The Duke I Once Knew by Olivia Drake
Series: Unlikely Duchesses, book 1
Genre: historical/regency romance
Publisher: St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Publication Date: December 31, 2018
Rating: ★★★★✰
Abigail Linton fell in love and got her heart utterly broken at a very young age. Since then she has devoted all her time to taking care of her parents and hew nieces and nephews. With her 30th birth year approaching, she is dangerously close to becoming a spinster and that cannot happen.
She decided to change her own life and takes up the job of a governess of the sister of the Duke of Rothwell who just so happens to be the man who scorned her.
But she can manage because he’s never home so she’ll never have to see his face again.Then he arrives unexpectedly and everything falls to chaos.
Can Max and Abigail reconcile and move forward from a painful past? Or was their love doomed from the start.
I think I am lowkey in love.
Abigail was an easy character to like. Her character might come off as submissive or naive but I actually thought she was pretty strong and a genuinely good person. I love that she knew how to stand up for herself and then see it through. Whatever she did it was out of the goodness of her heart not because she gave absolute permission to use her. I just adore her.
I didn’t really like Max as much as I wanted to. I think I wanted to see more of his love, his desperation and hie yearning for Abigail. He was pretty amazing and I do love a broody, jilted hero but I know it could have been so much more.
This story was really fresh and I didn’t know historical second chance romances could be so delicious. I am still getting schooled and this story was just the perfect addiction to my new found love for Historical Romances.
4 Stars!
~Sonal
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Synopsis:
First love is always the sweetest.
For years, Abigail Linton devoted herself to caring for her aging parents and the children of her siblings. Now, eager to make her own life, she takes a position as governess on the neighboring estate. It shouldn’t matter that her absentee employer is Maxwell Bryce, the Duke of Rothwell, the infamous rake who once broke her youthful heart. Surely he’s forgotten her, for he hasn’t set foot on his estate for fifteen years. At least, that is, until he arrives unexpectedly.
Max is incensed to meet his sister’s new governess. But why does Abby appear just as displeased to see him when it was she who’d rejected him all those years ago? Why is he so drawn to the independent spinster she has become? And why is there a sparkle in her beautiful blue eyes that suggests they might have a second chance at love?