Reviewed by Geri.
The novel’s premise:
...a reverse Kate and Leopold...a light-hearted
time travel romance where a bewildered modern-day duke ends up in Regency
England and meets the girl of his dreams...
Jared Langley,
present-day Duke of Reston, tumbles into an abandoned fountain on his ducal
estate and travels back in time to the year 1816. There, Reston servants and
local villagers think him a dead ringer for his namesake and rakehell
ancestor--the seventh Duke of Reston, gone missing at the Battle of Waterloo.
Unfortunately, Seven got mixed up with French spies out to assassinate the Duke
of Wellington, and an unwary Jared ends up in their crosshairs.
Lady Ariana Hart has
loved Jared Langley, the seventh Duke of Reston, since she was twelve years
old, until the night the rogue broke her heart. Given up for dead, her rakish
neighbor makes a miraculous return from Waterloo--only Jared shows up a changed
man and reignites all the feelings Ariana had long ago buried.
Jared is in a race
against time. He must waylay the suspicions of his quirky servants and
neighbors, get to Wellington before the French spies do, fix his
fountain--before Seven shows up--so Jared has a way home, and definitely not
fall in love with the irresistible Lady Ariana.
Geri’s review:
After reading a rip-roaring Regency time travel romance a few years ago I
graduated to Outlander and then returned to my favourite historical period
because I do love Regency romance novels best of all. This one the Duke du Jour
lived up to expectations almost throughout its entire plot.
The start of this novel is in the modern day and the Duke of Reston is
livid when news his fiancé is a gold-digging bitch is brought to his attention.
She was cheating on him as well, and so furious is he, he throws a major wobbly
and so angry is he at her feeble explanation he takes a hike and one slip into
a fountain and he ends up wet and finds himself back in 1816. I felt sorry for Jared
who is a modern day man with gadgets at his fingertips, and the past life Jared
falls into is a nightmare of telling lies to people who are convinced he is
another duke returned from the dead. Of course that’s not the half of it
because for one thing he’s the wrong Duke of Reston, and then there’s a Lady Ariana
who loved the 7th duke who was horrible to her. Instead Jared is shockingly
nice to Ariana and she’s confused by it all. There is a sad part to this
novel with the dreadful fact Ariana is 200 years in the past and Jared dare not
fall in love with her. If that wasn’t bad enough the missing 7th duke
lands Jared in trouble when French spies and assassins scare the pants of Jared.
A flint-lock pistol is nothing like a Glock, and when Ariana’s life is at risk
he turns into a Regency hero and falls in love with the heroine. Crumbs I thought,
because if the 7th duke is dead and Jared stays in 1816 he dare not father
the 8th duke and alter the line of descendants to his own titled
position. From there onward I turned the pages at lightning speed to see how
the author would extract Jared’s sticky boots out of his 1816 situation. The
actual wind up ending took a bit of swallowing, because although I read it
three times I couldn’t see how the 13th duke could become the 7th
duke. That part of it defied logic of family genealogy so I gave up trying to
solve the outcome. The rest of the novel is a thrilling read and the author was
spot on with historical titbits except for Napoleon Bonaparte, who wasn’t sent into
exile on the Island of St Helena twice. His first defeat and capture ended with
imprisoned on the Island of Elba. His second imprisonment was on St Helena. I
expect a lot of readers won’t know or won’t care about that silly mistake. It
is though as a result of bad research and a three star rating is my verdict for
otherwise an exciting novel.
