WELCOME
Not me basically highlighting all of the sexy parts of this book and seriously lusting after this man. 🤣🤣🤣 Dear Readers, Aliens and Creatures, I give you – ‘Daring and the Duke’.
BASICS
Official title: Daring and the Duke
My title: Forgive the Duke, Punish the Duke
Author: Sarah MacLean
Publisher: @harpercollins @avonbooks
Fav character: Ewan
Type: Book – Bareknuckle Bastards Series
4.5/5
INTRO
The pure fire of all of these unspoken words 😍 – is the spirit I wish could have been kept throughout the book, alas, it was not to be so. This book goes from friends to lovers to enemies to lovers, covering several romantic tropes in one book – which is a plus. 😁
REVIEW
A childhood attraction, passion, violence, glamour, a madman on the brink – because he thinks he has lost the only one he has ever loved and does not understand how he didn’t feel her passing. Lots of intrigue as to Ewan’s motives and whether he is truly after the blood of his half-siblings. SUCH A POTENTIAL 5+/5 book… but alas… the execution… Sigh.
(SO MUCH TALKINGGGGGGGGG)
Grace and her ‘foster’ brothers have protected each other from Ewan for the past 16+ years. Ewan, the half-brother who grew up to become the new Duke of Marwick, after their father, a despicable figure that for two years of their lives trained them to take up the ruthless position of a Duke in Society. While the other two half brothers failed, Ewan was selected as heir, stealing the christened name and position of Grace, born Robert.
To save themselves from their father and now Ewan the heir, the foster siblings escape to Covent Garden, where they beat and build a life for themselves, growing, learning and thriving. While their father dies, Ewan lives and his betrayal is fresh in their minds – especially his betrayal of Grace, who the other two brothers know they must protect at all cost. It is because of this that when faced with Ewan, Devil and Whit lie about her being dead, which ultimately strips Ewan of his sanity.
☀️Okay… let me explain…
The Duke of Marwick was a ho, with a wife and at least three other women. All four women became preggers and he had three sons and a daughter. The daughter was born to his wife, but was not his, GASP – ESCANDALO – and to continue the line, the Duke decides to lie and bribe EVERYONE he can. He claims the daughter is actually boy, and the boy christened Robert. So the poor girl ends up just being a place-mark.
Marwick wants his line to continue and so gathers the four children from their mom’s to his estate when they are twelve. He trains the boys to take the place of Robert in society. This ultimately means that the girl, informally named Grace, must die. Of course they all love Grace and don’t want to do it, especially Ewan who loves her desperately.
The boys and Grace manage to escape after being betrayed by Ewan. They are now essentially rulers of Covent Garden and seeking loves of their own. Devil and Whit are successful, but Grace’s heart has always belonged to Ewan, and his to her. So, he is devastated when he hears that she has died while in the care of Devil and Whit and he decides they should pay for their negligence in not keeping her safe and well.
He attacks his half-brothers and their loved ones until he takes things too far and Grace decides to step in to finally confront him and put him in his place and out of their lives. However, things don’t go exactly as planned.
☀️Ehem, back to the review…
As a now – big, wealthy and powerful Duke, after discovering that Grace still lives, Ewan is ready to claim her as his Duchess, or to become her King, whichever comes first and regardless of what he has to do to ensure his greatest desire is met. Ewan will continue plotting, as he always has, until Grace is in his bed FOREVER.
OBSERVATIONS
▪️Growing up together-ISH and being in love with your supposed sibling:
They seemed to all know, from the beginning, that Grace was not actually their sister. So when they met at twelve, the three boys were half brothers, but Grace was not quite their sister… although in the ensuing years she becomes a sister to Devil and Whit.
▪️14 year old’s falling in love:
To be fair, considering the time, girls this age were already working in households and maids and other types of servants. These girls could also be found in poorhouses, at factories and also selling their bodies on the streets. Times were tough… this ‘love/attraction’ does not seem unrealistic to me given the en environment.
▪️ The change from ‘African’ to ‘Black’ in the book:
This may be an issue that few people understand, because it goes back to my aversion to the term ‘Black people’. I dislike it because it is the most ridiculous monolithic expression in popular use today. When you say ‘black people’ there is nothing of the identity of the person, their history, their culture, their language…NOTHING… frankly not even skin colour, because there are dark-skinned people to be found in many pockets of the world.
▪️My dislike stems from the author changing from ‘African’, which would have been an accurate description at the time, to the VERY lazy ‘Black’, which becomes fuzzier when she tries to give one of the characters Caribbean origins… Sigh, it just became messy. Of course we get no skin descriptors for these ‘black women’ apart from just that, them being ‘black women’. This is an issue since the term ‘blackie’ and ‘black’ could refer to any darker-skinned person at the time… Suffice to say, I did not understand what her characters were meant to look like…😒 RESPECTFULLY.
CONCLUSION
▪️ Whether Ewan is good and can be forgiven:
This was the trickiest problem for me… whether someone who caused the deaths of 5 people due to his machinations could be called a good person and could be ‘forgiven’. Although, let it be noted that this forgiveness was to come from Grace, not necessarily the families… which I was like… 🤔(hummm).
Again, historically, the bar was pretty low…😒 What with all of the killings and traffickings of peoples, brutal murders in England, public hangings for petty offenses, women being forced into terrible situations and barely having rights, murderers and friends being shipped to other parts of the world because they had money – the bar was PRETTY FARKIN LOW, so, ehem, I could see how the author and Grace would want to claim he was good. Especially as he ‘sent money, allowed them to beat him up and did work at the docks’ 🤣🤣😁🤣🤣 – pathetic really how this is supposed to equate to lives – but hey…
It was tough, because I was really attracted to Ewan’s intensity and his single-minded determination. I however, sitting in 2021, pretending to be Grace… could forgive him (because it really has little to do with me), but I would want to see him taken to court.
The Crux of the story to me is: How much are you willing/can you forgive?
What are your thoughts on forgiving someone for others who truly suffered at their hands?
Pages: 384
Publisher: Avon Books
Year: 2020
