The problem with Forever My Duke is that it doesn’t go about things in a unique or inventive way, resulting in audience fatigue, even though the romance itself is generally all right. Well, it’s a romance novel – they’ll find a way. But how can a duke who wants to marry an aristocratic miss ever find true love with a common girl? Hadrian offers her a helping hand, and the two of them begin to develop feelings for one another. Natalie plans to escape their life of drudgery, by opening a school for the poor in the city, and to unite Leo with his British relatives, but it’s a hard row for her to hoe alone. The woman is American Natalie Fanshawe, and her adopted son, Leo, is the pirate-obsessed boy who disrupts Hadrian’s intentions.

His valet, Chumley, disapproves the reason for his master’s having journeyed so far from home – the pursuit of liquor – but then a small boy and his mother appear, and Hadrian’s plans go rather sideways. Yet he is determined to capture this “perfect bride”. He has not seen his intended, his seventeen-year-old (yikes!) second cousin Lady Ellen, since they were adolescents, and his lateness does not provide a positive impression. Hadrian Ames, Eighth Duke of Clayton, is on his way to dinner with his family and his prospective bride when he’s waylaid at a taproom by an ice storm.

Forever My Duke is one of those ‘just okay’ romances, one that has its sweet points but whose joints creek alarmingly.

Forever My Duke by Olivia Drake