat surged.”
This is the moment I believe where Marlena falls in love with the Duke. It happens quite early on in the novel but I wouldn’t class it quite as instalove because they’ve known each other for a while before this novel takes place, I believe. This could be considered as forbidden love I believe as the Duke is at first Malena’s guardian. This doesn’t change until quite a way in to the novel, when feelings have already been established. I enjoyed the authors writing style in all aspects of “It’s All About The Duke” but especially the romance scenes and anything pertaining to the love story. I thought she accounted the feeling of falling in love well.
As for side characters in “It’s All About The Duke,” Marlena has a cousin, Justine who is annoying beyond anything else. She’s clearly meant to be annoying, though so don’t let that detract you from reading “It’s All About The Duke.” She’s even quite funny in what she says, sometimes. She is just always onto Marlena about finding a man, but that’s not the most exasperating thing about her. That is that Justine actively tries to steal the Duke Of Rathburne from Marlena!
“She had no connections to high society and Justine’s were limited, even though her cousin liked to think otherwise.”
This tells us that Marlena has no links to High Society herself and that even though Justine thinks she does, she doesn’t have many either. Justine, in other words thinks she’s better than she actually is. She therefore thinks that the Duke Of Rathburne is the one for her when he clearly doesn’t want her. He wants her cousin instead. Other side characters, like Eugenia, Marlena’s confidante, for example are present but on a very small scale. Eugenia has a few funny moments in the book, as well as Justine. One of those being how she always seems to faint whenever in the presence of the Duke of Rathburne. She obviously doesn’t know him like Marlena learns to over the space of the book. It would have been nice if Eugenia got her own novel but as this is the last in The Rakes Of St James trilogy that’s unlikely to happen, and the slight romance that she does have is within this book, anyway. It just would have been nice to have her romance as the main plot to a book. Two other side characters are the Ladies that help Marlena become the woman she becomes by the end of the novel. Lady Vera takes her to dances and insists that she meets other men, as her sister does, until she works out she’s only interested in one man!
“He could be a rake if he promises to call on you but never does.”
The most surprising thing about “It’s All About The Duke” for me, was that Marlena writes an anonymous advice column called “Miss Honora Truth’s Words of Wisdom and Warning About Rakes, Scoundrels, Rogues, and Libertines.” At the beginning of each chapter there is a line or two from the gossip sheets that she writes (see example above). A rake is “a fashionable or wealthy man of dissolute or promiscuous habits: a merry Restoration rake,” according to the dictionary, meaning that Marlena sees men that have money and wanton or immoral habits as rakes. Marlena just provides others with a look into society as she sees it. It’s like a blog if you like, in today’s culture and is anonymous, as I said.
Marlena is very independent and new age for this time period.
“Desperate?” The word came out almost as an oath. She was infuriated...I may have lost my parents when I was a babe but I have never been desperate,”
shows just how self-governing Marlena is and how she doesn’t feel the need to rely on anyone but herself. This is refreshing for the time period. We see many girls trying to be independent I feel in historical literature but Marlena seems to outrank most for actually becoming independent.
As the gossip sheets are anonymous, Marlena doesn’t have to be worried about being found out. Or does she? Does she tell Rath, the Rake who becomes the love of her life throughout the novel her secret? She writes about friends of his in her gossip sheets so if she does tell him is he angry about it? Does Rath reciprocate her feelings also? You’ll have to read to find out!
I really enjoyed “It’s All About The Duke” so I’m giving the novel 4 Stars, overall. It was a quick read that I wish had been slightly longer. It felt that we’d only just touched the surface of some of the elements. The relationship was really the only thing expanded on in the book, as it was. I was fine with this because I love romance so much but I wish even that had gone slightly deeper. The comic parts made up for the lack of other plot elements that were missing for me but for others I don’t know if this would make up enough of a story for them. The other elements I don’t believe were expanded upon enough to be mentioned in this review. I’d just be writing them and giving no explanation as to why I was writing them so that’s why they’re not mentioned. If I had read books 1 and 2 to this trilogy first I might have more of an understanding about the other points that I haven’t written about above but I’ve had this arc for ages so as I thought that each book focused on a separate couple, it would be okay to go into blind. It was fine in terms of the relationship, as I’ve stated above. It was just other little things that might have made a little more sense had I read the other novels first. I’ll read them at some point, I expect because the author can clearly write romance well.
Stand by for my next review, coming soon!
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