C-
Genre: Historical: European, Romance
Theme: Enemies to Lovers, Epistolary
Archetype: Diverse Protagonists
Yet again, I have picked up a book because of its cover. I feel zero shame for this shallowness on my part. Okay, sometimes it backfires on me, but this time it worked out, kind of. Although I’ve landed on a C- here, depending on your answers to the questions I pose in this review, you might land in DNF territory, or as high as a B. Very much a case of ‘your mileage may vary’ depending on your personal views.
Eleanor is a compositor, the best in the business. She, along with her two friends, puts individual letters in the right order so that ultimately books and newspapers can be printed. Peter (a duke, of course) has invested in a machine that can do the same job at a fraction of the cost that it takes to employ a large team of compositors. He has a warehouse full of the machines and prepares to sell them to publishers and newspapers in London.
When Eleanor and Peter first meet by chance at the zoo, Peter hides that he is a duke. He implies that he’s a civil servant. There is some lovely chemistry, but that chemistry is a ticking time bomb because it’s only a matter of time until Eleanor realises he’s a duke. They meet again at a few society events because Eleanor (as part of a publishing deal) is serving as an author’s (Lady Wharton’s) companion. When Eleanor realises that he’s a duke, she’s hurt. When she realises that he is the duke that is about to put an entire group of people out of work, she is incensed.
While this is happening, Eleanor’s anonymous pen pal (Peter’s sister) has had surgery on her eyes and so Peter (known as ‘the captain’ to Eleanor) reads his sister her mail and includes notes of his own to Eleanor (aka Booklover). They strike up a deep and sincere friendship.
Do you see the potential for mess here?
There are three questions that any prospective reader needs to ask themselves when deciding if this book is for them.
First: ‘Can I forgive Peter for his multiple lies?’ If you can (and I did, with some difficulty) then it’s possible to enjoy this book.
I’m going to hide why I had difficulty behind a spoiler because it happens late in the book.
Despite figuring out that ‘booklover’ and ‘Eleanor’ are the same person at about the midway point of the story, Peter only reveals that he is the ‘captain’ at the very very end of the book. If this had happened to me personally, I would be enraged. Eleanor maintains that he did the right thing keeping it a secret, but I couldn’t get on board with that decision. This was one of the factors that lowered my overall opinion because the feeling I was left with when I finished reading was, ‘not cool, bro’.
BUT most of what came before the end was genuinely interesting to me for a variety of reasons. I enjoyed Eleanor, and I wanted to spend more time with her.
Second: ‘How important is prompt, fair, and just treatment of the working class?’
When there is sudden mass unemployment and people are demonstrating, Peter takes no responsibility and repeatedly says that it is their responsibility to retrain. Eleanor loses her shit with him (quite rightly) and for a time they are bitter enemies. Why on earth did I keep reading at this point? Because I was sure that he would listen to Eleanor and actually use his privilege for something good. I clung to that hope desperately. But did he?
It takes Peter ages (80% of the book) to use his influence to get the newly unemployed decent severance packages and opportunities to retrain. He saw how deeply his invention impacted innocent people and he took way too long to act. That I struggled with a lot.
Third: ‘Could you see your way to falling in love with the person that rendered you not only unemployed but unemployable, with your entire career over, as the field no longer exists?’
Peter tries to restart his friendship with Eleanor after she loses her job. Eleanor is allegedly gracious in defeat, according to her, and so they become, in their words, ‘friendly’.
But I struggled to get on board with this. I’ve been let go once and I still hold a huge amount of anger for the circumstances of me losing that job as it was unjust and hurtful. Losing a job and a livelihood are traumatic experiences. I would never, not once in a million years, be friends with the person who ended my career, nevermind fall in love with them. But perhaps that’s a me thing. I’m not proud to admit that I had to push down my moral outrage to get to the end of the book.
Despite my frustrations, I still devoured this book in a couple days because it is an original premise with interesting characters. If you can answer all three of the questions I put forward in the affirmative, then you’ll enjoy The Duke’s Got Mail. I wasn’t able to answer all the questions in the affirmative and I still landed on a C- for this book which to me means a book that is readable and pleasant but not going to set my world on fire or keep me up past a sensible bedtime. It may have been that I was so looking forward to their HEA that I just closed my eyes to the clear obstacles to it. That is, in part, due to the writing, which I found engaging; due to Eleanor, who I enjoyed for the most part, and due to my own headspace where I NEEDED a HEA. For some of the Bitchery, I think this book might enrage them and cause them to flip tables. For others in the Bitchery, perhaps in a similar position to me, they’ll find it a pleasant way to pass the time.
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Yeah, any The Shop Around the Corner variation is going to be a big ol Nope for me, because secret keeping is a major trigger. The only one that has ever worked for me is the Undertaking of Hart and Mercy and I think a huge part of that is that it jettisons the whole “he can destroy her life” but.
(Ironically, KJ Charles loves her a shifty lying MC, and for the most part it works usually bc the other MC “knows” the character is a shifty liar (if not usually about what) and is acting accordingly.)
Thank you Lara for the thoughtful review! I’m curious about the book now. But this looks like a case of dukes inflation to me. Why does the hero need to be a duke? Could he not be an industrialist/capitalist? Would a duke really have the training to invent an innovating machine? That’s annoying to me
@Omphale, agreed. I think a reason why the KJ Charles shifty lying liar also works well is because the liar is almost always revealed early enough (roughly 50-60% of the way through the book), so the two ding dongs can really ACTUALLY get past the lying and whatnot. She lets the plot and characters really breathe, and I love it.
@Lap
I mean, any Duke who WANTED the relevant training could certainly get it.
I’m with Omphale in that I’ve found these types of plots (enemies in one “real world” version of themselves and then secret pen-pal/online/masked identity where they are bffs/potential lovers with the person they are lying to and one person knows or figures out very early on and doesn’t tell) do NOT work for me. I get far to angry/anxiety/worked up up it all.
I think for me why other liars, like KJ Charles’ are more ok and these aren’t, is that generally those other liars lie and manipulate yes, but in these plots it’s the using the secret way they know the other person to insinuate themselves in further into their good graces and very deliberately keeping on lying after they find out and refusing to divulge.
Idk, there’s something, to me at least, that feels far more predatory and deeply manipulative and gaslighting (when the one being lied to starts to question things and the liar always makes them doubt themselves to keep the deceit going) to me about that? Like if they are willing to keep something so fundamental a secret for so long, what else are they going to hide?
@Omphale: I hate You’ve Got Mail and all its iterations with a passion. He LIED to her and she was ok with it. It’s such a major power imbalance that I don’t see how any healthy relationship can result from it. There’s always going to be the question of what else is he hiding? And it seems like it’s always the MMC, not the FMC who’s doing it.
The whole “duke” question is so fascinating to me. I know that books with “duke” in the title sell better than say ‘viscount’ or ‘rando baron’ or whatever, because it’s an understood shorthand for wealth, power, a certain degree of social status and protection, etc. It’s all part of the set dressing and communal world we understand as ‘historical romance’ especially set in the Regency or adjacent time periods – what Melody Carlisle at Heaving Bosoms calls “Englandtimes.” It is interesting that characters whose lives and livelihood aren’t necessarily “dukish” (I made that word up and it looks silly so I love it) are given the title anyway, perhaps as a way of inviting historical readers who look for that title in particular. It’s something folks have been talking about for a long time, too – Sandy at AAR wrote in 2010, “I like dukes when authors make me actually believe they are dukes.”
As someone who’s been laid off 5 times, always found another job, but never forgave the corporate bullshit the led to the layoffs, no, would not consider any of those corporate bullshitters to be an appropriate love connection.
And I realize many of the so-called historical romances coming out now are extremely anachronistic, but a lady’s companion is not also going to have time to have a job. And a person with a job would never be hired as a lady’s companion. I don’t care what nonsense they’ve come up with about a publishing deal, I don’t buy it.
Thus, this book is many times a NOPE for me, thank you for the review!
On the topic of secret identities where people are keeping secrets and it all blows up, the only time it has ever worked for me is in the supremely extra (and wonderful, and 90s crazy) manga Basara, where they find out the big secret identity thing at same time and it’s soo angsty and wonderful.
I can see that a book that explores the tension between technological advancement and the associated human cost could feel very timely. I’m looking at you AI, but the industrial revolution clearly has parallels. I don’t have any answers, so I’m just going to drop this wikipedia article on the Paige Compositor here.
I was unfairly fired, so I made my former boss the murder victim in a novel. Granted, he was 50 years older than I was and I wouldn’t have dated him under any circumstances anyway, but the concept is a stretch for me no matter how young and handsome the guy is.
@ SB Sarah
Exactly! The whole point about dukes is that there aren’t many of them. Current romance titles make it sound like you could get a box of dukes at Target.
Too bad about this book’s content. The cover art is very attractive.
I’m very picky about You’ve Got Mail/Shop around the corner take-offs; this sounds like a pass for me.
I’m more willing to accept the You’ve Got Mail/Shop Around the Corner set-up if neither of the protagonists knows the identity of the other. In that case it doesn’t strike me as truly a lie. If, however, one knows but isn’t telling, then it is a lie and is more problematic.