"If I conferred with our furry friends, man to animal
Think of the amazing repartee
If I could walk with the animals, talk with the animals
Grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals
And they could talk to me" - Leslie Bricusse
https://betinakrahn.com/
Anyone but a Duke is the last book in Betina Krahn’s Sin and Sensibility series. While I am excited to see Betina Krahn wielding her pen again, her latest series was a little underwhelming. Ms. Krahn is one of those authors who I hold to higher expectations. She has been around for a while. She is what I would call a veteran, and is responsible for some of my favorite “old” romance books. Although, I will admit that when I recently reread her old classic Caught in the Act, it did not pass the test of time. It melted down in the Way-back machine. Back to Anyone but a Duke. Be warned, there is a large amount of plausibility stretching in this story.Anyone but a Duke returns us to those wild and woolly cowpoke girls, the Baumgarten sisters. This story is about the youngest sister, Sarah. When the story begins, she is in the process of having her feelings hurt by one of her suitors. She believed he was the man for her, she thought he was in luvvvv with her. However, Sarah is not wise to the way of the aristocracy. Evidently, inheriting an Earldom turns her suitor into a worm, and he dumps the brash American for an Italian heiress. Sarah is embarrassed. She decides to leave London and hide out at her brother-in-law’s estate. She has had enough of the backbiting society world. She is off to the country! Did I mention she was nineteen, her brother-in-law and sister are not at the estate, and she is going without any chaperones? Not only that, but once she gets there she notices that the estate is in shambles. As any nineteen-year-old girl would do, she takes over the management of the estate, and in just a matter of months, she is getting everything in order. It would seem that servants and village people do not have any trouble following the orders of a teenager. A teenager, by the way, who is not the owner of the property, nor do they have the authority to manage said property. Not only that, she is an American teenager and she’s giving orders to British servants/villagers/farmers/cow-herders/etc. That whole scenario was one big hurdle to jump. Dare I say it was ludicrous? I do not care if it was the 1890s. Let’s take that scenario out of the past and bring it into our age. Seriously, would any of us take orders from a nineteen year old who has no experience, and who does not have the authority to make changes to the land/property/whatever? “What’s that you say little lady? You want to build a new roof. Sure, sure! I’ll get right on it! You’re going to get the money from where? No proble-mo! By the way, just who are you?” I can only arrive at the conclusion that Sarah was a Vulcan who could control people with a mind-meld. But it is not just people. She also has a way with animals. Not just a way, but a waaaay.
Sarah communes with the animals, she sings, she dances, she whispers, and they follow her around. All of them fighting just to get close to her. It’s probably the peanut butter she wears behind her pointy ears. There was one particular scene in this book, which reminded me of Disney’s Snow White cleaning the dwarf’s house. That was the scene where Snow White sang while allll the animals helped her. Not only is she super-duper with the animals, and bends servants to her will, she can heal human gunshot victims. Enter our hero, Arthur.
Now on to another convoluted plot: Arthur. The estate Sarah is saving, Betancourt, belongs to her brother-in-law – sort of. Her brother-in-law, Ashton, was the hero from A Good Day to Marry a Duke. Ashton married Sarah’s sister Daisy. Daisy had set her sights on Ashton’s brother Arthur, the Duke of Meridian. But, in the end she decided Ashton was her man. I guess Arthur had his heart broken, so he decided to leave, and journey the world. In his absence, he left Ashton with the responsibility of managing the estate. He also said that if he didn’t return in six years Ashton would be the Duke, or something like that. I would think that Arthur would have to be declared legally dead for that to happen. However, I am not a solicitor, or a lawyer. Anyway, it seems that neither brother is alllll that responsible. Arthur is off seeing the world and Ashton is off touring America with his new wife. Both brothers are ignoring the poor starving people on their estate. Then Arthur disappears, his family thinks he is dead. Does anyone try to find him? Not that I know of. Nah, Ashton is too busy showing off in America to take the time to find his brother, or help the struggling people at Betancourt. In the meantime, Arthur’s tour of the world is not turning out to be what he wanted. He is kidnapped, imprisoned, works for a pirate, escapes, is captured, imprisoned, then escapes again. He does not let anyone know he is alive. True, there weren’t smartphones then, but this story takes place in the 1890s, and there were telegraphs strung across continents, there were telephone systems, there were postal deliveries, and don’t forget about those carrier pigeons. There had to have been a way for Arthur to communicate to someone that he was still alive. In the meantime, people are starving back at Betancourt, houses are falling down, and cows are drying up. However, then super-duper girl shows up to save the day. Then one day while she was walking along talking to the squirrels, she stumbles across an injured stranger. She takes him back to Betancourt, puts him in his old bed and treats him. Of course, she does not remember him; she was only thirteen the last time she saw him. However, he looks mighty familiar. Arthur, on the other hand remembers her. Does he tell her who he is? Oh, you silly-willies, of course not!
If it were just Arthur and Sarah, I might have bought into the story, but there were a whole lot of other things going on. There was an obvious villain. He looks, tastes, smells, and acts like a villain. However, Sarah and Arthur do not catch on. There are gangs of house and stable burning, scum-sucking, hoodlums, who are out to disrupt the peaceful village. I never quite understood a secondary-secondary bad-guy-good-guy. Even in the end, I was puzzled as to whether he was protecting Sarah, or trying to kill her. There were Ashton and Daisy returning from America, and trying to explain their neglect of Betancourt. There was Daisy’s mother, who was over-protective in all the other books, but did not seem to care that her nineteen-year-old daughter was managing an estate miles, and miles away. And, of course there was Uncle Red.
This story was an “if-only story”. If only the heroine was older, and/or chaperoned. If only the heroine was not such a super-duper girl. If only the hero was honest about his identity. If only Ashton had lived up to his hero status from the previous books. If only the villains were not in the book. If only someone cared about the poor villagers, someone with the authority to do so. While Sarah and Arthur had possibilities, the rest of the story was a convoluted narrative, and it did not live up to my expectations. Sorry to say, the last book in this series was a disappointment for me. As much as it pains me to say, I cannot recommend it.
Time/Place: 1890s England
Sensuality:Warm
No comments:
Post a Comment