book review the duke and i

The Duke and I by Julia Quinn | Book Review

Posted May 27, 2021 by Jana in Adult Fiction , Book Review / 4 Comments

In the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Regency London, rules abound. From their earliest days, children of aristocrats learn how to address an earl and curtsey before a prince—while other dictates of the ton are unspoken yet universally understood. A proper duke should be imperious and aloof. A young, marriageable lady should be amiable… but not too amiable. Daphne Bridgerton has always failed at the latter. The fourth of eight siblings in her close-knit family, she has formed friendships with the most eligible young men in London. Everyone likes Daphne for her kindness and wit. But no one truly desires her. She is simply too deuced honest for that, too unwilling to play the romantic games that captivate gentlemen. Amiability is not a characteristic shared by Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings. Recently returned to England from abroad, he intends to shun both marriage and society—just as his callous father shunned Simon throughout his painful childhood. Yet an encounter with his best friend’s sister offers another option. If Daphne agrees to a fake courtship, Simon can deter the mamas who parade their daughters before him. Daphne, meanwhile, will see her prospects and her reputation soar. The plan works like a charm—at first. But amid the glittering, gossipy, cut-throat world of London’s elite, there is only one certainty: love ignores every rule...

Here’s the story of a true bookworm. I bought The Duke and I in 2013 and was so excited to read it. I kept looking at it and adding it to my seasonal TBRs and never getting to it. Apparently it took a Netflix series and all my friends talking about it to actually get me to prioritize it over everything else I’ve been reading lately. Oh well! I finally got to it, and that’s all the counts! For the most part, I really enjoyed this book. Except for one scene. As always, my main points are bolded.

1. I adore the Bridgerton family, and they were my favorite part of this book. I think this is the first book series I’ve read that has such strong family bonds (no, I did not read the Harry Potter books so I don’t know of these Weasleys everyone mentions when book families are discussed). Their sibling relationships are so warm and sweet. Daphne’s brothers are extremely protective, and I found it to be really heartwarming! Growing up, I always wanted an older brother to look out for me. I loved their meddling mother, Violet. She is a queen and runs that family like a well-oiled machine. I’m so, so excited that each sibling (and their names are alphabetical from oldest to youngest! I love it!) gets their own story, because I already feel so attached to some of these characters. And I seriously can’t wait to see what Violet does next.

2. I have a feeling this series is going to be very character-driven, which we all know is my favorite. I never ever get attached to, much less remember, secondary characters from historical or contemporary romance series. Maybe someone will feel familiar or I’ll recognize the name, but I can’t think of anyone noteworthy enough in one book that I remembered them later on when they became the hero/heroine of their own story.

3. I was not expecting the humor I got with The Duke and I , so that was a very pleasant surprise. It reads like a romantic comedy, with banter and disagreements between the love interests as well as Daphne and her siblings. I have been living for romantic comedies these days (well, this entire past 15 months really), and was delighted to discover I can switch things up from contemporary to historical and still get my fix.

4. Lady Whistledown’s gossip column is amazing. Each chapter begins with an excerpt from the latest issue of this anonymous woman’s musings and information about noteworthy members of society, and I practically giggled with each one. The sarcasm and little jokes and jabs were positively delightful. I’m assuming she remains a staple across the entire series, and I really want more information on who she is. What a fun mystery!

5. Simon and Daphne are very cute together, and I fell in love with them quickly They enter a fake dating agreement, which we all know is my favorite romance trope, but catch real feelings along the way. They have so much chemistry and their banter is wonderful. I loved their flirtations and discussions. However, they both have horrible communication skills. Miscommunication or lack of communication is a very common trope in the romance genre, and I never enjoy it because it requires too much of my own energy to push through it. I feel like if the author had allowed them to communicate properly and build trust and understanding, their relationship would have been much healthier and happier for the both of them. But then…

6. The author chose to write a scene that I really wish she had not chosen to write. What happens in this scene is rape, and it’s wrong no matter how you look at it . When a person rescinds their consent, no matter when it happens, anything further is rape. Daphne takes advantage of Simon during sex while he’s drunk, and does not allow him to stop participating when he clearly and emphatically wants to. His panic is real, and his pain and anguish is heartbreaking. The resolution and recovery seemed way too easy and unrealistic for such a blatant act of betrayal on Daphne’s part. I so wish their story had been written differently.

7. Julia Quinn’s writing is wonderful. I loved the dialogue, so many of the characters, and the humor. The text flows so freely and naturally and it’s honestly a joy to read.

I cannot wait to move on to the second book in the Bridgertons series, The Viscount Who Loved Me , for Anthony’s love story! Anthony is the oldest Bridgerton sibling, and I really love what I’ve seen of him so far (even though he’s got some anger issues and could loosen up a little). I’m excited to get to know him better and see what falling in love does to him.

Bridgertons Series
By Julia Quinn

4 responses to “ The Duke and I by Julia Quinn | Book Review ”

I enjoyed this series–I’m waiting for the last book to be available at the library.

I haven’t read this series yet but I loved the Netflix adaptation! Can’t wait to see how the book series is for myself! And I love the Bridgerton family dynamics the most… based on the Netflix show of course 😅 Hasini @ Bibliosini recently posted… Sunday Sum-Up #16: Stormy Days and a Downtown-esque Whodunnit

I’m forcing myself to read the first 4 books before watching the Netflix show because I don’t want to be spoiled on who Lady Whistledown is! I’ll be starting the third book sometimes this week!

I have also had this book on my shelf for years and every now and then it was recommended to me as well. Even though it’s not my reading preference at all. I’ve watched the first episode of the hit series and then read read The Duke and I within a day. Loved it!

Glad you also enjoyed it. Sorry that disturbing scene upset you so much. Not an easy one to digest, no.

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The Duke & I by Julia Quinn | Book Review

October 24, 2013 - Updated February 9, 2021 // 20 Comments

Updated for 2021: I wrote this book review for The Duke & I in 2013 and, after Bridgerton’s popularity, this post has been revived from the dead and getting a lot of traffic and it seems y’all have A LOT of questions about the sex in the show vs the books so I’m going to add some things at the end to my review of The Duke and I to include book vs show comparison (head to the very bottom for that).

(Seriously, you should see my google search console query requests for this post. Y’all are my people, clearly).

Check out this list of books to read if you loved Bridgerton !

The Duke and I by Julia Quinn

Published January 5, 2000 Book 1 of the Bridgerton series

The Duke & I: Plot & Summary

Young Daphne Bridgerton is on her way to becoming an old spinster in her high society circles because she’s not yet married. Her mother is hellbent on finding her a husband but she doesn’t fancy the few suitors she’s had.

Simon Bassett, a Duke and an old friend of Daphne’s brother, comes to town and is instantly fawned over by all the society mothers and their daughters.

Both Daphne and Simon are jaded with the process and come up with a plan that benefits them both — to get into a faux-courtship. It’s a win-win for both of them so Simon can hopefully get a breather from the moms wanting him to marry their daughters and will make Daphne more desirable to the men because the Duke is pursuing her and she’ll have more suitors to choose from.

As the two get to know each other, Daphne may not be faking her feelings towards the handsome Duke, even though he’s made his intentions clear, but wants to try to convince him that perhaps they really are the real deal.

You May Also Like : Upcoming Book To Movie Adaptations To Enjoy

My review/thoughts

My first historical romance and I LOVED IT SO MUCH. I truly am sad I’ve dismissed this genre for so long. I’m so glad I listened to so many of you to give historical romance a chance and told me to read this one first.

The Duke and I was so charming and I cannot wait to read more from the Bridgerton family. It was everything I loved about Pride & Prejudice but without the more dense language of the time.

I just love books set in the Regency era — all that prim and proper etiquette, the extravagant balls and high society, the social norms, etc. but desire is still there. LOVE the tension that ensues because of all the pent-up feelings and desires.

In my general thoughts about my foray into the romance genre , I noted that this one wasn’t as steamy as the Lucky Harbor book (my first proper romance read) and honestly I went through more than half the book before there was even so much as a kiss.

I love steamy and sexy but I LOVED the tension that just smothered you because of the more modest times in The Duke and I. I think if you are looking for a romance novel filled with super sexy times — this isn’t it.

This one is just utterly romantic complete with moments that make your heart pitter patter and swoon in the midst of the obvious tension. There’s sex, yes, but it’s not as steamy and explicit as others.

The Bridgerton family and the sibling dynamics were the kind that you read and remember forever. You feel like you are cozying up with old friends and your heart feels at home.

It kind of reminded me of slipping in with the March family from Little Women or a family like that — except some darling brothers thrown in there.

I loved the relationships within the family and how they fiercely loved each other and how they all had their unique individual characteristics that really jumped out at me — rather than just being cardboard siblings. This excites me since the rest of the series focuses on a different Bridgerton sibling!

The most delightful surprise about this novel was how FUNNY it was. I don’t often laugh out loud at books but I actually did with this one. It’s so witty and peppered with humor and it just made it such a feel good read. One of the parts that made me snort laugh unattractively is the first sex scene. OH MY GOODNESS.

Also 2021 update: I feel remiss to mention there is a sex scene, while I didn’t recognize it for what it was when I read it initially, that is rape between Daphne and Simon in which Daphne has sex with him, because she’s upset he lied about something, when he’s drunk and asleep. I remember feeling like it was wrong but I never mentioned it in my original review and didn’t call it (or see it) as it was: rape.

My Final Thought

The Duke and I by Julia Quinn was so utterly charming and romantic. If you loved Pride & Prejudice or love the Regency era, I highly recommend this if you want an absolutely fun romance novel. I think it’s a perfect foray into the historical romance genre if you are coming from a non-romance background.

There’s so much about this novel that I loved and it made me smile and laugh SO MUCH — the romance, this quirky family, the humor Julia Quinn infuses and that Regency feel.

It’s more on the side of swoony rather than steamy though there is a little bit of sex but not at all graphic. Cannot WAIT to read more from this series. I’m restraining myself so I don’t binge read it all.

Let’s Talk : Have you read this one? Heard of it? What were your overall feelings about it? Did you expect it to be so funny?? I totally didn’t. If you’ve read the series, which book is your favorite? I’m so excited to read more from this family! What other historical romances do you recommend now that I think I am in love?!

Check out the must-read romances for this year ! Or maybe you wanna delve into Christmas romances this year!

Bridgerton Show vs the book

Had to throw an update in here comparing the book and the show (which I LOVED — truly one of my most favorite adaptations ever).

The first season of the show is this book and the next season will be the second book and I love that they are doing it this way. I have, since this book, had read a couple of the others after (didn’t review them though, sorry) and so many of the other books were EVEN BETTER.

Some thoughts:

in general it was a pretty darn faithful adaptation with some changes that I’m interested in — namely a character being introduced much earlier into the story and a different fate for one. There were some other characters who weren’t in it or weren’t a big part (like the Queen). Stylistically they made it much more of a Gossip Girl-y vibe.
The biggest difference is the reveal of Lady Whistledown: we find out at the end of the season who it is (same as who it is in the books) but in the book series we don’t find out until 4 books in.
what you all wanna know: is the book as steamy/sexy as the show? No. They definitely steamed up the show and I was HERE FOR IT but you do miss out some of the more playfulness of their first time in the books when it comes to her ignorance. I also recall some of the other books having more sex than this one. I need to revisit them.
The show Duke is way hotter than Julia made me feel the book Duke was. I never pictured him SO attractive haha
I loved how they played with race in this adaptation with the alternate history twist in which there is now a racism free society. I don’t get how people are so mad about it (okay I do: racism). So much historical stuff y’all consume is NOT accurate…this is not the hill to die on. Sheesh.
I will be honest, when I read the book, I didn’t see that controversial sex scene for what it was: rape. I don’t think I had that much nuance and insight when I read it as I do now in the topic. They changed the scene from the book (in the book she takes advantage of him drunk and asleep) but it’s still very questionable in the show and still very much rape in my eyes because he’s trying to pull out and she won’t let him. There’s also some differences surrounding that scene because in the book Simon also threatens rape and he definitely didn’t do that in the show AND in the book Simon knew she had NO IDEA how babies were made. In the show he’s like more shocked she doesn’t know.
if you are on the fence if you should read the books or just watch the show, it’s up to you and what you like to read, but I say give them a try! I think the books are funny and smart and sexy. They are historical romances and read as such when it comes to describing the sex scenes vs the hot and perfect show version. I think they are a GREAT introduction into the genre and remain one of my favorites in the genre.

Ethan and Faith had a moment in high school but it…

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Book Review: The Duke & I — Bridgerton Series

Each Bridgerton book is centered on one of the eight siblings and their love life. The Duke & I is the first story and focuses on Daphne Bridgerton.

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Official summary.

“Can there be any greater challenge to London’s Ambitious Mamas than an unmarried duke?

—Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers, April 1813

By all accounts, Simon Basset is on the verge of proposing to his best friend’s sister, the lovely—and almost-on-the-shelf—Daphne Bridgerton. But the two of them know the truth—it’s all an elaborate plan to keep Simon free from marriage-minded society mothers. And as for Daphne, surely she will attract some worthy suitors now that it seems a duke has declared her desirable.

But as Daphne waltzes across ballroom after ballroom with Simon, it’s hard to remember that their courtship is a complete sham. Maybe it’s his devilish smile, certainly it’s the way his eyes seem to burn every time he looks at her… but somehow Daphne is falling for the dashing duke… for real! And now she must do the impossible and convince the handsome rogue that their clever little scheme deserves a slight alteration, and that nothing makes quite as much sense as falling in love… (Goodreads).”

Format & General Writing

The book is narrated in the third person and rotates between Daphne and Simon’s perspective, with an occasional reading of Lady Whistledown’s society papers.

The Duke and I by Julia Quinn Bridgerton Book Series Audiobook.

The Duke & I Book Review

I discovered the series after watching and falling in love with season 1 of Bridgerton. After binge-watching the episodes faster than I’d like to admit, I decided to learn more about the Bridgerton world and discovered the show was based on a book— The Duke & I . Of course, I read it. In all honestly, I was disappointed…which was unexpected. Typically tv or movie adaptations fall short compared to the book they’re based on, but in this scenario, Bridgerton, the Netflix series was better than Bridgerton book one.

Daphne was a great introduction to the Bridgerton family and the world of the Ton—England’s high society. In an era where women were raised to be wives and mothers, it was refreshing to see a modern author’s take on what life for a female could have been like with a progressive-minded and close-knit family. I also appreciated seeing the perspective of a woman who had decided on her own that she wants to become a wife and mother. Daphne had the wonderful example of her father respecting her mother and we learn how wonderful Lady Bridgerton is as a mother, too. Naturally, Daphne felt capable and desired to follow in her mother’s footsteps of taking on the role and raising a family of her own. I thought this was a well-executed take on the Regency era trope while resonating with many modern-day readers.

Character Development

Overall, the characters were rather bland outside of their family dynamics. There wasn’t much pizzaz between Simon and Daphne (not like the show at least). The main reason for finishing the book was because the recommendations/online buzz said that this was the worst book in the series and all of the others were significantly better. I also wanted to see how much the show departed from the original storyline.

I did appreciate the representation of a learning disability with Simon’s stutter and speech difficulties. The author didn’t write them away as he grew up. Simon, like most adults, struggle with this for their entire life and learn to cope by finding tools/ resources to make the stutter and limitation more manageable.

Overall, I would suggest skipping The Duke & I if you want to read the Bridgerton series. The other books—especially the second book, The Viscount Who Loved Me, summarize the entirety of relevant information from The Duke & I in the first few chapters. Plus, this storyline is paced to keep the reader engaged longer and the character development—both personally and the love interests as a couple, is more prominent and consistent.

Spoiler alert if you keep reading below.

My biggest turnoff with The Duke & I was the nonconsensual intimacy scene. While I understand this is a part of life and books are a way to understand as close as we can without experiencing a situation, it was poorly written and did not depict the sensitivity or seriousness of rape. I was uncomfortable reading the steamy scenes in this book, to begin with (there was no disclaimer about this on the reviews I read and I didn’t want to google too much, to give the plot away). Adding this component to the plot made me more uncomfortable. Plus, the aftermath and dealing with the non-consensual scene, wasn’t addressed by the author and was brushed off. I couldn’t help but think that because it happened to a man, it could be chalked up to a misunderstanding. If it were the other way around, and it was Daphne’s boundaries that were not respected, perhaps this would have been an entirely new story.

Instead, Simon’s boundaries, requiring space after his physical and emotional boundaries were broken, were turned around on him. Somehow in all of that Daphne was victimized and the book ended with the Bridgerteton brothers showing up at their home ready to fight Sion for Daphne being upset that he needed distance. All the while, the brothers aren’t given the truth to the situation. Daphne paints the picture that Simon is avoiding his “husbandly duties” and staying away from the home/her because he can—because he’s a man. In reality, if she were to have told her brothers that Simon retracted consent, it would have been a much different outcome. I would have rather seen her brothers—or more impactfully, her mother, Lady Bridgerton, sit Daphne down and teach her the other aspect of “husband and wife marital duties” by respecting each other in all aspects and areas of life.

But, Daphne was the star of the show despite hurting Simon and breaking his trust. She was rewarded by getting her way—being able to start a family with Simon and live out her dream of being a wife and mother. I think the end result of them starting a family could have respectfully and mutually happened, but it didn’t make sense how we get from Simon telling Daphne she broke his trust to him being 100% back to trusting her as if nothing happened because her brothers show up and he has a split second realization that they love each other, before their arrival.

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Book Review: The Duke and I by Julia Quinn

In the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Regency London, rules abound. From their earliest days, children of aristocrats learn how to address an earl and curtsey before a prince—while other dictates of the ton are unspoken yet universally understood. A proper duke should be imperious and aloof. A young, marriageable lady should be amiable… but not too amiable. Daphne Bridgerton has always failed at the latter. The fourth of eight siblings in her close-knit family, she has formed friendships with the most eligible young men in London. Everyone likes Daphne for her kindness and wit. But no one truly desires her. She is simply too honest for that, too unwilling to play the romantic games that captivate gentlemen. Amiability is not a characteristic shared by Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings. Recently returned to England from abroad, he intends to shun both marriage and society—just as his callous father shunned Simon throughout his painful childhood. Yet an encounter with his best friend’s sister offers another option. If Daphne agrees to a fake courtship, Simon can deter the mothers who parade their daughters before him. Daphne, meanwhile, will see her prospects and her reputation soar. The plan works like a charm—at first. But amid the glittering, gossipy, cut-throat world of London’s elite, there is only one certainty: love ignores every rule…

Although I haven’t watched the television show, Bridgertons is a book series that I’ve been meaning to delve into for quite some time. I love historical fiction romance stories, especially set in the early 1800s to early 1900s. I enjoy immersing myself in the cultures, values, fashions, and settings of those times. Additionally, it’s always entertaining to read a spicy scene while the characters are trying their hardest to maintain the elegant composure expected of them during those time periods. And this book did not disappoint.

Interestingly, there is a controversial sex scene in chapter 18 of this book, which further challenges some of the double standards still existing between men and women. I will not comment on it further as it is a spoiler and subjective in terms of opinion.

Overall, I found The Duke and I to be just what I expected. It is not Jane Austen levels of romantic perfection, but it still a very enjoyable story. I look forward to reading the rest of the series!

This beautiful edition of The Duke and I came from Once Upon a Book Club . I purchased the set because I thought it was so charming and dainty.

Have you read the Bridgerton series or watched the television show?

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October 2023 Reading Wrap-Up

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Book 1 in the bridgerton series.

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Can there be any greater challenge to London’s Ambitious Mamas than an unmarried duke? Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers, April 1813

By all accounts, Simon Basset is on the verge of proposing to his best friend’s sister, the lovely—and almost-on-the-shelf— Daphne Bridgerton . But the two of them know the truth—it’s all an elaborate plan to keep Simon free from marriage-minded society mothers. And as for Daphne, surely she will attract some worthy suitors now that it seems a duke has declared her desirable.

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Phoebe Dynevor as Daphne Bridgerton. photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix

Portrayed by: Phoebe Dynevor

Phoebe Dynevor. photo: Phoebe Dynevor Instagram

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Phoebe Dynevor appears in Bridgerton , seasons 1 and 2

Simon Basset

Duke of hastings.

Regé-Jean Page as Simon Basset. photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix

Portrayed by: Regé-Jean Page

Regé-Jean Page. photo: Irvin Rivera

Regé-Jean Page appears in Bridgerton , season 1

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Quinn-tessential Quote

"Men are sheep. Where one goes the rest will soon follow"

Inside the Story: JQ’s Author Notes

Of all my books, The Duke and I was the most difficult to title. I have a personal fondness for Daphne's Bad Heir Day , but How to Bear an Heir was also a contender for the "Most Fun Titles You Never Used" award.
Eagle-eyed readers will spot a few of my favorite past characters in the pages of The Duke and I . The heroes from both Everything and the Moon and How to Marry a Marquis are mentioned in Chapter One (although neither actually says anything). And of course Lady Danbury is right there in the thick of it. She first appeared as a major secondary character in How to Marry a Marquis , and I liked her so much I thought it would be fun to bring her back. Little did I know that this would be the first of many, many Lady Danbury appearances. In fact, I think she might be my very favorite character to write.
Lady Whistledown's Society Papers, which made their debut in The Duke and I , came about almost by accident. I was writing the opening scene, and I realized that I needed to impart quite a bit of expository information. I wanted the reader to know that Daphne was from a large family and that she was fourth in the birth order, with three older brothers. I couldn't very well have Daphne and her mother mention all this in conversation, as this wasn't news to either one of them, so I came up with the idea of putting it all down in a gossip column. It turned out to be the most happy accident in my entire career!
Many people have asked me where I got the idea to have Simon stutter, and the truth is, I'm not sure. I have never stuttered, nor has anyone in my family. I did a fair amount of research into stuttering, but there really wasn't much to go on with regards to the regency era, so in the end I tried to simply imagine how frustrating it must have felt for someone as intelligent as Simon to be unable to communicate with as much facility as his peers.
Finally, while I was writing this book, someone very close to me was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and so I've decided to donate a portion of my royalties to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Scientists are getting closer to a cure every day, and in my book, that will be the greatest happy ending of all.

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Bridgerton family tree, when jq first created lady whistledown, a father-daughter story, i take tea with violet bridgerton, and other mugs, bridgertons comics.

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Awards & Achievements

Int’l #1 Bestseller

The birth of Simon Arthur Henry Fitzranulph Basset, Earl Clyvedon, was met with great celebration. Church bells rang for hours, champagne flowed freely through the gargantuan castle that the newborn would call home, and the entire village of Clyvedon quit work to partake of the feast and holiday ordered by the young earl’s father.

This, the baker said to the blacksmith, was no ordinary baby.

For Simon Arthur Henry Fitzranulph Basset would not spend his life as Earl Clyvedon. That was a mere courtesy title. Simon Arthur Henry Fitzranulph Basset — the baby who possessed more names than any baby could possibly need — was the heir to one of England’s oldest and richest dukedoms. And his father, the ninth Duke of Hastings, had waited years for this moment.

As he stood in the hall outside his wife’s confinement room, cradling the squalling infant, the duke’s heart burst with pride. Already several years past forty, he had watched his cronies — dukes and earls, all — beget heir after heir. Some had had to suffer through a few daughters before siring a precious son, but in the end, they’d all been assured that their lines would continue, that their blood would pass forward into the next generation of England’s elite.

But not the Duke of Hastings. Though his wife had managed to conceive five times in the fifteen years of their marriage, only twice had she carried to full term, and both of those infants had been stillborn. After the fifth pregnancy, which had ended with a bloody miscarriage in the fifth month, surgeons and physicians alike had warned their graces that they absolutely must not make another attempt to have a child. The duchess’s very life was in danger. She was too frail, too weak, and perhaps, they said gently, too old. The duke was simply going to have to reconcile himself to the fact that the dukedom would pass out of the Basset family.

But the duchess, God bless her, knew her role in life, and after a six-month recuperative period, she opened the connecting door between their bedrooms, and the duke once again commenced his quest for a son.

Five months later, the duchess informed the duke that she had conceived. The duke’s immediate elation was tempered by his grim determination that nothing —absolutely nothing— would cause this pregnancy to go awry. The duchess was confined to her bed the minute it was realized that she’d missed her monthly courses. A physician was brought in to visit her every day, and halfway through the pregnancy, the duke located the most respected doctor in London and paid him a king’s ransom to temporarily abandon his practice and take up residence at Clyvedon Castle.

The duke was taking no chances this time. He would have a son, and the dukedom would remain in Basset hands.

The duchess experienced pains a month early, and pillows were tucked under her hips. Gravity might keep the babe inside, Dr. Stubbs explained. The duke thought that a sound argument, and, when the doctor had retired for the evening, placed yet another pillow under his wife, raising her to a twenty degree angle. She remained that way for a month.

And then finally, the moment of truth arrived. The household prayed for the duke, who so wanted an heir, and a few remembered to pray for the duchess, who had grown thin and frail even as her belly had grown round and wide. They tried not to be too hopeful — after all, the duchess had already delivered and buried two babes. And even if she did manage to safely deliver a child, it could be, well, a girl.

As the duchess’s screams grew louder and more frequent, the duke shoved his way into her chamber, ignoring the protests of the doctor, the midwife, and her grace’s maid. It was a bloody mess, but the duke was determined to be present when the babe’s sex was revealed. The head appeared, then the shoulders.

All leaned forward to watch as the duchess strained and pushed, and then…

And then the duke knew that there was a God, and He smiled on the Bassets. He allowed the midwife one minute to clean the babe, then took the little boy into his arms and marched into the great hall to show him off.

“I have a son!” he boomed. “A perfect little son!”

And while the servants cheered and wept with relief, the duke looked down upon the tiny little earl and said, “You are perfect. You are a Basset. You are mine.”

The duke wanted to take the boy outside to prove to everyone that he had finally sired a healthy male child, but there was a slight chill in the early April air, so he allowed the midwife to take the babe back to his mother. The duke mounted one of his prized geldings and rode off to celebrate, shouting his good fortune to all who would listen.

Meanwhile, the duchess, who had been bleeding steadily since the birth, slipped into unconsciousness, and then finally just slipped away.

The duke mourned for his wife. He truly did. He hadn’t loved her, of course, and she hadn’t loved him, but they’d been friends in an oddly distant sort of way. The duke hadn’t expected anything more from marriage than a son and an heir, and in that regard, his wife had proven herself an exemplary spouse. He arranged for fresh flowers to be laid at the base of her funereal monument every week, no matter the season, and her portrait was moved from the sitting room to the hall, in a position of great honor over the staircase.

And then the duke got on to the business of raising his son.

There wasn’t much he could do in the first year, of course. The babe was too young for lectures on land management and responsibility, so the duke left Simon in the care of his nurse and went to London, where his life continued much as it had before he’d been blessed by parenthood, except that he forced everyone —even the king— to gaze upon the miniature he’d had painted of his son shortly after his birth.

The duke visited Clyvedon from time to time, then returned for good on Simon’s second birthday, ready to take the young lad’s education in hand. A pony had been purchased, a small gun had been selected for future use at the fox hunt, and tutors were engaged in every subject known to man.

“He’s too young for all that!” Nurse Hopkins exclaimed.

“Nonsense,” Hastings replied condescendingly. “Clearly, I don’t expect him to master any of this anytime soon, but it is never too early to begin a duke’s education.”

“He’s not a duke,” Nurse muttered.

“He will be.” Hastings turned his back on her and crouched down beside his son, who was building an asymmetrical castle with a set of blocks on the floor. The duke hadn’t been down to Clyvedon in several months, and was pleased with Simon’s growth. He was a sturdy, healthy young boy, with glossy brown hair and clear blue eyes.

“What are you building there, son?”

Simon smiled and pointed.

Hastings looked up at Nurse Hopkins. “Doesn’t he speak?”

She shook her head. “Not yet, your grace.”

The duke frowned. “He’s two. Shouldn’t he be speaking?”

“Some children take longer than others, your grace. He’s clearly a bright young boy.”

“Of course he’s bright. He’s a Basset.”

Nurse nodded. She always nodded when the duke talked about the superiority of the Basset blood. “Maybe,” she suggested, “he just doesn’t have anything he wants to say.”

The duke didn’t look convinced, but he handed Simon a toy soldier, patted him on the head, and left the house to go exercise the new mare he’d purchased from Lord Worth.

Two years later, however, he wasn’t so sanguine.

“ Why isn’t he talking? ” he boomed.

“I don’t know,” Nurse answered, wringing her hands.

“What have you done to him?”

“I haven’t done anything!”

“If you’d been doing your job correctly, he ” —the duke jabbed an angry finger in Simon’s direction— “would be speaking.”

Simon, who was practicing his letters at his miniature desk, watched the exchange with interest.

“He’s four years old, God damn it,” the duke roared. “He should be able to talk.”

“He can write,” Nurse said quickly. “Five children I’ve raised, and not a one of them has taken to letters the way Master Simon has.”

“A fat lot of good writing is going to do him if he can’t talk.” Hastings turned to Simon, rage burning in his eyes. “Talk to me, damn you!”

Simon shrank back, his lower lip quivering.

“Your grace!” Nurse exclaimed. “You’re scaring the child.”

Hastings whipped around to face her. “Maybe he needs scaring. Maybe what he needs is a good dose of discipline. A good paddling might help him find his voice.”

The duke grabbed the silver-backed brush Nurse used on Simon’s hair and advanced on his son. “I’ll make you talk, you stupid little—”

“ No !”

Nurse gasped.The duke dropped the brush. It was the first time they’d ever heard Simon’s voice.

“What did you say?” the duke whispered, tears forming in his eyes.

Simon’s fists balled at his sides, and his little chin jutted out as he said, “Don’t you h-h-h-h-h-h-h—”

The duke’s face turned deathly pale. “What is he saying?”

Simon attempted the sentence again. “D-d-d-d-d-d-d—”

“My God,” the duke breathed, horrified. “He’s a moron.”

“He’s not a moron!” Nurse cried out, throwing her arms around the boy.

“D-d-d-d-d-d-d-don’t you h-h-h-h-h-h-hit” —Simon took a deep breath— “me.”

Hastings sank onto the window seat. “What have I done to deserve this? What could I have possibly done…”

“You should be giving the boy praise!” Nurse Hopkins admonished. “Four years you’ve been waiting for him to speak, and—”

“And he’s an idiot!” Hastings roared. “A goddamned, bloody little idiot!”

Simon began to cry.

“Hastings is going to go to a half-wit,” the duke moaned. “All those years of praying for an heir, and now it’s all for ruin. I should have let the title go to my cousin.” He turned back to his son, who was sniffling and wiping his eyes, trying to appear strong for his father. “I can’t even look at him,” he gasped. “I can’t even bear to look at him.”

And with that, the duke stalked out of the room. Nurse Hopkins hugged the boy close. “You’re not an idiot,” she whispered fiercely. “You’re the smartest little boy I know. And if anyone can learn to talk properly, I know it’s you.”

Simon turned into her warm embrace and sobbed.

“We’ll show him,” Nurse vowed. “He’ll eat his words if it’s the last thing I do.”

Nurse Hopkins proved true to her word. While the Duke of Hastings removed himself to London and tried to pretend he had no son, she spent every waking minute with Simon, sounding out words and syllables, praising him lavishly when he got something right, and giving him encouraging words when he didn’t.

The progress was slow, but Simon’s speech did improve. By the time he was six, “d-d-d-d-d-d-d-don’t” had turned into “d-d-don’t,” and by the time he was eight, he was managing entire sentences without faltering. He still ran into trouble when he was upset, and Nurse had to remind him often that he needed to remain calm and collected if he wanted to get the words out in one piece.

But Simon was determined, and Simon was smart, and perhaps most importantly, he was damned stubborn. He learned to take breaths before each sentence, and to think about his words before he attempted to say them. He studied the feel of his mouth when he spoke correctly, and tried to analyze what went wrong when he didn’t.

And finally, at the age of eleven, he turned to Nurse Hopkins, paused to collect his thoughts, and said, “I think it is time we went to see my father.”

Nurse looked up sharply. The duke had not laid eyes on the boy in seven years. “Are you certain?”

Simon nodded.

“Very well, then. I’ll order the carriage. We’ll leave for London on the morrow.”

The trip took much of the day, and it was late afternoon by the time their carriage rolled up to Basset House. Simon gazed at the busy London streetscape with wonder as Nurse Hopkins led him up the steps. Neither had ever visited Basset House before, and so Nurse didn’t know what to do when she reached the front door other than knock.

The door swung open within seconds, and they found themselves being looked down upon by a rather imposing butler.

“Deliveries,” he intoned, reaching to close the door, “are made in the rear.”

“Hold there!” Nurse said quickly, jamming her foot in the door. “We are not servants.”

The butler looked disdainfully at her garments.

“Well, I am, but not him.” She grabbed Simon’s arm and yanked him forward. “This is Earl Clyvedon, and you’d do well to treat him with respect.”

The butler’s mouth actually dropped open, and he blinked several times before saying, “It is my understanding that Earl Clyvedon is dead.”

“What?” Nurse screeched.

“I most certainly am not!” Simon exclaimed, with all the righteous indignation of an eleven-year-old.

The butler examined Simon, recognized immediately that he had the look of the Bassets, and ushered them in. “Why did you think I was d-dead?” Simon asked, cursing himself for misspeaking, but not surprised. He was most likely to stutter when he was angry.

“It is not for me to say,” the butler replied.

“It most certainly is,” Nurse shot back. “You can’t say something like that to a boy of his years and not explain it.”

The butler was silent for a moment, then finally said, “His grace has not mentioned you in years. The last I heard, he said he had no son. He looked quite pained as he said it, so no one pursued the conversation. We all —the servants, that is— assumed you’d passed on.”

Simon felt his jaw clench, felt his throat working wildly. “Wouldn’t he have gone into mourning?” Nurse demanded. “Did you think about that? How could you have assumed the boy was dead if his father were not in mourning?”

The butler shrugged. “His grace frequently wears black. Mourning wouldn’t have altered his costume.”

“This is an outrage,” Nurse said. “I demand you summon his grace at once.”

Simon said nothing. He was trying too hard to get his emotions under control. He had to. There was no way he’d be able to talk with his father while his blood was racing so.

The butler nodded. “He is upstairs. I’ll alert him immediately to your arrival.”

Nurse started pacing wildly, muttering under her breath and referring to his grace with every vile word in her vocabulary. Simon remained in the center of the room, his arms angry sticks at his side as he took deep breaths. You can do this, he shouted in his mind. You can do this. Nurse turned to him, saw him trying to control his temper and immediately gasped. “Yes, that’s it,” she said quickly, dropping to her knees and taking her hands in his. “Take deep breaths. And make sure to think before you speak. If you can control—”

“I see you’re still mollycoddling the boy,” came an imperious voice from the doorway.

Nurse Hopkins straightened and turned slowly around. She tried to think of something respectful to say. She tried to think of anything that would smooth over this awful situation. But when she looked at the duke, she saw Simon in him, and her rage began anew. The duke might look just like his son, but he was certainly no father to him.

“You, sir,” she spat out, “are despicable.”

“And you, madam, are fired.”

Nurse lurched back.

“No one speaks to the Duke of Hastings that way,” he roared. “No one!”

“Not even the king?” Simon taunted.

Hastings whirled around, not even noticing that his son had spoken clearly.

“You,” he said in a low voice. Simon nodded curtly. He’d managed one sentence properly, but he didn’t want to push his luck. Not when he was this upset. Normally, he could go days without a stutter, but now…

The way his father stared at him made him feel like an infant. An idiot infant.

And his tongue suddenly felt awkward and thick.

The duke smiled cruelly. “What do you have to say for yourself, boy? Eh? What do you have to say ?”

“It’s all right, Simon,” Nurse Hopkins whispered. “You can do it, sweetling.”

And somehow her encouraging tone made it all the worse. Simon had come here to prove himself to his father, and now his nurse was treating him like a baby.

“What’s the matter?” the duke taunted. “Cat got your tongue?”

Simon’s muscles clenched so hard he started to shake.

Father and son stared at each other for what felt like an eternity, until finally the duke swore and stalked toward the door. “Get him out of my sight,” he spat at Nurse Hopkins. “You can keep your job just so long as you keep him away from me.”

“Wait!”

The duke turned slowly around at the sound of Simon’s voice. “Did you say something?” he drawled.

Simon took three long breaths in through his nose, his mouth still clamped together in anger. He forced his jaw to relax and rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to remind himself of how it felt to speak properly. Finally, just as the duke was about to dismiss him again, he opened his mouth and said, “I am your son.”

Simon heard Nurse Hopkins breathe a sigh of relief, and something he’d never seen before blossomed in his father’s eyes. Pride. Not much of it, but there was something there, lurking in the depths; something that gave Simon a whisper of hope.

“I am your son,” he said again, this time a little louder, “and I am not d—”

Suddenly his throat closed up. And Simon panicked.

You can do this. You can do this .

But his throat felt tight, and his tongue felt thick, and his father’s eyes started to narrow…

“I am not d-d-d—”

“Go home,” the duke said in a low voice. “There is no place for you here.”

Simon felt the duke’s rejection in his very bones, felt a peculiar kind of pain enter his body and creep around his heart. And as hatred flooded his body and poured from his eyes, he made a solemn vow.

If he couldn’t be the son his father wanted, then by God, he’d be the exact opposite …

Chapter One

The Bridgertons are by far the most prolific family in the upper echelons of society. Such industriousness on the part of the viscountess and the late viscount is commendable, although one can find only banality in their choice of names for their children. Anthony, Benedict, Colin, Daphne, Eloise, Francesca, Gregory, and Hyacinth — orderliness is, of course, beneficial in all things, but one would think that intelligent parents would be able to keep their children straight without needing to alphabetize their names. Furthermore, the sight of the viscountess and all eight of her children in one room is enough to make one fear one is seeing double — or triple — or worse. Never has This Author seen a collection of siblings so ludicrously alike in their physical regard. Although this Author has never taken the time to record eye color, all eight possess similar bone structure and the same thick, chestnut hair. One must pity the viscountess as she seeks advantageous marriages for her brood that she did not produce a single child of more fashionable coloring. Still, there are advantages to a family of such consistent looks — there can be no doubt that all eight are of legitimate parentage. Ah, Gentle Reader, your devoted Author wishes that that were the case amid all large families… Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers, 28 June 1813

“Oooooooooohhhhhhhhhh!” Violet Bridgerton crumpled the single-page newspaper into a ball and hurled it across the elegant drawing room.

Her daughter Daphne wisely made no comment and pretended to be engrossed in her embroidery.

“Did you read what she said?” Violet demanded. “Did you?”

Daphne eyed the ball of paper, which now rested under a mahogany end table. “I didn’t have the opportunity before you, er, finished with it.”

“Read it, then,” Violet wailed, her arm slicing dramatically through the air. “Read how that woman has maligned us.”

Daphne calmly set down her embroidery and reached under the end table. She smoothed the sheet of paper out on her lap and read the paragraph about her family. Blinking, she looked up. “This isn’t so bad, Mother. In fact, it’s a veritable benediction compared to what she wrote about the Featheringtons last week.”

“How am I supposed to find you a husband while that woman is slandering your name?”

Daphne forced herself to exhale. After nearly two seasons in London, the mere mention of the word “husband” was enough to set her temples pounding. She wanted to marry, truly she did, and she wasn’t even holding out for a love match. But was it really too much to hope for a husband for whom one had at least some affection?

Thus far, four men had asked for her hand, but when Daphne had thought about living her days in their company, she just couldn’t do it. There were a number of men she thought might make reasonably good husbands, but the problem was — none of them was interested. Oh, they all liked her. Everyone liked her. Everyone thought she was funny and kind and a quick wit, and no one thought her the least bit unattractive, but at the same time, no one was dazzled by her beauty, stunned into speechlessness by her presence, or moved to write poetry in her honor.

Men, she thought with disgust, seemed interested only in those women who terrified them.

No one seemed inclined to court someone like her. They all adored her, or so they said, because she was so easy to talk to, and she always seemed to understand how a man felt. As one of the men Daphne had thought might make a reasonably good husband had said, “Deuce take it, Daff, you’re just not like regular females. You’re positively normal.”

Which she might have managed to consider a compliment if he hadn’t proceeded to wander off in search of the latest blond beauty.

Daphne looked down and noticed that her hand was clenched into a fist. Then she looked up and realized her mother was staring at her, clearly waiting for her to say something. Since she had already exhaled, Daphne cleared her throat and said, “I’m sure Lady Whistledown’s little column is not going to hurt my chances for a husband.”

“Daphne, it’s been two years!”

Daphne’s fingernails bit her palm, as she willed herself not to make a retort. She knew her mother had only her best interests at heart, she knew her mother loved her. And she loved her mother, too. In fact, until Daphne had reached marriageable age, Violet had been positively the best of mothers. She still was, when she wasn’t despairing over the fact that after Daphne she had three more daughters to marry off.

Violet pressed a delicate hand to her chest. “She cast aspersions on your parentage.”

“No,” Daphne said slowly. It was always wise to proceed with caution when contradicting her mother. “Actually, what she said was that there could be no doubt that we are all legitimate. Which is more than one can say for most large families of the ton .”

“She shouldn’t have even brought it up,” Violet sniffed.

“Mother, she’s the author of a scandal sheet. It’s her job to bring such things up.”

“She isn’t even a real person,” Violet added angrily. She planted her hands on her slim hips, then changed her mind and shook her finger in the air. “Whistledown, ha! I’ve never heard of any Whistledowns. Whoever this depraved woman is, I doubt she’s one of us. As if anyone of breeding would write such wicked lies.”

“Of course she’s one of us,” Daphne said, her brown eyes filling with amusement. “If she weren’t a member of the ton, there is no way she’d privy to the sort of news she reports. Did you think she was some sort of impostor, peeking in windows and listening at doors?”

“I don’t like your tone, Daphne Bridgerton,” Violet said, her eyes narrowing.

Daphne bit back another smile. “I don’t like your tone,” was Violet’s standard answer when one of her children was winning an argument.

But it was too much fun to tease her mother. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said, cocking her head to the side, “if Lady Whistledown was one of your friends.”

“Bite your tongue, Daphne. No friend of mine would ever stoop so low.”

“Very well,” Daphne allowed, “it’s probably not one of your friends. But I’m certain it’s someone we know.”

Violet crossed her arms. “I should like to put her out of business once and for all.”

“If you wish to put her out of business,” Daphne could not resist pointing out, “you shouldn’t support her by buying her newspaper.”

“And what good would that do?” Violet demanded. “Everyone else is reading it. My puny little embargo would do nothing except make me look ignorant when everyone else is chuckling over her latest gossip.”

That much was true, Daphne silently agreed. London was positively addicted to Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers. The mysterious newspaper had arrived on the doorstep of every member of the ton three months earlier. For two weeks it was delivered unbidden every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And then, on the third Monday, butlers across London waited in vain for the pack of paperboys who normally delivered Whistledown, only to discover that instead of free delivery, they were selling the gossip sheet for the outrageous price of five pennies a paper.

Daphne had to admire the fictitious Lady Whistledown’s savvy. By the time she started forcing people to pay for their gossip, all the ton was addicted. Everyone forked over their pennies, and somewhere some meddlesome woman was getting rich.

While Violet paced the room and huffed about this “hideous slight” against her family, Daphne looked up to make certain her mother wasn’t paying her any attention, then let her eyes drop to peruse the rest of the scandal sheet. Whistledown —as it was now called— was a curious mix of commentary, social news, scathing insult, and the occasional compliment. What set it apart from any previous society news sheets was that the author actually listed her subjects’ names in full. There was no hiding behind abbreviations such as Lord S— and Lady G—. If Lady Whistledown wanted to write about someone, she used his full name. The ton declared themselves scandalized, but they were secretly fascinated.

Today’s edition was typical Whistledown . Aside from the short piece on the Bridgertons — which was really no more than a description of the family — Lady Whistledown had recounted the events at the previous night’s ball. Daphne hadn’t attended, as it had been her younger sister’s birthday, and the Bridgertons always made a big fuss about birthdays. And with eight children, there were a lot of birthdays to celebrate.

“You’re reading that rubbish,” Violet accused. Daphne looked up, refusing to feel the least bit guilty. “She gives quite a good account of the Middlethorpe ball. Mentions who was talking to whom, what everyone was wearing—”

“And I suppose she felt the need to editorialize on that point,” Violet cut in.

Daphne smiled wickedly. “Oh, come now, Mother. You know that Mrs. Featherington has always looked dreadful in purple.”

Violet tried not to smile. Daphne could see the corners of her mouth twitching as she tried to maintain the composure she deemed appropriate for a viscountess and mother. But within two seconds, she was grinning and sitting next to her daughter on the sofa. “Let me see that,” she said, snatching up the paper. “What else happened? Did we miss anything important?”

Daphne said, “Really, Mother, with Lady Whistledown as a reporter, one needn’t actually attend any events.” She waved toward the paper. “This is almost as good as actually being there. Better, probably. I’m certain we had better food last night than they did at the ball. And give that back.” She yanked the paper back, leaving a torn corner in Violet’s hands.

“Daphne!”

Daphne affected mock righteousness. “I was reading it.”

“Well!”

“Listen to this.”

Violet leaned in.

Daphne read: “‘The rake formerly known as Earl Clyvedon has finally seen fit to grace London with his presence. Although he has not yet deigned to make an appearance at a respectable evening function, the new Duke of Hastings has been spotted several times at White’s.’ ” She paused to take a breath. ” ‘His grace has resided abroad for six years. Can it be any coincidence that he has returned only now that the old duke is dead?’ ” Daphne looked up. “My goodness, she is blunt, isn’t she? Isn’t Clyvedon one of Anthony’s friends?”

“He’s Hastings now,” Violet said automatically, “and yes, I do believe he and Anthony were friendly at Oxford. And Eton as well, I think.” Her brow scrunched and her pale blue eyes narrowed with thought. “He was something of a hellion, if my memory serves. Always at odds with his father. But reputed to be quite brilliant. Anthony said he took a first in mathematics.”

“He sounds quite interesting,” Daphne murmured.

Violet looked at her sharply. “He’s quite unsuitable for a young lady of your years is what he is.”

“Funny how my ‘years,’ as you put it, volley back and forth between being so young that I cannot even meet Anthony’s friends and being so old that you despair of my ever contracting a good marriage.”

“Daphne Bridgerton, I don’t—”

“—like my tone, I know.” Daphne grinned. “But you love me.”

Violet smiled warmly and wrapped an arm around Daphne’s shoulder. “Heaven help me, I do.”

Daphne gave her mother a quick peck on the cheek. “It’s the curse of motherhood. You’re required to love us even when we vex you.”

Violet just rolled her eyes. “I hope that someday you have children—”

“—just like me, I know.” Daphne rested her head on her mother’s shoulder. Her mother was a fussbudget, and her father had been more interested in hounds and hunting than he’d been in society affairs, but theirs had been a warm marriage, filled with love and laughter. “I could do a great deal worse than follow your example, Mother,” she murmured.

“Why Daphne,” Violet said, her eyes growing watery, “what a lovely thing to say.”

Daphne twirled a lock of her chestnut hair around her finger, and grinned, letting the sentimental moment melt into a more teasing one. “I’m happy to follow in your footsteps when it comes to marriage and children, Mother, just so long as I don’t have to have eight.”

At that exact moment, Simon Basset, the new Duke of Hastings and the erstwhile topic of the Bridgerton ladies’ conversation, was sitting at White’s. His companion was none other than Anthony Bridgerton, Daphne’s eldest brother. The two cut a striking pair, both tall and athletic, with thick dark hair. But where Anthony’s eyes were the same deep brown as his sister’s, Simon’s were icy blue, with an oddly penetrating gaze.

It was those eyes as much as anything that had earned him his reputation as a man to be reckoned with. When he stared at a person, clear and unwavering, men grew uncomfortable. Women positively shivered.

But not Anthony. The two men had known each other for years, and Anthony just laughed when Simon raised a brow and turned his icy gaze upon him. “You forget, I’ve seen you with your head being lowered into a chamberpot,” Anthony had once told him. “It’s been difficult to take you seriously ever since.”

To which Simon had replied, “Yes, but if I recall, you were the one holding me over that fragrant receptacle.”

“One of my proudest moments, to be sure. But you had your revenge the next night in the form of a dozen eels.”

Simon allowed himself a smile as he remembered both the incident and their subsequent conversation about it. Anthony was a good friend, just the sort a man would want by his side in a pinch. He’d been the first person he’d gotten in touch with upon returning to England.

“It’s damned fine to have you back, Clyvedon,” Anthony said once they’d settled in at their table at White’s. “Oh, but I suppose you’ll insist I call you Hastings now.”

“No,” Simon said rather emphatically. “Hastings will always be my father. He never answered to anything else.” He paused. “I’ll assume his title if I must, but I won’t be called by his name.”

“If you must?” Anthony’s brown eyes widened slightly. “Most men would not sound quite so resigned about the prospect of a dukedom.”

Simon raked a hand through his dark hair. He knew he was supposed to cherish his birthright and display unwavering pride in the Basset family’s illustrious history, but the truth was it all made him sick inside. He’d spent his entire life not living up to his father’s expectations; it seemed ridiculous now to try to live up to his name. “It’s a damned burden is what it is,” he finally said.

“You’d best get used to it,” Anthony said pragmatically, “because that’s what everyone will call you.”

Simon knew it was true, but he doubted if the title would ever sit well upon his shoulders.

“Well, whatever the case,” Anthony added, respecting his friend’s privacy by not delving further into what was obviously an uncomfortable topic, “I’m glad to have you back. I might finally get some peace next time I escort my sister to a ball.”

Simon leaned back, crossing his long legs at the ankles. “An intriguing remark.”

Anthony raised a brow. “One that you’re certain I’ll explain?”

“But of course.”

“I ought to let you learn for yourself, but then, I’ve never been a cruel man.”

Simon chuckled. “This coming from the man who dunked my head in a chamberpot?”

Anthony waved his hand dismissively. “I was young.”

“And now you’re a model of mature decorum and respectability?”

Anthony grinned. “Absolutely.”

“So tell me,” Simon drawled, “how, exactly, am I meant to make your existence that much more peaceful?”

“I assume you plan to take your place in society?”

“You assume incorrectly.”

“But you are planning to attend Lady Danbury’s ball this week,” Anthony said.

“Only because I am inexplicably fond of the old woman. She says what she means, and—” Simon’s eyes grew somewhat shuttered.

“And?” Anthony prompted.

Simon gave his head a little shake. “It’s nothing. Just that she was rather kind to me as a child. I spent a few school holidays at her house with Riverdale. Her nephew, you know.”

“Very well. So you have no intention of entering society. I’m impressed by your resolve. But allow me to warn you— even if you do not choose to attend the ton’s events, they will find you.”

Simon, who had chosen that moment to take a sip of his brandy, choked on the spirit at the look on Anthony’s face when he said, “they.” After a few moments of coughing and sputtering, he finally managed to say, “Who, pray tell, are ‘they?’ ”

Anthony shuddered. “Mothers.”

“Not having had one myself, I can’t say I grasp your point.”

“Society mothers, you dolt. Those dragons with daughters of marriageable age. You can run, but you’ll never manage to hide from them. And I should warn you, my own is the worst of the lot.”

“Good God. And here I thought Africa was dangerous.”

Anthony shot his friend a faintly pitying look. “They will hunt you down. And when they find you, you will find yourself trapped in conversation with a pale young lady all dressed in white who cannot converse on topics other than the weather, who received vouchers to Almacks, and hair ribbons.”

A look of amusement crossed Simon’s features. “I take it, then, that you have become something of an eligible gentleman during my time abroad?”

“Not out of any aspirations to the role on my part, I assure you. If it were up to me, I’d avoid society functions like the plague. But my sister made her bow last year, and I’m forced to escort her from time to time.”

“Daphne, you mean?”

Anthony looked up in surprise. “Did the two of you ever meet?”

“No,” Simon admitted, “but I remember her letters to you at school, and I knew she was fourth in the family, so she had to start with D, and—”

“Ah, yes,” Anthony said with a slight roll of his eyes, “the Bridgerton method of naming children. Guaranteed to make certain no one forgets who you are.” Simon laughed.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“Say, Simon,” Anthony suddenly said, leaning forward, “I’ve promised my mother I’ll have dinner at the Bridgerton House later this week with the family. Why don’t you join me?”

Simon raised a dark brow. “Didn’t you just warn me about society mothers and debutante daughters?”

Anthony laughed. “I’ll put my mother on her best behavior, and don’t worry about Daff. She’s the exception that proves the rule. You’ll like her immensely.”

Simon narrowed his eyes. Was Anthony playing matchmaker? He couldn’t tell.

As if Anthony were reading his thoughts, he laughed. “Good God, you don’t think I’m trying to pair you off with Daphne, do you?”

Simon said nothing.

“You would never suit. You’re a bit too brooding for her tastes.”

Simon thought that an odd comment, but instead chose to ask, “Has she had any offers, then?”

“A few. I’ve let her refuse them all.”

“That’s rather indulgent of you.” Anthony shrugged. “Love is probably too much to hope for in a marriage these days, but I don’t see why she shouldn’t be happy with her husband. We’ve had offers from two men old enough to be her father, one who is a bit too high in the instep for our often boisterous clan, and then this week, one who was perfectly amiable, but a rather bit dim in the head.”

“Not many brothers would allow their sister such latitude,” Simon said quietly.

Anthony just shrugged again, as if he couldn’t imagine treating his sister in any other way. “She’s been a good sister to me. It’s the least I can do.”

“Even if it means escorting her to Almacks?” Simon said wickedly.

Anthony groaned. “Even then.”

“I’d console you by pointing out that this will all be over soon, but you’ve what, three other sisters waiting in the wings?”

Anthony positively slumped in his seat. “Eloise is due out next year, and Francesca the year after that, but then I’ve a bit of a reprieve before Hyacinth comes of age.”

Simon chuckled. “I don’t envy you your responsibilities in that quarter.” But even as he said the words, he felt a strange longing, and he wondered what it would be like to be not quite so alone in this world. He had no plans to start a family of his own, but maybe if he’d had one to begin with, his life would have turned out a bit differently.

“So you’ll come for supper, then?” Anthony stood. “Informal, of course. We never take meals formally when it’s just family.”

Simon had a dozen things to do in the next few days, but before he could remind himself that he needed to get his affairs in order, he heard himself saying, “I’d be delighted.”

by Julia Quinn

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Unë dhe Duka

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El duque y yo

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In 2021, following the premiere of Bridgerton on Netflix, The Duke and I shot to the top of every major bestseller list in the United States... and stayed there for months. It was also a Sunday Times bestseller in the UK, a Spiegel bestseller in Germany, a Dymocks bestseller in Australia, and a Veja bestseller in Brazil.
The Duke and I has become one of the most widely translated books in history. As of April 2021, it had been or was slated to be translated into 39 languages, including Albanian, Estonian, and Sinhala.

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Review: The Duke and I by Julia Quinn

Review of The Duke and I, a regency era romance set in 1813 London by Julia Quinn.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Please see our full disclosure for further information.

After two seasons of minimal success on the marriage mart, Daphne Bridgerton is uncertain if she will ever meet a man she can marry. Then she meets Simon Basset, newly minted Duke of Hastings.

Simon was rejected by his father for having a stutter as a child. Because of this, he is determined never to marry or have children to carry on the family line. He suggests to Daphne that they pretend to be courting. Hopefully, this will keep the Ambitious Mamas of marriageable-aged daughters from bothering him and make her more attractive to potential suitors.

However, Simon is increasingly attracted to Daphne, and Daphne cares more and more for Simon. And after they are found in a compromising position in a garden, Daphne’s elder brother demands they marry. Simon eventually agrees, but his constant dedication to spite his father comes between them. Can Daphne defeat Simon’s hatred of his father?

The Duke and I is the first of Julia Quinn’s novels about the Bridgerton siblings. It tells the love story of how Daphne, the eldest Bridgerton daughter and fourth Bridgerton child. It is also the inspiration for the first season of Netflix’s fantastic new show: Bridgerton.

The first half of the story almost seemed like a different book to the second half. I think the author may have used the first half to set the scene for the rest of the series. She introduced the large and lively Bridgerton family masterfully. Aside from some serious physical attraction, the relationship between Simon and Daphne didn’t develop much. This made the kissing in the garden scene feel a bit sudden.

The chemistry between Simon and Daphne was beautiful. I just couldn’t help falling in love with them as a couple. I liked how they have vastly different backstories but still have a connection and common purpose. And the banter between them was fun and adorable.

“Sir! Sir!”

With great reluctance, he dragged his eyes up to her face. Which was, of course, delightful in and of itself, but it was difficult to picture her seduction when she was scowling at him.

“Were you listening to me?”

“Of course,” he lied.

“You weren’t.”

“No,” he admitted.

A sound came from the back of her throat that sounded suspiciously like a growl. “Then why,” she ground out, “did you say you were?”

He shrugged. “I thought it was what you wanted to hear.”

Daphne is such an amazing young woman. She’s intelligent, friendly, and clear-headed. She has a sly sense of humour and a fantastic grasp on how to deal with men. I loved how she wasn’t afraid to interfere in things that affected her even though the men tried to exclude her.

Some parts of the story were repeated a bit often. These include the fact that Simon’s stutter is brought on by stress and anger and that Daphne is from a large and loving family with overbearing brothers. It keeps things consistent, but gets a bit overdone.

The Controversial Scene

About 80% of the way through The Duke and I , there is a controversial, potentially triggering scene. Some people would say that Daphne raped Simon. I’m not so sure – it’s very much more complicated than that.

Because of his problems with his father, Simon has decided that he will never have children. So before agreeing to marry Daphne, he tells her that he cannot have children. Daphne takes this to mean that there is something physically wrong with him and because she’s so innocent, she doesn’t notice the little thing he does to ensure that she will never conceive.

Two weeks into their marriage, Daphne puts two and two together and realises what Simon has been doing. They fight about it, and after a failed reconciliation, Simon gets very drunk. After a short nap, they have some apparently mutually consensual sexy times that becomes less mutually consensual at the end. Simon (understandably) becomes very angry and leaves.

I’m not going to get into the debate of who was right or wrong. However, I didn’t like the way it was delt with in the story. Simon and Daphne separate for a time, but come back together fairly easily.

Neither of them acknowledges their mistakes or apologises to the other. There’s very little discussion afterwards, and what discussion they have is centred around having children, not the issues they’ve had. I find it difficult to believe that a couple could get over something so major so easily.

Have you read The Duke and I ? What did you think? Do you agree with what I’ve said about it? Let me know in the comments.

If you haven’t, you can buy it at Book Depository (they have free international shipping!) or Waterstones (free delivery on UK orders over £25, will ship internationally).

2 thoughts on “ Review: The Duke and I by Julia Quinn ”

It makes sense that the first part takes time portraying the Bridgerton family, because the subsequent books go on to focus on a different member I think – or at least that’s what the TV series is doing! Now I’m even more curious to know what you’d make of the adaptation, Em.

I’m working on a comparison-type post with my thoughts on the adaptation. Hopefully it won’t take too long to write.

Update: you can find the comparison-type post here

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The Duke and I by Julia Quinn (Bridgerton) – A book review

About The Duke and I

Book Name: The Duke and I (Bridgerton #01)

Author: Julia Quinn

Genre: Fiction – Romance , Historical

Characters: Daphne Bridgerton, Simon Basset

Setting: London, England , The UK

Plot Summary of The Duke and I

Set in the Regency London, Daphne Bridgerton is the fourth of eight siblings in a close-knit family and is ready to meet her suitors. While everyone likes her wit and kindness, no one actually adores her. She is too friendly with her young suitors to be a romanced.

Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings is new to the scene as he has just returned to England from his stay abroad. He is not interested in marriage nor progeny, but he is constantly paraded by the mothers and daughters as an eligible bachelor.

So when Daphne, Simon’s best friend’s sister offers him a way out he takes it. They fake court, so that Simon will deter the parade and Daphne will get more prospects to choose from.

The plan works well, until it goes wrong horribly. Does the Duke and Daphne understand the folly in their plan and do they end up in a HEA? Read The Duke and I by Julia Quinn to know more.

Book review of The Duke and I

The Duke and I was my first book set in Regency London and my first time reading Julia Quinn’s writing as well. And imagine my surprise when I flew through the pages in an afternoon.

Julia Quinn’s writingwas witty and hilarious. I loved the banters and the sibling’s taunts. Even if they followed a half of Julia’s dialogues in the Netflix version, I won’t be surprised at what a hit the Bridgerton series has been. (Yes, I haven’t watched it yet.)

I loved the Bridgerton family dynamic and the drama. I would definitely have to keep a watch out for the other books.

On the other hand, I didn’t like the female lead at all, not even before that ONE SCENE. Don’t even start me with the Duke. He was lying and manipulative as well. So made for each other I guess.(?)

I loved the book and had a merry time with it, until that one scene.

Yes, it was cringe-y, manipulative, non consensual scene that spoiled everything for me. I understand the book was written in early 2000s, the “rules were different” then (no, they weren’t) and blah blah, but I completely lost it after that. (I am hoping that Netflix guys changed this one.)

What worked for me

The funny, witty banter sprinkled all through the book. I loved them. Julia Quinn made chuckle, grin, laugh and even snort at one point.
I loved the Bridgerton family dynamics and the younger ones were funny as well. I want more of the Bridgerton world y’all!

What may have been better

Both the leads were flawed, manipulative and lying. But given the time period it was set in, maybe it was normal I guess. Anyway, I was able to look past it.
Why did I have to read a non consensual sex (rape?) scene. It spoiled everything for me.

Content warning

Non consensual sex, parental neglect

Bottom line

While I loved the writing, the character building and the Bridgerton world, there were things that put me off The Duke and I by Julia Quinn. But I will definitely read Julia Quinn’s other books and continue the Bridgerton series soon (assuming they were not problematic or off putting).

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Gayathri has been reviewing books since 2010. When she is not reading books or creating online content, she works as a writer and a digital marketer. Head over to meet me!

Literature & Fiction
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COOKING FOR WIZARDS, WARRIORS AND DRAGONS

Book Review: The Duke and I

Title: The Duke and I

Let me start off by saying, I’m not much of a romantic, and I would never have purchased this book if it hadn ’t been for Ana. Like most cynics, I viewed the genre as trite and silly, with the Fabios and disheveled maidens on the covers and taglines like “If he had to TAME her, he WOULD!” *collapses into giggles* That said, however, I never had given romance novels a try…and I’m glad that I did! While you can bet your ass that there are many romance ‘novels’ (for lack of a better word) out there that involve no plot between bodice ripping and descriptions of throbbing phalluses , there are legitimate romance novels that actually have wonderful characters and decent plots (and of course, the requisite steamy sex). The Duke and I can be included in the latter category, and is a charming, sexy story. It is a whimsical, fun read that I enjoyed immensely…and finished within about 3 hours.

Daphne Bridgerton is an amiable, quick-witted young woman with a sly sense of humor. The eldest daughter in the Bridgerton family, she finds herself being pushed out into society by her driven mother (a so-called “ambitious mama”) to find a husband. The Bridgertons are not in financial straits nor do they need to gain higher social position—refreshing for a regency period novel that seems to constantly have a heroine who is penniless/indebted/of low social rank—but Violet Bridgerton (said ambitious mama) is in a tizzy to marry off her daughter. Simultaneously, Simon Basset, Earl of Clyvedon , Duke of Hastings ( isn ’t THAT a mouthful) is making his entrance to society after gaining notoriety as a rake in his university days and traveling the world to escape having to deal with his nasty father. Hastings is best friends with Daphne’s older brother, Anthony, and thus by the unspoken man-rule between friends, shall not covet his friend’s sister. Of course things are never that simple, and Simon stumbles upon Daphne and comes to her rescue from an overzealous suitor. Before he knows who exactly she is, he finds himself irrevocably attracted to her.

After getting a taste of the rabid marriage-minded ton , Simon—who has sworn an oath never to marry—makes a proposition to level-headed Daphne. They will form a false attachment to each other, thereby freeing Daff from the vicelike grip of her mother’s marital schemes and simultaneously deterring any matronly ambitions towards Simon. In the meantime, Simon convinces Daphne that her stock will increase dramatically, because all men want what they cannot have.

Of course, you can tell where this is going.

The Duke and I isn ’t exactly the literary equivalent of a winter feast in Glasgow—but it isn ’t meant to be. It is a light, airy romance that is more along the lines of a fresh squeezed glass of cold lemonade on a summer day. It won’t linger with you when you are done, but it satisfies a craving for something sweet, and smooth.

Thea James is one half of the maniacal duo behind The Book Smugglers. She is Filipina-American, but grew up in Hawaii, Indonesia, and Japan. A full-time book nerd who works in publishing for her day job, Thea currently resides in Astoria, Queens with her partner and rambunctious cat. COOKING FOR WIZARDS, WARRIORS & DRAGONS (available August 31, 2021) is her first cookbook.

I love The Duke and I – Simon is so dreamy and Daphne is so funny. I just love when they first meet and he tries to look like a rake and she sees through him and just starts laughing! So funny. So, are you reading the other Bridgerton books?

Thea you are really converting? Hmmm…this one could be for a rainy day. I’ll keep it mind.

badmamajama

read free book online at GbNovels.com with thousand of free books http://www.gbnovels.com/free-novel/Kiss-an-Angel-4440

Marguerite Lathan

Thanks for a delicious read…

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Heidi Dischler

Book review: the duke and i by julia quinn.

Picking up The Duke and I to review, I already had an idea what I was getting into. Since this was not my first book read by Julia Quinn, I know a little about her style and her love of older eras. With that said, I ranked The Duke and I pretty low on my Bridgerton list because it isn’t really my favorite…. It’s not the worst book I’ve read by any means, but it was just meh.

Book Information

Daphne Bridgerton is not like the other eligible women in London. She does not think she’s beautiful, or that she’ll be able to find a suitable husband who she likes. Simon Basset, however, sees her beauty. He sees her for the amazing woman that she is and that is exactly the type of relationship he wants to avoid the most. Even though he knows he wants Daphne Bridgerton—and that she wants him—he has made a promise to himself never to get married and have children. But Daphne has other plans, and she knows that she can win his heart despite the scars Simon holds close to him.

Bridgerton: The Duke and I (Bridgertons Book 1): The Sunday Times bestselling inspiration for the Netflix Original Series Bridgerton (Bridgerton Family)

Review | Heidi Dischler

So, this is not the first Julia Quinn book I’ve read. I actually started with her prequel to the Bridgerton Series called Because of Miss Bridgerton in the Rokesby Series, but I decided to finally read The Duke and I when I found out that it was becoming a Netflix series. I love Julia Quinn’s romance novels even if they get a little uncomfortable at times when you’re listening to them in audiobook form…. With The Duke and I , though, I finally got to see where it all started in terms of the Bridgertons.

I really liked Simon as a character, but I found Daphne very lackluster in terms of development. While I love Julia Quinn’s romantic novels, it isn’t necessarily for their complexity. That’s what I love about them, though. I simply get to get lost in the world and its characters. I love the rowdy Bridgertons, and how they all seem to stick together. I have something similar with my family (although, we are not as quite large as a group), so I could really relate to a lot of their jests.

Spoilers ahead.

My favorite part of the novel was when Simon and Daphne were fake courting each other. It made it very interesting and lighthearted. When they were forced to get married, however, I found that the novel became a little slower in terms of pacing. There were also a few parts that made me cringe. Like Daphne’s attempt to become impregnated while Simon was drunk. It made me lose a lot of respect for her character, and I still don’t know how I feel about the whole thing.

Overall, though, this book is very light reading in terms of fluffy, lighthearted writing. It was a cute story with a memorable family, but I do really think Simon stole the show in terms of character development.

Check out the next book in the series, The Viscount Who Love Me !

Source: Audible Audiobook

“‘A duel, a duel, a duel. Is there anything more exciting, more romantic... or more utterly moronic?’”

– lady whistledown (julia quinn), the duke and i, leave a reply cancel reply.

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Bridgerton Book 1: The Duke and I | Parent Guide & Review

This post may contain affiliate links. If you click on a link and decide to buy, I make a small commission for referring you. This helps me make a few cents for doing what I love.

Season 2 of Bridgerton is coming out soon, and all the buzz about the first season is back in full force. This review has a few spoilers but nothing major that would take away from the experience of reading The Duke and I or watching Bridgerton.

Disclosure: I am an Amazon affiliate. If you click on a link and decide to buy something, I will get pennies for referring you. This in no way changes the price for you. It just helps me make a bit for doing what I love.

How I Got “Hooked” on Bridgerton

woman lying on bed while eating puff corn

I love reading, but I’m also (for the most part) a huge fan of Netflix and Disney+. They save my sanity some days and are why we eat most days. My daughter was obsessed with the show Sofia the First, and we have watched every episode three or four times now. It is a fantastic show, and I highly recommend it!

Since I’ve been on Netflix frequently, as you can tell from a peek into our watch history, I was introduced to Bridgerton and the books it was based on through their featured trending shows.

Netflix’s advertising strategy with their featured clips about Bridgerton totally got me hooked on the story about a girl and a guy tricking society with their fake romance. However, I was wary of the TV-MA rating. I’m not a fan of nudity or sex in my television shows or books. Noticing that the series was based on books, I decided to start there and then figure out whether or not I really wanted to watch the show.

Regency Romances

I’ve read a lot of regency romances about a girl during her debut season who ends up falling for the rake or guy that she isn’t supposed to be with. It seems like the authors change up a few details about the characters, but the story is the same every. single. time.

Oh, and of course, the author has to add a bunch of sex to make the story palatable. After reading many regency novels, I can pretty much pinpoint when the first sex scene will happen in the book so I can skip it. With that as my background, I was not impressed with The Duke and I by Julia Quinn. It didn’t stand out as anything new or different compared with other trashy regency romances.

Synopsis of The Duke and I

The two main characters, Daphne and Simon, fake a relationship to make the most of the season. Daphne wants more marriage prospects, and if Simon, a duke, shows interest, then others will as well. Simon uses his fake relationship with Daphne to drive off the other marriage-hungry Mamas from conspiring and trapping him into a marriage. They end up falling in love and getting married about halfway through the book.

Why I Didn’t Like It

My main complaint about the whole story is the entire conflict of the story revolves 100% around the sex life of the main characters. Yes, sex is a vital part of a relationship, especially a brand new marriage. But there are so many different and more captivating story elements that would have made this story fantastic instead of just meh.

Also, because their sex life takes center stage in their conflict, the sex scenes in the book are very long and very detailed. The details are semi-necessary to understand the conflict between the two characters. However, I don’t want or need to know the intimate points of someone else’s sex life. If an author has to rely on sex to power the story, they don’t have a good plot and need to rethink what direction they are planning to take.

What come after The Duke and I?

After reading The Duke and I, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read the rest of the books in the series. I ended up reading the rest to better help inform you. Plus, I kind of wanted to see if the rest of the Bridgerton books were just as bad. Finding out who Lady Whistledown is was just a bonus. Spoiler alert: you will not discover her identity in this book. It is revealed a few books into the series in this book .

The next couple of books had just as much sex, but it wasn’t as prominent in the story as the first book. By the end of the Bridgerton series, Julia Quinn had matured as an author and could write a very engaging and new story that didn’t rely on sex. I remember some sex in the later books, but it is not nearly as long or descriptive as the first book or two. Which meant that I enjoyed the end of the series far better than the beginning.

Quick Parent Guide for The Duke and I

Violence: PG There is almost a duel, and a couple of fists are thrown. Language: 73 instances of biblical swearing; 22.5% of pages have language Adult Content: R or X; Long graphic descriptions of sex, a make out session with nudity.

Touchy Topics and Trigger Warnings

There are some touchy topics in The Duke and I that require trigger warnings. Some are more sensitive than others. They include:

Miscarriage
Child neglect
Loving home versus neglectful home
Having to win at all costs
Death of a parent

The Duke and I vs. Bridgerton Season 1

Here is the burning question: is the book anything like the TV show? The simple answer is yes and no.

The main story between Daphne and Simon is pretty much the same in the show as in the books. Many of their dates and interactions are taken straight from the books. There is quite a lot that sets up for future stuff, like Anthony and his mistress having a falling out. However, even more of the story is fabricated to take up space.

What is different in Bridgerton?

There is way more sex and nudity in the TV show compared to the book. I watched it with the remote in my hand, so I could fast-forward through random scenes that did not happen in the book. Like Anthony’s pants being around his ankles almost every episode or Benedict going to crazy parties with nude models. Plus, the whole scene where Simon talks about masturbating and then Daphne experimenting… Ya didn’t happen in the book!

The first scene in the television series with Daphne making a fool of herself doesn’t happen in the book. Instead, she just has three very overprotective brothers who drive off all of her conquests. Because the Queen isn’t a character in the books, Eloise isn’t trying to figure out who Lady Whistledown is. Everyone speculates, but there isn’t a hunt for her yet. That comes in later books. We also don’t learn of her identity until book 4 .

The scandal with the Featheringtons and Colin also never happens in the book. The only thing we hear about the Featheringtons is how terrible their fashion sense is. We do know about Penelope Featherington and her friendship with Eloise, though. She also has her eye on Colin.

My Recommendations

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The Duke and I is not a book for teenagers at all . I also don’t recommend this book or series to anyone looking for a “clean read” or something with closed-door sex. Sex takes center stage in this book. There isn’t enough sex for The Duke and I to be considered erotica, but it isn’t far off in some chapters.

If you are comfortable watching the television series or other MA rating materials, you would probably enjoy reading The Duke and I . However, don’t be expecting anything PG-13 or even PG-17. To be honest, there are so many other fantastic regency romances out there that you could be reading instead, like Edenbrooke or The Heiress of Winterwood . For more romance novels with a little less steam, check out this post with 13 of my favorites .

Happy Reading!

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World War I’s famous soldier poets spring to life in ‘Muse of Fire’

Michael korda’s group biography of siegfried sassoon, wilfred owen and others is richly detailed and elegantly written.

It’s a bitter paradox that even the most virulently antiwar of the famous soldier poets of World War I felt the lure of battle. “He was not eager to die,” Michael Korda writes of Siegfried Sassoon in his new book, “ Muse of Fire ,” “but he yearned for the excitement and camaraderie of combat.” An acting captain, Sassoon regarded his troops as “his family, his children,” Korda writes. “Despite the nagging guilt that he was going to lead many of them to their deaths, he was happy.”

Sassoon’s friend Wilfred Owen was drawn “to prove to himself and to others that he had never been a coward” — an impulse that proved fatal.

Korda’s group biography takes its title from Shakespeare’s “Henry V” and its invocation of “a muse of fire, that would ascend/ The brightest heaven of invention.” Starting with Rupert Brooke’s naive glorification of military service and culminating in Owen’s grim, gorgeous verses about the effects of poison gas, “Muse of Fire” is richly detailed, elegantly written and at times idiosyncratic.

Korda, a former editor in chief of Simon & Schuster, is the scion of a famous European film family and the author of more than 20 books. At 90, he still writes engrossing prose. Even his footnotes, which address intersections between the lives of his subjects and his own biography, are engaging. “All my family fought in that war, but on opposite sides,” he writes in the introduction. But none of the survivors talked about their experiences: “They had no desire to revisit it — the horrors were beyond description.”

Korda’s thesis is that World War I, more than other wars of the past century, came to be “encapsulated” by the poetry it produced. It helped that poetry, unlike other writing, escaped official censorship. But while the super-patriot Brooke achieved immediate renown, appreciation of the other, more skeptical soldier poets developed only gradually.

The subject is, by now, well-plowed territory. But Korda, keenly attuned to the nuances of Britain’s class system and its overlapping literary circles, excels at tracing the bonds of acquaintance, collegiality, amity and sometimes physical attraction that knit these men to one another.

One commonality turns out to have been their indebtedness to the editorial and promotional skills of Edward Marsh, Winston Churchill’s private secretary and “a shrewd and influential judge of poetry.” Korda calls him “one of the most pertinacious and meticulous editors of all time,” and Brooke and Sassoon both relied on him. So, too, did Isaac Rosenberg, a poet and visual artist whose paintings Marsh bought.

The British verse of World War I reflected two linked developments. It embodied, first of all, the national turn from exhilaration and idealism to antiwar protest and cynicism, fueled by devastating casualties, stalemated trench warfare and the whole endeavor’s apparent pointlessness. One persistent drumbeat in Korda’s book is his battle-by-battle accounting of the killed and wounded, an unbearable toll on an entire generation.

The second development, which Korda traces more fitfully, is the evolution of poetry from its Georgian ornateness and sentimentality to a more stripped-down and unsparing modernism. Korda reproduces some famous poems in full, including Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est,” with its image of a man “guttering, choking, drowning” from poison gas and its stinging indictment of patriotic verities. But Korda avows that he is no literary critic, and “Muse of Fire” is not the place to learn about Owen’s celebrated use of half-rhymes and other poetic techniques.

Korda’s narrative can meander. Most of the first hundred pages detail Brooke’s tumultuous romances, as well as his peregrinations across the United States, Canada and the South Seas. Korda seems fixated on Brooke’s physical beauty and his personal life. “Seldom in the long history of male-female relationships has anybody ever produced a bigger storm of neurotic angst, jealousy, self-pity, and complaints than Brooke did in the autumn and winter of 1911, with so little to show for it in terms of sex,” he writes, in a hyperbolic construction he favors. One of the book’s peculiarities is its preoccupation with the question of which dalliances were physically consummated — prurient gossip with little relevance to the poetry of war.

Brooke, already gaining a literary reputation, enlisted as soon as war broke out and became one of its leading propagandists. His sonnet “Peace” analogized soldiers to “swimmers into cleanness leaping,” unafraid of death and seeking escape “from a world grown old and cold and weary.” “He embodied the national spirit perfectly,” Korda writes. Brooke died of blood poisoning in 1915 before seeing much action or having the chance to reconsider his enthusiasm.

After covering Brooke and before discussing the star duo of Sassoon and Owen, Korda touches on the lives and poetry of Rosenberg (who enlisted out of financial need), Alan Seeger and Robert Graves. Graves, another officer devoted to his soldiers, gained postwar celebrity for his memoir “Goodbye to All That” and his historical fiction, including “I, Claudius” and “Claudius the God.”

Seeger’s inclusion is the biggest surprise. He was American, a Harvard graduate and the uncle of folk singer Pete Seeger. To join the war, he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, and his verse, like Brooke’s, skewed romantic. He is known today primarily for a single line of poetry, “I have a rendezvous with Death,” which proved unfortunately prophetic.

Sassoon also enlisted early and eagerly. Decorated for his courage, he wrote realistically about the trials of his fellow soldiers, and with increasing savagery about the politicians and generals he blamed for their ordeals. When Sassoon issued an antiwar protest statement in July 1917, after forswearing further military service, he was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, which treated what was then known as shell shock. For Sassoon, it was an alternative preferable to court-martial. At the hospital, he came under the care of a psychiatrist, W.H.R. Rivers, charged with readying him to rejoin the war. He also met an admirer, Owen, who did, in fact, suffer from what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. They became close, and Sassoon encouraged and even edited Owen’s poetic efforts.

Both would return to battle, and only Sassoon would survive to commemorate the war’s end. His celebratory anthem “Everyone Sang” promised, optimistically, that “the singing will never be done.” The poem, Korda writes, “came to symbolize the futility and cruelty of warfare and the hope that humanity might pursue its destiny without it.” So far, no such luck.

Julia M. Klein is the contributing book critic at the Forward.

Muse of Fire

World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets

By Michael Korda

Liveright. 381 pp. $29.99.

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Delmore Schwartz’s Poems Are Like Salt Flicked on the World

A new omnibus compiles the poet’s books and unpublished work, including his two-part autobiographical masterpiece, “Genesis.”

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By Dwight Garner

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The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz , edited by Ben Mazer

Come with me, down the rabbit hole that is the life and work of the Brooklyn-born poet Delmore Schwartz (1913-66). There are two primary portals into Delmore World. Neither involves his own verse. Reading about Schwartz is more invigorating than reading him, or so I have long thought. He was so intense and unbuttoned that he inspired two of the best books of the second half of the 20th century.

The first portal is James Atlas’s 1977 biography, “ Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet .” Atlas’s book has more drama and critical insight than seven or eight typical American literary biographies. I would be hard-pressed to name a better one written in the past 50 years, in terms of its style-to-substance ratio and the fat it gets into the pan.

Atlas follows Schwartz, the bumptious son of Jewish Romanian immigrants, through his alienated childhood and into his early work in the 1930s, when he was considered America’s Auden, the most promising poet of his generation. He captures Schwartz’s downtown Manhattan milieu, long before bohemia became a tourist attraction, and his friendships with Alfred Kazin, John Berryman, Philip Rahv, Robert Lowell and others.

Delmore! He had ardent nostrils; he was photographed by Vogue; he was slovenly and grand; he had read everything; he outtalked the most indefatigable talkers. “Cosmopolitan, radical, at home with Rilke, Trotsky, Pound,” Atlas writes, “he was the very embodiment of the New York intelligentsia.”

Schwartz never fulfilled his early promise. The highway he was on became a path and then a dense forest. He staggered into delusions and writer’s block and insomnia and lawsuits and D.U.I.s and fantasies of revenge and (oh, no!) the saggy parts of rural New Jersey. His tragedy is underscored by the fact that he is best known today for one Bartlett’s-ready quotation: “Even paranoids have real enemies.”

Atlas was lucky that Schwartz left carnage in his wake. The biography is a rolling dessert cart of anecdote. Returning from a party at the sexologist Alfred Kinsey’s house, where he had admired the erotic art, Schwartz was observed skipping through flower beds, singing and shouting “pistils and stamens!” He abruptly ended a long discussion of socialism with the critic R.P. Blackmur by pushing him into the fireplace. And so on.

I felt the impact of Atlas’s book personally. More than 20 years ago — two dogs ago, at any rate — I signed a contract to write a biography of a different American writer of Schwartz’s generation. I never wrote that book, for a slew of reasons. But what really sunk me, early on, was reading Atlas’s book for research and understanding in my bones that I could never write anything so good.

The second portal is Saul Bellow’s novel, “Humboldt’s Gift,” which was inspired by his messy friendship with Schwartz. They had taught at Princeton at the same time. The novel won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize. (“It’s just a dummy newspaper publicity award given by crooks and illiterates,” chortles the Schwartz character, Humboldt, about the Pulitzers.) Bellow captured Schwartz’s pugilistic conversational manner:

To be loused up by Humboldt was really a kind of privilege. It was like being the subject of a two-nosed portrait by Picasso, or an eviscerated chicken by Soutine.

Schwartz punched other egos down the way a baker does dough, as if to redistribute the intellectual yeast and allow for an improved rise.

A new book, “The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz,” lets us see this rumpled prodigy fresh. Though his reputation has dimmed, Schwartz has not vanished from bookshelves. The independent publishing house New Directions has loyally kept the flame lit. Its founder, James Laughlin, was Schwartz’s friend and early champion. In return, Schwartz wrote him crazy letters and tapped him for loans.

This collection prints the five full-length books Schwartz published during his lifetime. These include his much disputed translation of Rimbaud’s “Season in Hell.” (Schwartz’s French was limited, and he was criticized for his errors, but the translation was beloved by some.) Much of this material has been out of print for decades. This volume, edited by Ben Mazer, also includes a good deal of previously unpublished work.

I’m going to skip over the bulk of this material. Schwartz’s poems, especially the later ones, are dated. They groan under a freight of leaden rhymes and — Schwartz had a capacious mind — showy philosophical and literary references, spillover from the overstocked pantry that was his mind. A beachcomber will find things to admire but will return with only a small sack of sea glass and bright but mostly broken treasures.

There is something more important to talk about. Unearthed here is Schwartz’s masterpiece, a two-part autobiographical poem in free verse, “Genesis,” which he worked on for more than a decade. It’s so squirming and alive that it will, I suspect, be the rock upon which future considerations of Schwartz will stand. It should be reissued as a stand-alone volume. It’s the sort of book — it presages and compacts the soulfulness of Kazin’s memoirs, Lowell’s confessional verse and Berryman’s melancholy playfulness and irony — that you want to have in portable form. It should not be lost inside a huge collection, as if it were a handgun or a vibrator in the bottom drawer of a chifforobe.

Schwartz published “Genesis: Book 1” in 1943 to mixed reviews, but Atlas shrewdly calls it “the most significant poem of the age.” It has long been out of print. Even tattered copies sell online for more than $1,000, Mazer writes. “Genesis: Book 2,” which is even stronger, has never been published, except in excerpts. Together these volumes take up 300 pages, the molten core of this book.

Schwartz disliked the orotundity of his first name. (His parents thought “Delmore” sounded American.) Lowell noted, in one poem, that Schwartz’s last name was a handful, too, “one vowel bedeviled by seven consonants.” Schwartz tended to give his protagonists unusual names as well. The young hero of “Genesis” is named Hershey, after the candy bar. His surname is Green.

Book 1 takes Hershey up to the age of 7. Book 2 follows him into late adolescence. Future books in the series were considered but not pursued.

The effect of this long and Freudian poem, packed with nostalgic self-plunder, is sweeping and powerful. It gives us family history and an account of Hershey’s parents’ fractured marriage, along with antic personal observation — he is the “Atlantic boy” and “history’s orphan,” emerging puking and squalling from the lower middle class, for whom circumcision is done “with the knife that reached across 5,000 years from Palestine.” Kindergarten is a “Congress of thirty Ids, like a convention/Of a small radical party.” He discovers antisemitism.

Schwartz was one of the great writers about New York City. To young Hershey, the upthrust of office buildings makes Manhattan “look like a monstrous warship,/A dreadnaught!” He describes Long Island as nudging into North America “like an ocean liner coming from Europe.”

Hershey is attended by a Greek chorus of history’s ghosts. The grown poet in him, swinging for the rafters, is allowed to peek through. He speaks for “Genesis” writ large when he says:

Thus now I’ll flick the salt of intellect Upon all things, the critical salt which makes All qualities most vivid and acute.

There is a superb moment in Frederick Exley’s 1968 novel “A Fan’s Notes” — it is one of the great scenes in American literature — when the narrator meditates on literary fandom and his own overweening admiration for the critic Edmund Wilson. Wilson had once written that he was “stranded” in America. Exley’s hero feels an overpowering urge to drive to Wilson’s house in upstate New York, knock on his door and shout: “Eddie, baby! I too am stranded!”

What is so winning about Schwartz at his best, and especially in “Genesis,” is that he is the sort of writer who collapses the difference between a cultivated intellect like Wilson’s and the mind of someone like Exley’s narrator, a literate but excitable and unpretentious embracer of life. Delmore, baby! We’re all stranded!

THE COLLECTED POEMS OF DELMORE SCHWARTZ | Edited by Ben Mazer | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 699 pp. | $50

Dwight Garner has been a book critic for The Times since 2008, and before that was an editor at the Book Review for a decade. More about Dwight Garner

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Updated with memorial fund information: Biomedical Engineering Chair Joseph Izatt Dies

Joseph Izatt, the Michael J. Fitzpatrick Professor of Engineering and chair of Duke’s Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), passed away on Sunday, April 7.

Since joining Duke in 2001, Izatt served the university through dedicated service to his students and colleagues, and as a pioneering researcher. During his tenure as chair of Duke BME, he championed the successes of all within the community and worked with faculty, staff and students to ensure the department supported their goals.

In a message Monday to the Duke Engineering community, Pratt School Dean Jerome Lynch celebrated Izatt’s career and leadership. “He was an exceptionally thoughtful leader who weighed every decision with a care that originated with his deep love for the BME community. The integrity and humility he brought as a school leader will be missed.”

Biomedical engineering chair Joseph Izatt

Izatt was a skilled researcher and inventor who played a foundational role in the development of optical coherence tomography (OCT). The non-invasive medical imaging technique uses optical interferometry to peer through layers of soft tissue, such as the retina at the back of the eye, to provide richly detailed images that guide diagnosis and treatment decisions.

Izatt’s decades-long interdisciplinary collaboration with Dr. Cynthia Toth, a medical doctor and Duke professor of ophthalmology, helped bring this research directly to patients. Their work to improve the accuracy of examination and surgery of the eye led to handheld OCT systems for infants and the first intraoperative OCT-guided system for surgery.

Izatt advised and collaborated with talented students and staff in his Biophotonics Group to advance OCT technology. Together, they developed new methods to improve non-invasive medical diagnostics, in vivo tomographic microscopy, and real-time image-guided robotic surgery. The lab’s expertise in OCT technology has also allowed them to expand their reach beyond the realm of biomedical imaging to other endeavors, such as investigating how OCT could help autonomous robots and vehicles to see better.

In recognition of these impressive scientific contributions, Izatt was named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Beyond his research, Izatt was recognized as a kind and dedicated mentor and leader within Duke Engineering. He received the Pratt School’s Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising in 2008 and the Graduate School Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring in 2017. He also helped shape the direction of the wider university, serving as chair for both the Pratt 2039 organizational visioning exercise and the Search Committee for Duke’s Vice President for Research and Innovation.

Izatt took up the mantle as chair of Duke BME in 2022. In this role, he helped support the department’s trajectory of success by recruiting outstanding new research and teaching faculty. He also worked with the BME Strategic Visioning Committee to ensure that the department continues to educate ethical, well-rounded engineers who can guide and transform the future of the biomedical engineering field.

This is a significant loss for the academic community Izatt championed, and the impact of his legacy will be felt for years to come.

“The loss of Professor Izatt leaves us and the Pratt community with a profound sense of sorrow as his dedication to his family, students, faculty and staff were the hallmarks of who he was as a person,” said Dean Lynch. “I am especially saddened to have lost a school leader who proudly led with his heart and who cared so deeply for the members of the BME and Pratt community.”

In recognition of Professor Izatt's impact and legacy, in lieu of flowers, the family requests contributions be made to the Dr. Joseph Izatt Memorial Fund. Donations can be made at Duke's giving portal. Visit https://gifts.duke.edu and click "Or choose an area" at the bottom of the screen. On the next screen, click "Still can't find your designation of choice?" which will reveal a box that states "Which area of Duke would you like to support?" In this text field, please type "Dr Joseph Izatt Memorial Fund" to ensure your gift is appropriately directed.

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The Duke and I
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The Duke and I: The (Bridgertons Book 1): Quinn, Julia: 9780062353597
The Duke and I (Bridgertons, #1) by Julia Quinn
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The Duke and I (Bridgertons, #1) by Julia Quinn
The Duke and I is a romance set in the Regency era. In the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Regency London, rules abound. From their earliest days, children of aristocrats learn how to address an earl and curtsey before a prince—while other dictates of the ton are unspoken yet universally understood. A proper duke should be imperious and aloof.
The Duke and I by Julia Quinn
The Duke and I by Julia Quinn Series: Bridgertons #1 Also in this series: The Viscount Who Loved Me Published by Avon on January 5, 2000 Genres: Historical Romance, Romance Pages: 384 Format: eBook Source: Purchased Add to Goodreads Buy on Amazon. In the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Regency London, rules abound.
The Duke & I by Julia Quinn
Updated for 2021: I wrote this book review for The Duke & I in 2013 and, after Bridgerton's popularity, this post has been revived from the dead and getting a lot of traffic and it seems y'all have A LOT of questions about the sex in the show vs the books so I'm going to add some things at the end to my review of The Duke and I to include book vs show comparison (head to the very bottom ...
The Duke And I by Julia Quinn
Something, I'm sure we all need. In the book, she is described overall as being a friend. The bane of why she can't find a husband even after three seasons. Though Daphne is the fourth child in the family, she is the eldest daughter. Her relationship with her mother is a beautiful mix of friendship and typical annoyance.
The Duke and I by Julia Quinn Book Review
The Duke and I by Julia Quinn Published by Avon Books Book 1 in the Bridgerton Series In the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Regency London, rules abound. From their earliest days, children of aristocrats learn how to address an earl and curtsey before a prince—while other dictates of the ton are unspoken yet universally understood. A proper duke should be imperious and aloof.
Book Review: The Duke & I
Conclusion. Overall, I would suggest skipping The Duke & I if you want to read the Bridgerton series. The other books—especially the second book, The Viscount Who Loved Me, summarize the entirety of relevant information from The Duke & I in the first few chapters. Plus, this storyline is paced to keep the reader engaged longer and the ...
The Duke and I: The (Bridgertons Book 1)
A #1 New York Times Bestseller. From #1 New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn comes the story of Daphne Bridgerton, in the first of her beloved Regency-set novels featuring the charming, powerful Bridgerton family, now a series created by Shondaland for Netflix. In the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Regency London, rules abound.
Book Review: The Duke and I by Julia Quinn
And this book did not disappoint. Interestingly, there is a controversial sex scene in chapter 18 of this book, which further challenges some of the double standards still existing between men and women. I will not comment on it further as it is a spoiler and subjective in terms of opinion. Overall, I found The Duke and I to be just what I ...
Book review: Bridgerton: The Duke & I · OutLook by the Bay
So many more juicy details. Fellow New York Times bestselling author Jill Barnett describes Quinn as "Truly our contemporary Jane Austen," and she's not wrong. However, Bridgerton: The Duke and I may not be the Austen-esque novel the reader is expecting. That's because it's not a true enemies-to-lovers story like Austen's Pride and ...
The Duke and I
The Duke and I was a finalist in the 2001 RITA Awards in the Short Historical category. The RITAs are awarded by Romance Writers of America and are the highest honor in romance writing. The eventual winner was The Mistress by Susan Wiggs. The Duke and I was named one of the Ten Best Romances of 2000 by the editors at Amazon.com.
Review: The Duke and I by Julia Quinn
Review. The Duke and I is the first of Julia Quinn's novels about the Bridgerton siblings. It tells the love story of how Daphne, the eldest Bridgerton daughter and fourth Bridgerton child. It is also the inspiration for the first season of Netflix's fantastic new show: Bridgerton. The first half of the story almost seemed like a different ...
The Duke and I by Julia Quinn (Bridgerton)
The Duke and I was my first book set in Regency London and my first time reading Julia Quinn's writing as well. And imagine my surprise when I flew through the pages in an afternoon. Julia Quinn's writingwas witty and hilarious. I loved the banters and the sibling's taunts. Even if they followed a half of Julia's dialogues in the ...
Amazon.com: Customer reviews: The Duke and I: The (Bridgertons Book 1)
The Duke and I is the first book to Julia Quinn's Bridgerton series. The first book focuses on Daphne, the fourth of eight siblings in the Bridgerton family, and the Duke of Hastings, Simon Basset. Readers will also meet the other Bridgertons' and other secondary characters that I liked getting to know more than the main characters at times ...
The Duke and I (Bridgerton Series, Book 1)
The Duke and I (Bridgerton Series, Book 1) Mass Market Paperback - June 27, 2006. Simon Basset, the irresistible Duke of Hastings, has hatched a plan to keep himself free from the town′s marriage-minded society mothers. He pretends to be engaged to the lovely Daphne Bridgerton.
Book Review
Julia Quinn cleverly turns a voyeuristic eye on the couple's sizzling romantic exploits, which are torrid enough to keep every reader red-hot in the dead of winter. The Duke and I is a fun, twisted romp of manners in the drawing rooms, ballrooms and castles of the rich and famous of Regency London. The novel's resolution and its two ...
The Duke and I: Bridgerton (Bridgertons, 1)
The Duke and I: Bridgerton (Bridgertons, 1) Hardcover - May 4, 2021. A #1 New York Times Bestseller. From #1 New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn comes the story of Daphne Bridgerton, in the first of her beloved Regency-set novels featuring the charming, powerful Bridgerton family, now a series created by Shondaland for Netflix.
Book Review: The Duke and I
Title: The Duke and I. Author: Julia Quinn. Review Number: 3. Genre: Historical Romance. Stand alone or series: First in the Bridgerton series, but can be taken on its own (like many romance novels) Summary: (from JuliaQuinn .com) Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings, has sworn never to marry. Daphne Bridgerton has sworn to marry only for love.
The Duke and I: Study Guide
Overview. American author Julia Quinn's The Duke and I, published in 2000, is the first in an eight-book series about the Bridgerton family, with each novel focusing on one of the family's eight siblings. The Regency-era historical romance hit the New York Times extended bestseller list as well as both the Publishers Weekly and USA Today ...
Book Review: The Duke and I by Julia Quinn
February 18, 2021 by Heidi Dischler. Picking up The Duke and I to review, I already had an idea what I was getting into. Since this was not my first book read by Julia Quinn, I know a little about her style and her love of older eras. With that said, I ranked The Duke and I pretty low on my Bridgerton list because it isn't really my favorite….
Bridgerton Book 1: The Duke and I
The Duke and I book cover. The two main characters, Daphne and Simon, fake a relationship to make the most of the season. Daphne wants more marriage prospects, and if Simon, a duke, shows interest, then others will as well. Simon uses his fake relationship with Daphne to drive off the other marriage-hungry Mamas from conspiring and trapping him ...
Bridgertons Series by Julia Quinn
Queen Charlotte. by Julia Quinn. 4.15 · 25,307 Ratings · 3,144 Reviews · published 2023 · 48 editions. From #1 New York Times bestselling author Julia Qu…. Want to Read. Rate it: Regency romance. See also The Lady Whistledown story collections, and the new Rokesbys prequel series. The Duke and I (Bridgertons, #1), The Duke and I: ...
Bridgerton: The Duke & I
Synopsis. Book number one of the Bridgerton series (The Duke & I) tells the story of Daphne Bridgerton and Duke Simon Basset which takes place in London during the Regency Period (around 1813). Now, I have to emphasize that this is the first book in this specific series because Julia Quinn has written more books that solely focus on its own ...
The Duke and I: Full Book Summary
The Duke and I Full Book Summary. Previous. In the late 1700s, the Duke of Hastings is ecstatic when his wife gives birth to a male child after fifteen years of miscarriages and stillborn births. The child is named Simon Basset, and he will one day inherit the title of Duke of Hastings. The duchess dies from complications during childbirth, and ...
My Issue With The Bridgertons Series
The Duke & I is the first book in the Bridgertons series, following Daphne Bridgerton and Simon Basset. Daphne is the eldest daughter of the Viscount, but the fourth of her eight siblings. Despite knowing most of the young eligible gentlemen in London, she is struggling to capture their interest when it comes to romance.
Jenny (Nyxie)'s review of The Duke Starts a Scandal
3/5: I read a MF romance, and I didn't hate it! But I was bored, and it was pretty chock full of the typical tropes. I will say this isn't an awful book but I was way more excited to hear about Aunt Tabitha and her Best Friend / Roommate (who got all of 5 pages in the book) than even the main characters. Make of that what you will.
Michael Korda's 'Muse of Fire' recalls World War I's soldier poets
6 min. 0. It's a bitter paradox that even the most virulently antiwar of the famous soldier poets of World War I felt the lure of battle. "He was not eager to die," Michael Korda writes of ...
Natha (Switzerland)'s review of A Duet with the Siren Duke
I really liked this book, maybe it can be too long for some but I was onto this story and it really worked for me, I mean it did make cry 3 times. Like ∙ flag Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read A Duet with the Siren Duke .
Darity Receives Leading Award from American Economic Association
Pioneering Duke economist William "Sandy" Darity, arguably the nation's leading authority on reparations for Black American descendants of slavery, has been named a 2024 Distinguished Fellow by the American Economic Association (AEA), officials with the university's Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, announced this week.. Darity, the Cook Center's founding director, is the ...
Book Review: 'The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz'
A new omnibus compiles the poet's books and unpublished work, including his two-part autobiographical masterpiece, "Genesis.". The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz, edited by Ben Mazer ...
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Pratt School of Engineering. Joseph Izatt, the Michael J. Fitzpatrick Professor of Engineering and chair of Duke's Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), passed away on Sunday, April 7. Since joining Duke in 2001, Izatt served the university through dedicated service to his students and colleagues, and as a pioneering researcher.

The Duke and I by Julia Quinn | Book Review

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The Duke & I by Julia Quinn | Book Review

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Book Review: The Duke and I by Julia Quinn

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