The Duke Who Knew Too Much blends Regency romance, mystery and kink–a formula that I expect will intrigue a lot of readers (especially those looking for more erotic historicals). There are a lot of things going on in this book–a lot– but the author weaves them all together well. The only thing that really irked me was the hero’s insistence that he’s incapable of feels, mostly because I’m sick of emotionally constipated dukes.
Anyway, the book opens with a bang, or rather a banging (almost). Debutante Emma Kent is at a ball during her first season. She’s getting some fresh air when she stumbles upon Alaric McLeod, Duke of Strathaven, aka The Devil Duke, about to ravish a woman. Emma thinks she about to witness a rape and she intervenes to save the woman. What she doesn’t know is that the ravishee is Alaric’s lover and they are engaging in a little kinky roleplay.
Later that night said lover drinks some of the liquor set out for Alaric and dies–a poisoning intended for him. When Emma hears of the incident she assumes that Alaric is the murderer and tells the magistrate what she saw at the ball.
So I bet you’re wondering how the hell Emma and Alaric wind up together, right? I mean, she’s accused him of attempted rape and murder. Well, Alaric does the sensible thing to prove to Emma that he’s innocent. He has a reasonable conversation with her regarding sexual roleplaying and consent.
HAHAHAHA. KIDDING.
He kidnaps her, takes her to a brothel, they watch some kinky shenanigans through a peephole, and Emma gets all hot and bothered. Emma admits she was wrong to the magistrates, but someone is still out to kill Alaric and shoots him.
Now Emma’s brother, Ambrose, and Alaric’s estranged brother, William, co-own a detective agency. They are determined to help Alaric, and so is Emma because 1. Alaric gives her pants feelings 2. she feels real bad about accusing him of rape and 3. she really wants to be a detective.
So Alaric and Emma dash off on a mission to figure out who is trying to kill him all while dancing around their attraction to each other. Alaric wants Emma but HE HAS NO FEELS so he knows he can never love her. Why does he have no feels? Because his ex wife was really mean to him and he had a rough childhood.
At one point he explains to Emma how he can never feel love again and then asks her to accompany him to his secret brooding cave, and for a terrible second I thought he was going to reveal to her that he was Batman.
Spoiler alert: He’s not Batman.
I guess that was the only thing that bothered me about this book, and honestly it wasn’t that Alaric wasn’t an interesting or fully fleshed-out character. I’m just tired of reading about heroes (especially dukes for some reason) who have some past pain that makes them think they can’t ever have a relationship again. A lot of people have shitty childhoods or bad former relationships, they don’t all wander around the moors brooding and screaming “Cathy!” while pulling at their hair. For one thing there aren’t enough moors for that, and for another you can be an engaging and interesting hero without being emotionally broken in some way. Maybe I resent the implication that having bad past relationships makes one incapable of having good futures ones (or believing that one can).
Anyway, I bet a lot of you are like, “Hey, Elyse, that’s great but can you elaborate on the kinky sex now?”
Of course.
The Duke Who Knew Too Much is lightly kinky, in line with Wicked Intentions by Elizabeth Hoyt. There’s some roleplaying, voyeurism and light dominance/submission. Even though Emma is a virgin, the sexual dynamic between her and Alaric works well. This is not Fifty Shades of Grey. Alaric doesn’t need to tenderly take Emma’s virginity before they can “fuck hard.” She’s also no doe-eyed innocent staring blankly at him while he thinks about dom jeans and putting ginger in her butt (there is no ginger nor butt-play in this book). Both partners are aware of what’s going on and consent, enthusiastically, to all of it. Emma fully embraces that this is the type of relationship she’s looking for even though she hasn’t had any other sexual partners.
One minor complaint–the characters use the word frig instead of fuck. Five seconds with Google told me that this was historically accurate but it sounded weird in my head as I read it.
So when they aren’t frigging, Emma and Alaric are hunting down a killer. I thought that the mystery element was handled well. Emma routinely gets information from other women by building trust and displaying kindness, information that none of her male cohorts are able to extract. She easily proves herself to be equal to the dude detectives who want to protect her. There are two stories here: the love story between Emma and Alaric, and the story of Emma becoming a detective and winning the respect of her peers. In many ways I liked the latter best. Also I was actually surprised when I found out who the bad guy was and that doesn’t happen very often (not because I’m super smart; I just read a lot of mysteries).
There’s a lot happening in this book–there’s romance, mystery, a sexual awakening, the story of two estranged brothers reuniting, and a sadness cave. It’s a lot to pack into a single romance but I think the story made it work. I appreciated that the sex in the story was a little more adventurous that I typically find in Regencies and I liked the mystery element immensely. In some ways I was disappointed that Alaric wasn’t actually Batman, although I’m sure that would be some serious copyright infringement. His brooding was irritating, but I fully admit to being a little overwhelmed by all the emotionally damaged dukes out there. Maybe these guys should form a support group.
The scene: the community room at a local library.
“My name is Alaric and I cannot love.”
“My name is Johnathan, and I cannot love either.”
Then all of them just sit in a circle, silently staring at each other moodily, and sipping shitty coffee.
Maybe the support group isn’t a great plan.
Anyway, readers looking for a good historical mystery/romance or a historical with a little more kink will enjoy The Duke Who Knew Too Much. This is also the first book in a series–I know many of your credit cards just winced a little.
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Haha! I had the same general frustrations with the book, but I still enjoyed it, for the most part. I agree with the rating. My own pet peeve was that (SPOILERS) I was hoping / expecting more sexy game time, which doesn’t happen. I think there’s the kiss behind the peephole and some light tying up with silk or something, and that’s it.
I did enjoy that the heroine wanted a career as a detective.
OMG I just read this whole series in one big gulp! And while it was a little formulaic, I enjoyed all of them so much!
I think I would be a lot less aggrieved about emotionally constipated dukes if it didn’t always come with some half-arsed “waaah, my childhood, other women” excuse. A lot of people have crappy experiences with exes of any gender, and bad childhoods, and I would argue that MOST rarely come out of it dramatically stating how they can never love again because they are cold as ice, ICE I SAY.
I would respond a lot better to a book that had an emotionally constipated duke from all the toxic masculinity being thrown around. Give me someone who is emotionally screwed up because they have been taught emotions aren’t for guys to feel or some such, and have them honestly work to overcome that inner prejudice instead of being magically healed by the love of some virginal waif. I love me some historical romances, but I am SO bored of the icy, squinty, cravat-y heroes who are thawed only by the persistence of some Manic Pixie Dream Girl (because of course ONLY SHE is a truly caring person when all those Other Women just use him for money and sex) and don’t actually undergo any character arcs whatsoever.
I quite enjoyed this series, even if it was a bit formulaic and not a little implausible. But it was fun.
“they don’t all wander around the moors brooding and screaming “Cathy!” while pulling at their hair.” Had me gasping with laughter. Love it.
BTW, in England the word “frig” is used as a mild expletive these days … as in “what the friggin’ hell?) But it was used to more to mean “masturbate” rather than a full blown “fuck”!
The “Cathy” line had me in stitches. Hilarious review. We are still pretty much trapped in our house with deep snow/cute layer of ice and so I am off to push the One-Click Buy button.
“you can be an engaging and interesting hero without being emotionally broken in some way.” YES. Plus, frankly, I don’t want to dream of meeting a love someday who is all broken. I am not Florence Nightingale. I am not Mommy. I am not a girl scout. I do not want to bind your warrior wounds. And if my vag were magical, don’t you think I would have a god given duty to use it to heal ALL THE BROKEN PEOPLE instead of just one?
Ok, I’m fine with a bit broken, who isn’t? But when humans are as broken as the guys in many novels are, they are often VERY BAD CHOICES as partners because not fully adult or able to love. Really broken people often wind up with other really broken people. Broken hero, please patch yourself. Then maybe look me up.
Can I just say Rhode Red gets the gold star for pointing out that a truly magical vagina should be shared with the world
Can I just say Rhode Red gets the gold star for pointing out that a truly magical vagina should be shared with the world; to do anything less is to doom all those broken heroes to lives of not so quiet desperation. Or maybe one only has an obligation to dukes, anyone lower on the social scale has to heal himself
Love the review!
I’m also getting tired of really flimsy excuses to not be able to have a relationship. I know it’s an easy way to create conflict…or whatever…but sometimes I just want to roll my eyes.
I’m also uneasy at the idea of the false rape aspect of this?
Its not just males in romancelandia that are afflicted with the wah wah I can’t love because I’ve been hurt. Ive stopped reading a lot of contemporaries because there is someone (male or more particularly females in contemporaries) that can’t see a counselor, or do something sensitible and build a bridge and get the f!#k over it. Compared to a lot of books I’ve read recently I thought Alaric grew pretty reasonably.
I was not concerned about the false rape stuff. A woman saw a scene she didn’t understand. Based on the time period this is reasonable. Another woman didn’t want her affair exposed. This is also a motivation that is easy to understand given the time period. It happens, and I’m also getting sick of whitewashing in fiction stuff that happens in real life. Not every fictitious book needs to teach us a lesson.
This may be the best book review I have ever read! I’m not sure I’ll pick up the book, but I thoroughly enjoyed the review! Thanks for the chuckles!
A regency with a sadness cave and unexpected Batman reveal? Now that’s a book I would read… Someone please get on that. Maybe they could do the bat-signal with a big ass bon fire? The possibilities are all there
Your reviews are terrible for my intentions to buy nothing in January! And I say frigging all. The. Time. It’s my favourite swear.
Frig or frigging was on the list of words we weren’t allowed to use when my former employer instituted a “no bad language on conference calls” rule years ago. There must have been a Brit or historical reader in H.R.
I’ve added this book to my already creaking Wish List. The sadness cave and the mystery are enticing, but there are interest points deducted for yet another Duke who can’t love. Elyse, thanks once again for another witty review and a fun coffee break for me!
There is a song that was favoured by the rugby players I knew as a teenager that included the line ‘frigging in the rigging’. Lots of innuendo, do not look up at work 😉
I am always particularly puzzled by the cold as ice/I can’t love trope in Regency or Georgian romances. Those people wrote a lot of awfully sentimental books, poems, letters, etc – men to men, women to women, women to men, men to women – and these I Can’t Feel aristocrats in fiction just don’t fit in at all.
The detective angle sounds interesting, though.
I’ve enjoyed all of the Grace Callaway books that I’ve read, including this one. That said, I think I preferred her first series “Mayhem in Mayfair” to the “Hearts of Enquiry” one.
Did love Emma as a heroine though, especially that she wanted to be a detective, and got to prove to her brother (and everyone else), that she was as good at it as them, if not better!
Chacha1, I agree with you in fact I think we may be less apt to express emotion than any time in history. Old letters between friends and family members and books written before WWII seem to drip with sentiment compared to more modern stuff.
Maybe it just a change the language used though.
Possibly just a language change. I’m sure there is some academic work on the subject, because I really think it’s cultural and I’m not sure where it started. We (literate humans) went from readily and freely expressing a broad spectrum of affection to this emotionally constipated state where saying “I love you” to a friend – or hearing it from a friend – makes us profoundly uncomfortable. (Unless of course we are drunk, a la “I love you, man!”) Hell, my parents have trouble saying it to their children. They grew up before TV so I can’t blame it on that.
Of course, we (as a society, specifically Americans) can’t/don’t talk about money much either, except to express envy or disapproval.
Anyway, it’s my personal take that the Scarred By Love/Betrayal and Will Never Love Again trope in Regency/Georgian romances is anachronistic. Those folks were both much more demonstrative than we are, and much less “one and only.” People died in droves, after all, often at young ages; moving on from a relationship that failed was the normal and healthy thing to do. Especially on the part of a male aristocrat. I always think it would be much more realistic from him to say “Well, that didn’t work. Next!”
I love it
Love the review.
@Elyse:
LOL at the support group for emotionally constipated dukes. I think from reviews I’ve read that this seris by Jess Michaels might be the one you’re looking for. A review I read for the first book describes the relations between the club members as Bromance. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0753GB5X2?ref_=dbs_s_ks_series_rwt