BOOK REVIEW| A DUKE WILL NEVER DO | DARCY BURKE

Title: A Duke Will Never Do Author: Darcy Burke Publication date: 19 May 2020 My rating: ★★★★★ Goodreads rating: 4.31 Pages: 248 Genre: Victorian Historical Romance

A Duke Will Never Do is book # 3 in the Spitfire’s Society series by Darcy Burke. I absolutely loved and enjoyed every single page.

Amazon’s blurb description: “After failing on the Marriage Mart, Jane Pemberton has two choices: submit to her parents’ edict to marry their boring neighbor or become a self-declared spinster and take up residence in the official headquarters of the Spitfire Society. It’s really no choice at all, and Jane is eager to embrace her newfound independence. She soon finds an unconscious viscount on her doorstep and nurses him back to health. When he offers to compensate her, she requests payment in the form of private instruction of a scandalous and intimate kind.”

My Review:

Jane Pemberton has decided to declare herself a spinster, an unmarried woman. She moved out of her parents home and has decided to get away from the shackles of society. She’s moved out on her own and intends to start living her life for her own pleasures. When Anthony, Lord Colton, turns up on her doorstep beaten and incapacitated, she brings him in to nurse him back to health. The two form a friendship that blossoms into more, but can the secrets of Anthony’s past, with a possible extortion, be put to rest for the couple to have their happily ever after?

I came into this series thanks to Netgalley’s ARC from Darcy Burke. Jane is a sweet and unassuming woman who has spent her life pleasing others. She longs for something more than a life lived pleasing others, and she has finally gotten the courage to grab that life for herself. Jane’s parents are just horrible to her and make her feel worthless and inferior for various rumors that were started about her during her First Season in coming out in society. These rumors made it impossible for her to find a nice gentleman to marry her, throw her over the edge and move out of her parents house.

Anthony is a rogue, in disguise of course. He is known all over town for his drinking and bar fights, but underneath it all he’s hurting from his parents murder. His way of hiding his true feelings is by drinking his sorrow away and fighting others in bars that he attends at night.

I absolutely loved the vulnerability that Anthony portrays in his love for Jane, but decides to hide it inside and not tell her. I was hoping for a happily ever after sooner, rather than later. Anthony is indeed mourning the loss of his parents and his ability to share that grief with Jane was one of my favorite parts of this book.

This book has been one of most satisfying reads I have had this year. I am giving this book 5 stars. Even though I started with Book # 3 in the Spitfire Society series, I loved these two characters, Jane, Anthony, and the kittens. Who can forget the wonderful little kittens, Fern and Daffodil. They were truly the icing on the cake in this novel.

Darcy Burke is a new author to me and I’m excited to read more from her. If you do not know Darcy Burke, do yourself a favor and pick up this series today. I will most definitely come back for more of her Victorian Historical romance novels, including her upcoming new releases.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Darcy Burke Publishing for sharing an eARC of A Duke Will Never Do by Darcy Burke. This is my honest review.